The Aladdin Industries Thermos that paired with the 1983 Castle Grayskull metal lunchbox shipped from the same Nashville factory and through the same back-to-school retail channels. Most kids who bought the lunchbox bought the matching Thermos at the same time; the two pieces formed the standard MOTU lunch combo across the 1983 to 1985 school years.
Construction is the classic Aladdin vacuum-insulated steel bottle with a screw-top plastic cup. Capacity is 10 fluid ounces, designed to fit inside the lunchbox’s interior bottle clip. The painted lithograph artwork wraps the exterior of the steel body: He-Man on the front, Skeletor on the back, MOTU logo banding around the cap and base. The colour palette is the standard hot Eternia reds and oranges that Aladdin had used on the matching lunchbox.
The plastic cup lid is the most fragile component. The cup is moulded in red plastic with a He-Man head embossed on the side. The cup lip cracks with use, and most surviving Thermoses have cracked or chipped cups. Replacement cups occasionally surface at flea markets and run $20 to $40 by themselves; matching original cups in NM condition with the original Thermos run $50 to $80.
The steel vacuum body survives well unless dropped, in which case the inner glass liner shatters and renders the Thermos non-functional. Collectors typically do not care about function; display-grade Thermoses with intact paint, intact cap, and original cup run $40 to $80 on eBay. Mint examples with no paint chipping and original cup with no cracks run $100 to $180.
Sealed-new examples in the original outer Aladdin retail packaging are rare. The retail packaging was a cardboard box with a clear plastic window showing the painted body. Most boxes were discarded at point-of-purchase. Sealed boxes with the original Thermos inside surface occasionally and have hammered past $400 at recent auctions.
The matched Castle Grayskull lunchbox plus Thermos set in NM condition with both pieces showing equivalent grade is the collector trophy. Pair sales on eBay have closed between $250 and $400 across the past three years.
Catalogue source: heman.fandom.com, Aladdin Industries archival catalogues (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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