Kevin Rej

About me: Husband, Father, Son, Brother, Vegan, Creative Director, Pez collector, Lunchbox aficionado, South Carolina native

My collections: My obsession with Pez dispensers and metal lunchboxes began innocently enough. In the early eighties, I would peruse yard sales and thrift stores, looking to reclaim lost treasures from my childhood. In exchange for a few dollars, I’d return home with a boxful of KISS albums, Pez, lunchboxes and scary clown paintings. Within a few months, my kitchen was filled with lunchboxes, and I was hooked.

Currently, my Pez collection stands at 418, my lunchbox collection is comprised of 165 boxes and occupies an entire wall in my studio. It includes both the first and last metal lunchboxes ever produced, Hopalong Cassidy (1950) and Rambo (1985).

My interests: For me, my collections represent the golden age of branding and consumer product marketing. In addition to collecting dust, these treasures serve as my visual archive of exceptional brand development.

Lunchboxes exemplify my earliest interaction with consumer product. For example, KISS, Dr. Seuss, Disney and Evel Knievel were all brands that monumentally influenced my childhood. In the mid-seventies, the rock band KISS was a formidable, fire-breathing marketing blitzkrieg unlike any other. In my early teens, I came to the realization that KISS embodied the perfect marriage of marketing, graphic design and advertising hype. This, without question, influenced my decision to pursue a career in communications design.