1992 USA Olympic Team Sponsor Pin ~ Louis Kemp ~ Ski Jumping ~ Oscar Mayer

A 1992 U.S. Olympic Team sponsor pin from Louis Kemp, the Crab Delights seafood brand Oscar Mayer owned at the time, from the winter sports half of the series. A dark teal green enamel panel in a gold frame carries "USA" above the Olympic rings in gold, with a gold ski jumper in flight, body stretched out over parallel skis, and "LOUIS KEMP" on a tan bar along the bottom. Gold tone metal, rectangular, with a single post and butterfly clutch.

About Louis Kemp: Louis E. Kemp came from a family that had been in the wholesale and retail seafood business since 1930. In 1985 he started making surimi seafood, a low-fat product made from Alaska pollock and flavored like crab, and in January 1986 the company introduced Crab Delights and opened a processing plant in Duluth, Minnesota, with help from a city jobs loan. In March 1987 Kemp sold the business to Oscar Mayer Foods for $4 million. Oscar Mayer, which had done well with full-name brands like Oscar Mayer and Louis Rich, asked to use his name, and the company became the Louis Kemp Seafood Company. By 1992 it was the leading U.S. maker of packaged surimi crab and lobster, with plants in Duluth and Olympia, Washington, and its Crab Delights and Lobster Delights held 62 percent of the retail market. In August 1992 Oscar Mayer agreed to sell Louis Kemp Seafood to Tyson Foods; the brand later passed to Bumble Bee and, in 2006, to Trident Seafoods.

About Oscar Mayer: Oscar F. Mayer and his brother Gottfried opened Oscar Mayer as a meat market in Chicago in 1883. By the early 1960s it was the leading U.S. maker of processed meats, and it went on to buy Claussen pickles in 1970, the Louis Rich turkey company in 1979 and Kemp's surimi seafood business in 1987. Oscar Mayer was bought by General Foods in 1981; General Foods was bought by Philip Morris in 1985, which added Kraft in 1988 and merged the two into Kraft General Foods in 1989 (renamed Kraft Foods in 1995). When this series was made, Oscar Mayer and Louis Kemp Seafood were both part of Kraft General Foods.

An Olympic sponsor: Oscar Mayer Foods and its Louis Rich turkey company were sponsors of the U.S. Olympic Committee in the run-up to the 1992 Games, and Oscar Mayer also issued pins marked "Official Sponsor 1992 U.S. Olympic Team." The Oscar Mayer family of brands shared one matching series of USA Olympic sport pins, covering both summer and winter sports, each with an athlete on an enamel panel and a brand name on the bottom bar: Oscar Mayer, Louis Rich, Claussen, Lunch Combinations or Louis Kemp. This pin is part of the Oscar Mayer family USA Olympic sport series made for the 1992 U.S. Olympic Team.

The Ski Jumping design: The jumper leans far forward over skis held side by side, the classic flying position. Ski jumping was pioneered in Norway by Sondre Norheim in the 1800s and has been on the Olympic program at every Winter Games since the first one at Chamonix in 1924. By the time of the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France, the newer V-style, with the ski tips spread apart in a fan shape for a longer flight, had taken over the sport. Its master at Albertville was Toni Nieminen of Finland, who at 16 won the large hill gold, plus team gold and a normal hill bronze, and remains the youngest man ever to win an individual Winter Olympic title.

The "36 USC 380" stamp: The back is stamped "36 USC 380," the section of the U.S. Code created by the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. It gave the U.S. Olympic Committee the exclusive right in the United States to the Olympic rings and the word "Olympic," so a company needed the USOC's permission to use them on merchandise. The stamp turns up on the backs of many licensed U.S. Olympic sponsor pins from the 1980s and 1990s. In 1998 the law was renumbered as 36 U.S.C. 220506, so the old "380" stamp is a sign of a pin made before then.

• Year: 1992 U.S. Olympic Team
• Sponsor: Louis Kemp Seafood (Oscar Mayer), Oscar Mayer family of brands
• Series: Oscar Mayer family USA Olympic sport series, summer and winter sports (Oscar Mayer, Louis Rich, Claussen, Lunch Combinations, Louis Kemp)
• Sport: Ski Jumping (Winter)
• Design: "USA" and the Olympic rings above a gold ski jumper in flight on parallel skis, "LOUIS KEMP" on the bottom bar
• Style: Dark teal green enamel panel, gold tone frame, rectangle
• Size: approx. 5/8" x 1"
• Back: Gold tone, stamped "36 USC 380," single post with butterfly clutch

Packaging: All orders shipped in corrugated box for extra protection, we don't use bubble mailers.

Shipping: U.S. shipping is $4.95 flat per order, and free on orders of $35 or more.