Tim Brauning

I received this light gray piece with a bunch of 90's bricks (minifig head for scale). It's obviously not a normal piece - it appears to have tabs for a fingernail to pull it out of some insert. But the Lego log o is so prominent I need to know what it is.

I'm working on a printable timeline of Lego parts, to make it easier to identify at a glance the age range of a collection of used pieces. But the database sites don't have dates for some of the most common mold variations. I know old parts were saved and used years or decades later, making it almost impossible to pin down end dates. But it should be possible to know when a new mold was first used in a set. Can anyone help me narrow down some of these unknowns? (I am in the United States—places without Samsonite might need to make some changes).