After ship and fix-it window, we have students with time on their hands, so they go to work on buttons. MOE always has a wide variety of buttons, with slogans (the famous Free the Sticks buttons were popular last year), pictures of the robot, and personalized buttons with the team members nicknames on it. We were fortunate to have the money to buy a button maker early so we can make unlimited numbers - and we pass out a lot! I can try and find out how many we do go through at an average regional.
The buttonmaker is from
http://www.buttonsonline.com/ (NOTE - Week 4 of our MOEmentum column discusses shirts and giveaways, but there is a typo in the button web site - the above is correct - see
http://www.moe365.org/moementum5.php). Buttonmakers can run $200-$300 easily, with each blank button back (metal ones) costing 15-40 cents each.
One year we tried the type where you glue a pin on the back of a cardboard/plastic button, but that was a mess - the pins kept falling off and getting stuck everywhere.
If you can afford it, some people like to buy two shirts so they can trade one.