Tuck in! McSweeney’s latest issue is a lunchbox

As a kid, your lunchbox was always a way of signalling who you were; branded with your favourite cartoon characters, motioning to your favourite colour, or covered in your most recent obsession – space, princesses or maybe animals. Now you’ve grown up, with McSweeney’s latest lunchbox-cum-magazine issue, you let everyone know you’re a fan of really good independent writing. Made to mark the San Francisco-based magazine’s 74th edition and 25 years as a quarterly publication, the lunchbox is full of treats that your friends will be begging you for swapsies, from author cards, to pencils that change meaning when sharpened, and artwork from the famed cartoonist and author of Maus, Art Spiegelman.

The first idea that later informed the overarching concept was the author cards, says McSweeney’s art director Sunra Thompson. “We had this idea to make author baseball cards, packaged in real tear-away baseball card packaging, and we wanted them to come with an issue of McSweeney’s. But we didn’t immediately know how we’d package these two things together.” For a long time, Sunra has also been fixated on using tin: “I’d got into the habit of just suggesting for every project, even if it didn’t make sense.” So, Sunra and the wider team began deliberating on how they could use tin; someone mentioned tin cases for collectable DVDs that were popular in the 90s, leading them down the line of past uses of tin. “And then, out of the blue, an editor suddenly shouted ‘lunchbox!’.”

Despite unanimously landing on the idea, actually getting the box to look as they envisioned was a little easier said than done. The artwork on the outside of the box is reminiscent of mid-to-late 20th century children’s books; the character-filled work has hints of Maurice Sendak about it. But, to achieve this effect, it was made with watercolour, and finding a printer that could capture it and colour-correct (as well as printing double-sided) was a bit of mission. But, after a fair few time-consuming tests “when it was finally right, and we got a sample of the final lunchbox, it was a great feeling – and a relief”.

Inside the box you’ll find just as thoughtfully designed ephemera. For Sunra, the “main event” is the baseball cards – featuring Zadie Smith, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and David Foster Wallace (among many others) they come in three packs, all with a unique look. Two are illustrated and have a comic essence to them, but are stylistically different, taken from either end of the spectrum of comic-book genre, while the third pack features classy black and white photographic portraits of each writer.

There’s also three pencils, each emblazoned with a short piece of writing from Lydia Davis, Catherine Lacey and David Horvitz, which as the pencil is sharpened (and words are lost) changes meaning, as well as an anthology of writing which features some of the best writing from the McSweeney’s Quarterly from the past 25 years. Wrapping things up is an extra special booklet of never-before seen watercolour pareidolia art (finding faces and objects in random shapes) from Art Spiegelman. In a particularly nice touch, it’s this very method that also inspired the lunchbox’s cover art.

“Surprising readers and ourselves is something McSweeney’s has tried to do from the very beginning,” says Sunra. “At least for me, making stuff is most exciting when you work as if there are no rules – which there aren’t. A magazine can be a pile of junk mail, a sweaty human head, or a lunchbox.” Maybe it’s time to bin that ratty New Yorker tote, and replace it with a McSweeney’s lunchbox.