Green text along top edge and very small green text along the bottom edge with a green and white illustration of cotton on a blue circle on a white background.

Made for Ingenue Magazine, a teen magazine. "I Cotton to You" is a phrase meaning "I like you" or indicating attraction to someone. It is said this came about because cotton was often cargo on riverboats and it would get stuck to workers' and passengers' hair or clothing. 

Lowercase black text along top edge with uppercase black text below on an yellow background.

Hippy Sippy was a Japanese candy produced in the late 1960s and imported into the United States by R.J. Albert & Sons. The packaging was shaped like a syringe and the candy resembled brightly colored pills. The candy played on the popular hippy and drug culture happening in the United States at the time, and each package came with a button that typically stated "hippy sippy says" and then another phrase alluding to drug usage slang such as "I'll try anything". The FDA ultimately recalled the candy in 1969 because of the controversy surrounding the drug paraphernalia inspired packaging.

An illustration of a green and white bumble bee with wings and human-like hands. The bee is holding a three leaf clover. The top half of the button is white and the bottom half is green.

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Six black overlapping semicircles with a diamond in the middle form a decorative background around the word "Galleria" with black text on the upper and lower edges on a silver background.

The Galleria in Portland, Oregon, was the result of a remodel in the 1970s. The original building had been constructed in 1910 by Olds Wortman and King. It was the first department store to take up an entire city block in the Northwest. The building is located on the corners of Morrison, Alder, Tenth, and West Park streets. The store was taken over by the Schlessinger Company in 1925 and the building was remodeled with new window displays and interior enhancements to make the store resemble Chicago’s famous Marshall Field’s building. Department stores continued to utilize the space until the 1970s when the building was obtained by Bill and Sam Naito who then turned the large building into a mall. The newly renovated Galleria held 42 stores on three floors. As interest in malls diminished over the years, the building moved all of the retail onto the first floor and the Western Culinary Institute and restaurant moved into the upper floors. 

White text on a green background. The business information is smaller and rounds the side of the button face.

After working for Frank’s Drum Shop on Wabash Avenue for five years, William Crowden (1931-2013) established Drums Unlimited.  He operated the retail business from November 1963 to January 1991.  It became one of the most renowned music retail locations in the Midwest with customers that included world famous drummers, i.e. Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich and Max Roach.

Large red text with a smaller piece of red text under it in quotes, both are surrounded by a ring made of two blues lines and one red line  

The Choozie Wear Corporation was founded in 1980 in New York and closed in 1996. The Choozie Wear Corporation sold children's clothing and switched from producing clothing in Hong Kong and China to producing clothing in U.S. cities during the early 90s. 

Red-trimmed white text on the center left portion of button and red text on the bottom portion of the button. A color image of a pig with golden wings and bow on the right portion of the button. The image and text lie on a cloud background. 

The “Angelic Pigasus” was created by the American artist Peter Apsit (1937-1999). After attending the University of Southern California for a degree in fine art in the early 1960s, he had a 25-year career as an artist. Apsit’s early career consisted of sculpting fountains and other free-lance projects. Eventually Apsit’s works was picked up by giftware companies and were sold in the form of collectible trinkets. Apsit was known not only for his sense of humor and cheerful personality, but his work was also known for being extremely detailed and intricate. Most of the collectible figurines that Apsit created were animals and various people. Some of the most popular figurines were his pigs with wings. Calabar Creations was a company based in Ontario, California that would sell collections of figurines including a lot of Apsit’s creations.

White words on a blue background and a blue number inside of a white circle.

This is most likely a button indicating the wearer brought someone with them to Sunday School.

An illustration of a yellow urn with yellow text on a blue background. 

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The button has an outer dark blue circle with white text and an inner white circle with blue text. A horizontal dark blue line runs through the center of the white circle.

The United Steelworker of America (USW) is one of the most famous, and largest, unions in United States History. The union began in 1942 when the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers met with the Steel Workers Organization Committee to form a new unified union of steelworkers. The organization grew over time as more metal-related workers joined including the Aluminium Workers of America in 1944. One of the early major victories for the USW was gaining pensions for workers at Bethlehem Steel in Maryland. In 1952, the first president of the USW, Phillip Murray, passed away. The USW, recently, merged with a British labor organization making it the first Trans-Atlantic trade union since the mid-1930s. Today, the union has nearly a million members, is very active politically, has dramatically expanded the base that it represents and shows no signs of slowing down.

This button refers to dues being paid by 'check off'. This means that the dues paid by unions members are simply taken directly from their pay check.