Ask Me Chili Cheese Fries

 Photograph of chili cheese fries with white text over the top

In 2024, this button became the subject of a podcast episode, when a librarian named Casey Koss became obsessed with finding the person who made it.  Koss first came across the button while working as an intern, researching unidentified buttons in the Busy Beaver Button Museum’s collection. 

After years of unsuccessful attempts to find any information about the business listed on the curl text, Koss contacted Alex Goldman’s Hyperfixed podcast for help.The podcast team discovered that the button had not been made by a restaurant, but by a former Busy Beaver employee named Nick Rouley.

When asked why he made it, Rouley explained that – as a collector of buttons and other historical ephemera – he’d always been drawn to the kind of weird objects that compelled him to ask: Why did somebody make this? So Rouley decided to make a button that would someday elicit that feeling in someone else. He added the curl text to give it the appearance of authenticity, and left two copies of the button at the museum, hoping someone would find it someday.  

When contacted about the button, nearly 15 years after its creation, Rouley told the podcast team: “This is a dream come true.”