I'll take a shot at it. When I was a kid in the late 40's and early 50's we could get "premiums" like your badge for different comic book characters, and later for TV programs. A typical comic book premium would require something like cutting the title off of 10 comic books off and sending them in along with a dime or so for shipping. There was a character in some of the older comic books from the 1930's or early 40's that were given to me, Ace something or other, that was a detective. If I remember correctly, and I may not be as that was a long time ago, a badge like that was a premium. A similar badge was a premium from the mid 1950's TV show, Tales of Wells Fargo.
