In 1972, the American Oil Company reproduced historic political campaign buttons with the history of the candidate on a card and gave them away as premiums to its gas station customers. They featured buttons from the 1896 campaign of William Jennings Bryan through the 1968 presidential campaign.

These buttons were marked as reproductions but when placed in a faux wooden frame, a novice would have a hard time determining their individual value. The customer would assume that the buttons were authentic with a high collectible value. They, unfortunately, are more decorative than collectible.

There was a complete set of 38 buttons attached to a cardboard card telling the customer the history of the candidate. Each button featured “A-O 1972 #” and the number of the button from 1 to 38. None of the buttons have the plastic covering over the button that the real ones would have, but instead are solid metal.

Additionally in 1968, the Kleenex Corporation issued a series of 15 political button reproductions that featured the name “Kleenex 68″ along the rim of each of the button reproductions. None of the buttons have the plastic covering over the button as the original buttons would have.

All of the above political button reproductions come in a faux wooden frame with paper backing.

I’m sure there are other similar political product premiums given away by major corporations at one time or another. Let us know what they are.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 2:12 am and is filed under Articles, Blog Entry, Fraternal, Political, Organizations, Political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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