1992 USA Olympic Team Sponsor Pin ~ Lunch Combinations ~ Cross-Country Skiing ~ Oscar Mayer

A 1992 U.S. Olympic Team sponsor pin from Oscar Mayer's Lunch Combinations line, the packaged lunches better known as Lunchables, from the winter sports half of the series. A yellow enamel panel in a gold frame carries "USA" above the Olympic rings in gold, with a gold cross-country skier striding forward on his poles, and "LUNCH COMBINATIONS" on a tan bar along the bottom. Gold tone metal, rectangular, with a single post and butterfly clutch.

About Lunch Combinations and Lunchables: "Lunch combinations" was Oscar Mayer's own name for a new kind of product: sliced meat, cheese and crackers packed side by side in one tray, ready for a lunchbox. Oscar Mayer registered its trademark for "lunch combinations consisting of crackers with meat and cheese or crackers with meat and poultry," with a first use date of September 1987, and sold them under the Lunchables name. The line was developed by an Oscar Mayer team led by Bob Drane, test-marketed in 1987 and introduced in 1988. By January 1990 Lunchables were already sold in about 70 percent of the U.S. market, and Oscar Mayer went to court that month to defend them against a rival lunch kit from Sara Lee. Lunchables became one of the best-selling products in Oscar Mayer's history and started the company's whole lunch combinations category; the packages still carry the words "Lunch Combinations" today.

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 later added Claussen pickles (1970) and Louis Rich turkey (1979). 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).

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 Cross-Country Skiing design: The skier leans into a long stride, one ski gliding ahead and both poles planted behind. Cross-country skiing was practiced in Scandinavia for centuries before it became a race, and it has been on the Olympic program at every Winter Games since the first one at Chamonix in 1924. Women first raced at the Olympics in a 10 km event at Oslo in 1952. At the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France, Norway's Bjørn Dæhlie won the men's 50 km and pursuit, and Norway took the men's relay, while Lyubov Yegorova of the Unified Team won the women's 15 km and pursuit.

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: Lunch Combinations (Oscar Mayer Lunchables), 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: Cross-Country Skiing (Winter)
• Design: "USA" and the Olympic rings above a gold cross-country skier with poles, "LUNCH COMBINATIONS" on the bottom bar
• Style: Yellow 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.