Illustration of a woman's face with white hair, red triangular earring, pearl necklace and cat's eye glasses.  Black and red text on a white background.

M.K. Brown is a cartoonist whose work was regularly featured in the American humor magazine, National Lampoon. One of her most popular contributions to the magazine was his comic strip titled "Aunt Mary's Kitchen." The strip ran from the early 1970s into the 1980s and featured the character of Aunt Mary, an older woman who gave recipe advice and spoke directly to the audience on how to cook a variety of different dishes. Over time the comic would change its focus from cooking recipes and instead developed a subplot where aliens invade the earth. The character proved popular enough that in 1983 a cookbook featuring the character was published and featured over one hundred and forty different recipes. Besides Aunt Mary, M.K. Brown had numerous works that were featured in the magazine throughout her time with National Lampoon between 1972 and 1981. In its early years, National Lampoon was hailed as a critically acclaimed magazine that helped shape American comedy and humor in the late 20th century. By the late 1980s, the magazine saw a decline in readership and began cutting back to publishing only one magazine per year in its final three years. The magazines final publication was released in November 1998.

Illustration of person standing in profile with white hair and a bandanna covering their mouth against an illustrated background of wood planks.  Orange and black text.
 

Gahan Wilson is an American author, illustrator, and cartoonist whose cartoons are often drawn in a humorously grotesque manner that is coupled with dark sense of humor. One of his most famous comic strips is Nuts, which appeared throughout the 1970s in National Lampoon Magazine. The strip follows the life of The Kid, an unnamed child who navigates childhood while coming to see the world as a strange, unfair, yet also fun place to inhabit. Wiltons inspiration behind the comic was to depict the complexity of childhood in an accurate and thought-provoking way.

Illustration of smiling person wearing brown overcoat and deerstalker-style hat waving to viewer.  Orange and black text on a white background.

B.K. Taylor is an American cartoonist, writer, and illustrator who is well known for his work in National Lampoon Magazine. Taylor worked for the magazine from 1975-1987, working on numerous strips, such as The Appletons, Stories from Uncle Kunta, and Timberland Tales. The character on this button is named Maurice The Indian Boy, also called The Joker by some. Featured as one of the main characters in Timberland Tales, which first appeared in October 1976. Maurice is described as a naive and humorous teenager who appeared frequently during the comic strips run in the magazine.

Illustration of a box with a red check mark with green text on a yellow background.

Bennigan's Irish American Grill & Tavern began in Atlanta, Georgia in 1976 as a mid-range casual dining restaurant serving Irish American cuisine. Following a 2011 organizational and marketing restructure, they rebranded to simply Bennigan's and focused on a high quality service and bar fare. These buttons were likely worn by waiters and bartenders in the original restaurants to advertise that they would ask for proper identification to patrons interested in purchasing alcoholic beverages. 

Black text on an orange background.

Leslie Tobin ran a shop in the 1960s in Philadelphia called "The Apparatus". The sold incense, jewelry, buttons, posters, and other hippie ephemera. The shop faced legal troubles in 1969 when it was raided several times by the Morals Squad of the Philadelphia Police Department due to complaints about obscene items—including buttons like this. No charges were filed, as buttons are a form of protected free speech. As Tobin stated in court, the buttons "were a social comment on the mores and hypocrisy of our society." In our judgment, 'Stop Vietnam' is as much speech on a button as it is in a newspaper, book or movie."

Red text inside an illustration of the state of Oregon in white with a red background.

Oregon is a U.S. state in the Pacific Northwest, which has a particularly unique history. It was inhabited by Paleo-Americans over 15,000 years ago, and has since been home to many Native American nations. Spanish explorers first sailed up the coast in the late 1500s, and Lewis and Clark made their famous expedition to the area in the 1800s. This sparked the Oregon Trail with many settlers moving West. Oregon’s admission to the Union has shaky beginnings. It was against slavery, but did not allow black people into its territory. Although Congress reluctantly admitted Oregon into the Union as a free state in 1859, its black exclusion laws were not fully repealed until the 1920s. 

However, today Oregon is a bastion of freedom and equality, being among the first states to legalize gay marriage, physician-assisted suicide, and recreational marijuana.

White and green text with a white circle in the middle of the button on a blue background.

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White text inside a red circle with white, yellowish-green and black concentric circles.

The American Tobacco Company introduced Lucky Strike cigarettes in 1916, acquiring its name from a chewing tobacco that originated in 1871. In the 1930s, it was the best-selling cigarette in the United States, controlling 39 percent of the market in 1931. However, sales dwindled as smokers sought filtered cigarettes. In the 1980s, Lucky Strike had less than 1 percent of the market. The company introduced a new filtered, low-tar cigarette with the advertising slogan “Lucky Strikes Again” aimed at male smokers ages 21 to 35 in the early 1980s. In the 2000s and 2010s, the company saw an uptick in sales, which some have tied to the television drama Mad Men. In the show, Lucky Strike is the client of a New York City advertising agency, and the cigarette is frequently smoked by many characters. Lucky Strike sold 23 billion packets of cigarettes in 2007 when the series first aired. In 2012 the company sold 33 billion.  

Illustration of smiling anthropomorphic "dilly bar" style ice cream wearing cowboy hat, neckerchief, gloves, spurred boots, and chaps holding a glowing "D" shaped branding iron.  Red text on a white background.

Dairy Queen's cowboy-themed "Dilly Bar" character, complete with a "D" branding iron, graced the ice cream bar’s paper wrappers throughout the latter part of the 1950s. The franchise's famous "Dilly Bar" is a circular soft-serve ice cream treat on a stick, coated in either chocolate or butterscotch, and topped with the trademark Dairy Queen swirl. The bar's creator, Robert Litherland, was the co-owner of a Dairy Queen store in Moorehead, Minnesota, when he introduced it to headquarters in 1955, making it an instant staple for the franchise. While demonstrating the technique of how one was made, the demonstrator held up the completed ice cream treat and pronounced, “Now isn’t that a dilly!” and the name was born, although never copyrighted.

Black text on a blue background

The phrase "let's lock loins" dates back to 1960s counterculture and is tied to the “free love” movement. The alliterative expression means to have sex with someone and is not in common use today.