Twin Peaks Prop – Sonny Jim’s Robot Lunch Bag

The Jones’ house in Twin Peaks: The Return is filled with lots of little treasures that capture the life of a modern family living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Sonny Jim attends school just like every other child his age. Naturally, he had accessories like a lunch bag to accompany him during the school day. In Twin PeaksPart 5, you can briefly see his bag as he exits the front door of him home. It didn’t take long to find a match thanks to a reverse image search and an Ebay auction that’s been online for a year.

SONNY JIM’S ROBOT LUNCH BAG

As Janey-E prepares to take Sonny Jim and Dougie Jones to school and work, we see the little boy leave his home carrying a robot lunch bag. I cropped the image and did a reverse image search on Google Images.

It didn’t take long to find a match – an Ebay auction that’s been online for about a year. It’s the only auction I can find with this bag. When identifying props, I use a combination of reverse image searches, newspaper article and online auctions. Sometimes I get lucky and find a quick match. Other times, as in the case of Special Agent Sam Stanley’s Whiteman Machine, the search can take years.

ROBOT LUNCH BAG BY CALIFORNIA INNOVATIONS

California Innovations designed the soft lunch bag shaped by a robot. The bag in the auction featured the name “Tyler” written in black marker. I have removed that name in the images since Sonny-Jim’s bag didn’t have that name.

The seller provided me with the product tag which lists the manufacturer as California Innovations, Inc. The style number is 1-60430-68-06. Despite an exhaustive search of newspaper advertisements on Newspapers.com, I did not locate the exact year this lunch bag was produced. I feel the “06” could be 2006 as this bag feels like something my son would have had in the late 2000s.

California Innovations began in Toronto in 1986 with the release of an automotive sun shield. They developed a soft sided cooler that collapsed as a promotional item included with the sun shield. Their sun shield business folded but the Original Collapsible Cooler was a success. In 2005, the company acquired Arctic Zone, a Chicago-based company founded in 1989 that specialized in developing insulated products.

Together, they have created several product “firsts” in the marketplace such as an insulated lunch bag, removable hard plastic liner, Zipperless™ Cooler with hard liner and an IceCOLD™ Performance Cooler to name a few.

This image shows the backside and bottom of the robot lunch bag.

This is the side view which shows a handle that moves.

The robot’s center square and its head unzips for reveal storage.

ROBOT LUNCH BAG APPEARANCES IN TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN

The robot lunch bag appears in Part 4 of Twin Peaks: The Return when Janey-E is seen making breakfast in her kitchen. The bag is seen resting on top of the toaster to the right of Janey-E.

In the Behind the Curtain footage from Part 4, you can see the bag on the toaster in one of the monitors David Lynch is watching.

A closer shot of Naomi Watts in the Behind the Curtain footage shows the bag on the toaster.

At some point, there was a take with the lunch bag placed on the island, not the toaster. The final appearance is in Part 5 as Sonny Jim carries the bag to the car as he prepares for school.

Thank you to Ettascollectibles who, as of time of this press, still has the bag available on Ebay.