Pin:Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

Spin-off merchandise from characters and subjects in popular culture are often just as fascinating as the characters, movies, radio programs, television events, or commercial products which inspire them. Apart from political pins, so-called "pinback" buttons or pins which display these characters and subjects are as old as the metal and celluloid buttons themselves. Beginning in 1893, people wore early plastic Heinz pickles to demonstrate their loyalty to that particular brand (as if home-made pickles weren't good enough!) and similar pins commemorate (and advertise) nearly every aspect of popular culture since. Comic strip and comic book super heroes are no exception; pinback pins adorned with hero imagery began to surge with these comics in the 1940s, and have not stopped.

Buck Rogers was a science fiction character who first debuted in a 1928 issue of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories and quickly gained popularity for his outer space adventures. Through the following decades, as Americans made advances in space exploration, Rogers remained a popular character taking form as a comic strip, a serial film and even a television series in 1979.