This Buck Rogers Solar Scouts badge from 1934 came as a premium with Cream of Wheat breakfast cereal. Fans mailed in a cereal box top, a little money, and received the badge to mark their connection to the space-faring hero.
The Buck Rogers character first appeared in the story "Armageddon---2419 A.D." by Philip Francis Nowlan, published in Amazing Stories for August 1928. He then became featured as a comic strip from 1929. It became enormously successful and produced numerous toys, games, puzzles, and a host of other merchandise, making Buck Rogers a symbol of the wildly futuristic.
Collector Michael O'Harro donated this pin to the Museum in 1993.
This object is on display in James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA.