1992 USA Olympic Team Sponsor Pin ~ Oscar Mayer ~ Ice Hockey ~ Louis Rich

A 1992 U.S. Olympic Team sponsor pin from Oscar Mayer, from the winter sports half of the series. A red enamel panel in a gold frame carries "USA" above the Olympic rings in gold, with a gold ice hockey player bent low over his stick, and "OSCAR MAYER" on a tan bar along the bottom. Gold tone metal, rectangular, with a single post and butterfly clutch.

About Oscar Mayer: Oscar F. Mayer and his brother Gottfried opened Oscar Mayer as a retail meat market on Chicago's near north side in 1883, and on their first day they took in $59. They built it into a national meat company, and in 1936 it launched its most famous promotion, the Wienermobile, a hot dog on wheels that toured the streets of Chicago. The company moved its headquarters to Madison, Wisconsin, in 1957 and by the early 1960s was the leading U.S. maker of processed meats. It bought Claussen pickles in 1970 and the Louis Rich Company, an Iowa turkey processor, in 1979, and in 1988 it introduced Lunchables, its packaged "lunch combinations." 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 Ice Hockey design: The player is shown in silhouette, knees bent and stick on the ice. Ice hockey first appeared at the Olympics at the 1920 Antwerp Summer Games, where the United States took silver behind Canada, and it has been played at every Winter Games since the first one at Chamonix in 1924. The U.S. won gold as the host nation twice, at Squaw Valley in 1960 and at Lake Placid in 1980, the upset over the Soviet Union remembered as the "Miracle on Ice." The 1992 Winter Games were held in Albertville, France.

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: Oscar Mayer, U.S. Olympic Committee sponsor
• Series: Oscar Mayer family USA Olympic sport series, summer and winter sports (Oscar Mayer, Louis Rich, Claussen, Lunch Combinations, Louis Kemp)
• Sport: Ice Hockey (Winter)
• Design: "USA" and the Olympic rings above a gold ice hockey player with stick, "OSCAR MAYER" on the bottom bar
• Style: Red 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.