Vintage 1960s-1970s Florida Highway Patrol 🍊 Special Police Toy Badge Pin NOS Carded Tin Litho Made in Japan Mid-Century

Size: 4 x 2.25 inches ~ New Old Stock, still on its card. They vary a little one to the next.

🚔 A Toy Badge Off the Dime-Store Rack

This is a 1970s tin litho toy badge, still sealed to its original card the way it hung on the rack. The card is yellow, with a red banner across the top reading SPECIAL POLICE BADGE and a cartoon motorcycle cop leaning over his handlebars in a white cap and a pair of big goggles, a city skyline sketched in behind him. Down in the corner, small, it just says JAPAN. That's where these little tin badges were made, for the American dime-store trade. And they're rare - carded or loose, a Florida Highway Patrol one just doesn't come up for sale.

The button itself is round tin: a bright yellow ring around a navy field, HIGHWAY arcing over the top and PATROL along the bottom in yellow letters, and right in the center a red-orange orange with a couple of green leaves, FLORIDA lettered straight across the fruit. It's a toy, made for a kid's shirt pocket, and it plays that part well.

🍊 Why There's an Orange on a Police Badge

That orange in the middle is right at home. The real Florida Highway Patrol has worn orange since its very first day - orange bands on the troopers' grey Stetsons and an orange-and-blue patch on the shoulder - and in the state that grows them, what else would you put on the badge?

🚓 The Real Florida Highway Patrol

The badge on this button is a toy, but the agency it copies is real. The Florida Legislature created the Florida Highway Patrol in 1939, under a new Department of Public Safety. W.F. Reid came on as director on October 1, H.N. Kirkman was made captain of the patrol - he led it until he retired in 1970, and troopers still call him its father - and on November 1 the first training school opened in Bradenton with 40 students at the Manavista Hotel. On December 6, 1939, Secretary of State R.A. Gray swore in the 32 who graduated. Their uniform was forest green whipcord, with orange bands on a grey Stetson campaign hat and a black Sam Browne belt, plus an orange-and-blue shoulder patch, FHP lettered on the left lapel and a winged wheel on the right. That original wheel had a broken spoke in it, which is where the Patrol's own Broken Spoke Club got its name. The whole look was patterned after the New York State Police.

🗓️ When These Were Made

There's no date printed on the card, but the family it belongs to gives it away. The same card design turns up with a New York City button copying the NYPD patch adopted in July 1971, and a San Francisco button copying the patch the SFPD added around 1970 - so these were on the racks in the 1970s. The button itself runs about an inch and a half across; the card is 4 by 2.25 inches.

🚔 The Real Junior Programs Behind Badges Like This

There is a real history standing behind every mid-century toy badge. This was the era of the junior deputy and the school safety patrol: sheriffs' offices swore children in as honorary junior deputies at fairs and school assemblies, safety patrol programs — running strong since the 1920s — pinned badges on generations of schoolchildren, and a visit from an officer with badges to hand out was a fixture of American civic childhood. Sheriffs gave tin badges just like this one out as prizes in their youth programs, too. A Florida Highway Patrol badge belonged to that world. When a child pinned one on, the game borrowed its seriousness from programs that were entirely real — and that is part of the history a survivor like this one still carries.