I refer to these as "SME badges" because you were required to register with the Society of Manufacturing Engineers on their website to obtain one.
I believe SME intended this to be a recruiting tool to gather a contact database of FIRST students and send them information designed to get them interested in their organization and manufacturing engineering in general. I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think they were satisfied with the level of response they were getting so they stopped sponsoring the badges. That, and too many mischievous people probably tried to use the system to get more than one (just who is "Poindexter Hoffman" anyway? Eh, I was young and dumb back then. Now I'm just plain dumb).:
Here's the 2001 application form.
2001 SME badge registration form
I always thought these were neat, and I still wear mine at competitions to this day. One cool thing SME did was to post multiple badge designs on their website and let people vote on their favorite:
http://web.archive.org/web/200112132...sme/index.html
I believe FIRST did require you to wear them to gain access to the team party and also to signify your attachment to the FIRST program in general as you were walking around Epcot and the parking lot in Florida. 2002 was the last year they had these badges. Ah, those were the days.