About a year ago I stumbled onto something pretty amazing while searching vintage lunchboxes on eBay. There was a box featuring an 80s property (what appeared to be a cartoon and toy brand), that I had never heard of before, and it is stunning. Now, I’m not going to claim I have an encyclopedic knowledge of every toy and cartoon from the eighties, but having spent 20 years steeping myself in the nostalgic kid-centric waters of that decade it’s rare that I find stuff that I’ve never heard of before. Typically, the stuff that has floated past my radar is either low-quality, action figure knockoff lines or single-episode pilots for animated series that just never made it.
So, when I do find something I’ve never heard of before, it’s kind of fascinating. But when that thing also features some wicked concepts or crazy designs, it’s hard not to fall deeply, madly in love with it. Thus was the case with the lunchbox I found for a property called The Cave Warriors released sometime in 1985. This red, plastic box features two sets of art, the main one being the large sticker adorning the lid of the box that depicts two warriors squaring off in battle. The second piece is a spot illustration of what I assume is the main villain on the included thermos. All of this artwork is in the style of 2D, cell-shaded animation and they look very much like a couple of cels from an animated series.
The Cave Warriors is clearly a rip-off of series like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or Thundarr the Barbarian. The main image features a musclebound hero decked out in some sort of furry, alien animal hide (maybe even a giant tarantula), and he’s wielding what appears to be some sort of metal weapon which I think is like a giant dagger with a pistol-like grip that also wraps around his wrist. This dude is facing off against a giant bipedal lizard or dinosaur man, with glowing red eyes and goblin heads where his hands would be. Let that last bit sink in a minute. THE LIZARD MAN HAS THE HEADS OF GHOULIES INSTEAD OF HANDS. This is the aspect that took hold of my imagination and would not let it loose. That design is so incredibly toyetic and just the right amount of batshit crazy that I adore in the cartoons of the era. Think of the Rankin/Bass action cartoon villains like Mumm-Ra from ThunderCats or Mon*Star from Silverhawks. Like, I want to know every single detail about this three-headed, evil lizardman right now. Luckily (for me) this is the character carried through to the image on the thermos and he’s depicted from a different angle showing off the fist-faces much better. They are both adorable and disturbing in equal measure and I love it.
I immediately went on the hunt for further proof of the existence of The Cave Warriors, crossing my fingers that there was a line of toys and a TV show I’d missed growing up in the 80s. If nothing else I was hoping I’d find some commercials on YouTube, or like one other person out there expressing their dearest love for the property and lamenting its disappearance from the pop culture landscape. But I couldn’t find anything. The only things I found were a couple of auctions for other copies of this specific lunchbox and thermos set. This felt otherworldly and just wrong as this lunchbox just feels too specific to be some random one-off. If the illustrations had been cruder, or the Cave Warriors logo not so well thought out, I’d probably be able to accept that this was just some weird anomaly. Like maybe it was a store-brand school supply trying to fit in with all of the branded merch hitting the shelves back in 1985. But this isn’t a knock-off Adidas she with four stripes instead of three.
The copyright and trademark for the Cave Warriors is listed as William I. Teitelbaum. Doing a deep-dive on Google I was able to turn up a couple of Bill Teitelbaums that dabbled in the 80s-era creative industries. One was part of a brother team that made a series of newspaper comic strips and the other was more into the business side of things. The business dude was the guy I was looking for, and after digging a little deeper at the U.S. Copyright Office I managed to find what I believe is the dead end of my search.
That doesn’t answer all of my questions of course, but I can infer that Teitelbaum had enough seed money to commission a couple of decent logos and some animation-style artwork (maybe even a teaser trailer or short) for this lunchbox and thermos set. The sculpting and molding process for some prototype toys was probably pushing the budget, though I wouldn’t be shocked if something was out there. I’m betting there is at least a pitch kit that he took to companies like Hasbro, DiC, Filmation, Mattel, or Marvel Productions, but I’m also betting they’re moldering away in some storage locker or basement. My guess is that the lunchbox was part of his pitch to showcase the potential of the idea, and when it didn’t sell, he either made a deal with Deka Plastics to utilize it in order to try and recoup some of his upfront costs in designing the brand pitches.
I did try and reach out to a handful of e-mail addresses and ancient social accounts I found, but after almost a year of waiting, I haven’t heard a peep. So I’ll probably never know for certain, but honestly, just the mystery surrounding this is delicious enough to make me smile. And nobody besides the grim reaper will be able to pry the Ghoulie-handed, lizard-man thermos out of my hands anytime soon.
