What club is this?

Another club I saw at a GoodWill today completely baffled me.  It said "Spalding Executive XE" on the sole.  It was all metal, but shaped like a wood and had what looked like a stylized 9 where the number for the club usually is.  The loft looked similar to a 7 iron.  I'm guessing it was some kind of wedge, or maybe it was a chipper or metal wood?  .  I thought about buying it but I was not sure it was worth it, even at 2 dollars.  I'm not even sure it was a USGA-legal club.  I wish I had taken a picture- I guess I could start snapping photos with my phone of all these oddities.

Edit:  a quick google search turns up it's an iron.  But this thing looked ancient and the general style looked like something from the 60's.  Did they have hybrid clubs back then?

This it?

Yeah, the one I posted above is from a full set. I don't what year they are but they sure "look" like hybrids to me, even if they pre-date the coining of the term.

Yes, that's the one.

I've seen old hybrid-looking clubs that had to be earlier than the late 90's at the local driving range in their practice bin.  Some of them had faces that were offset, probably to reduce slicing..

In the late 1800s, a tiny-headed wood called the bulldog did hybrid-like duty. In the early 1970s, trouble clubs such as the Ginty preceded our current hybrids .

Here's an earlier post on the topic: http://thesandtrap.com/t/45151/hybrid-vs-rescue#post_971772