Saturday, December 12, 2009

A "Team Mirage" set of toys? Not quite...

I was poking around in the storage space under my old studio today (looking for stocking stuffers, if you must know), and came across these two curiosities. I remember finding both of these sets in the mid-1990's at a local Toys 'R' Us (the Mirage dudes and I used to go to toy stores a lot back in those days), and being amused by the fact that this toy company had taken a photo of our Team Mirage-sponsored AMA Superbike roadracer, Dale Quarterley, and used it prominently on the packaging of these sets of "racing" toys. I'm not sure where they got the photo, although I know for certain that we didn't supply it to them. Here's a photo of the large set...



... and one of the small set...



... and a close-up of the photo of Dale (at speed on his Kawasaki race bike) which they used on both packages.



We never had any contact with the company which did this, and I have often wondered how they chose Dale, out of all the possible motorcycle racers around at the time, to decorate their packaging. Although it isn't terribly easy to see in this photo, Dale's bike DOES have the Team Mirage logo on its bodywork, as well as the abstract TMNT face design, and during those days of Team Mirage we made no secret of the TMNT connection. I wonder if the people behind this packaging saw that and thought they might get some mileage for their toys out of that connection.

I suspect not, mostly because it's not THAT obvious. I would guess that they just thought the image of Dale on his bike was cool and colorful (right on both counts) and would help to catch a kid's eye in the toy aisles. I have no idea how well these sets sold, or if the photo of Dale was used on any other packaging. -- PL

4 comments:

  1. dale?uh,i think his names godman...
    haha.i had to mention PR somehow!

    i dont know if it was intentional but even if its not its cool his colors match the mirage turtles.

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  2. " Tyrgermanic said...
    dale?uh,i think his names godman...
    haha.i had to mention PR somehow!

    i dont know if it was intentional but even if its not its cool his colors match the mirage turtles."

    It was definitely intentional. It was also convenient that the Kawasakis Dale raced were at that time painted in "Kawasaki green", a signature color of the Kawasaki brand which was pretty darn close to what I would consider "TMNT green". -- PL

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  3. PL said...
    " It was also convenient that the Kawasakis Dale raced were at that time painted in "Kawasaki green", a signature color of the Kawasaki brand which was pretty darn close to what I would consider "TMNT green"."

    i didnt notice that,but i just held leonardo #1 (from 86 i believe)and the greens are pretty damn close!cool.
    too bad thats not a bike anymore,that wouldve been awesome to see the tmnt racer race in real life.

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