Vintage 1990s Kellogg's Corn Flakes Racing Team #41 Pin 🏁 NOS NASCAR Promo

Remember Kellogg's #41? 🏁 Vintage 1990s Corn Flakes Racing Team NASCAR Pin, NOS

Size: 2" x 1 1/2"

A little yellow stock car with a big 41 on the door and Kellogg's down the side, riding on top of a tag that says Kellogg's Corn Flakes Racing Team. It's a 1990s enamel lapel pin with two posts on the back, each with its own butterfly clutch, and every one I have is new old stock, still sealed in its bag with the little paper tag that says MADE IN TAIWAN REPUBLIC OF CHINA.

🏁 Kellogg's at the track

Kellogg's went racing in a big way in the '90s. Kellogg's Corn Flakes sponsored the No. 41 Chevrolet of Larry Hedrick Motorsports in 1991 and 1992. In 1991 Larry Pearson - David Pearson's son and a two-time Busch Series champion - drove it on a limited schedule, and he made his last Cup start in it, at Atlanta's Hardee's 500. For 1992 the Corn Flakes deal made it a full-time ride: Greg Sacks started the season at the Daytona 500, Dave Marcis took over late in the year, and Hut Stricklin finished it out. Larry Hedrick himself ran the Statesville Auto Auction, which is where the team set up shop. A little pin with this same car on it, without the badge, is stamped 1992 Kellogg Co. on the back, so these come from those two seasons.

After that the Corn Flakes moved on: to Terry Labonte's No. 14 for Billy Hagan in 1993, then to the famous No. 5 Chevrolet Labonte drove for Hendrick Motorsports from 1994, and in 1996 he won the Cup championship in it - his second title, twelve years after his first. It's pure 1990s racing merchandise, from a time when a fan wore the sponsor as proudly as the driver.

🥣 Battle Creek's breakfast

The name on the car goes back to Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1894 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg, working at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, ran cooked wheat through rollers and found it came out in flakes; corn flakes followed. In 1906 W. K. Kellogg started the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company to sell them to everybody, and it grew into the Kellogg Company - which is how a sanitarium health food ended up on the hood of a stock car. Look close at that hood and you'll see Cornelius the rooster, Corny, the Corn Flakes mascot the Leo Burnett ad agency dreamed up for his 1957 debut, and a tiny TM after CORN FLAKES on the badge.

🏁 About these

It's about 2 by 1 1/2 inches. Pin one on a racing cap, put it in a shadow box with your '90s NASCAR things, or give it to the Corn Flakes fan who still remembers the No. 41. The supply is finite - once these last sealed 1990s Kellogg's racing pins are gone, they'll be very difficult to acquire.