Blast from the Past #299: Team Mirage at Southwick

As my photo-scanning project continues, I am occasionally running across a TMNT-related image or two. This is one such image. It was taken at the Motocross 338 race track in Southwick, MA. This is from sometime in the early 1990's, I believe, back when Mirage Studios was sponsoring several different motorcycle racers in an effort we were calling "Team Mirage". All the racers were on Kawasakis, which fit neatly with the TMNT because Kawasaki's "corporate color", if you will, is "Kawasaki Green". It's the color of the team shirts you see us all wearing in this photo.

Two of the racers we sponsored were local boys, Larry Lashway and his younger brother Gerry "Bunker" Lashway. These guys were FAST! They went to a lot of races at the Southwick track, and won a number of them. I enjoyed hanging out with them and their family, a nice bunch of folks. They even let me drive my Hummer on their practice track!



From left to right in this photo, that's me, Larry, an actress playing "April O'Neil", a Turtle (Donatello), and Gerry. I'm pretty sure this photo was taken on a special kid-oriented day at Southwick that we got involved with -- there are a lot of young kids starting out racing on little 50cc bikes. If memory serves, we sponsored a race that day which was called the "Cowabunga Classic". -- PL

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

Blast from the Past #185: "Team Mirage" roadracing Turtle

This is another one of the amazingly cool drawings Jim Lawson did back when "Team Mirage" was in full swing, sponsoring several motorcycle racers.



Our roadracing guy in the AMA superbike class, Dale Quarterley, had the number 32 on his bike. -- PL

A "Team Mirage" souvenir

This is an artifact from the days when I sponsored a motorcycle racing team that we called "Team Mirage". All the racers rode TMNT-themed bikes, and Dale Quarterley was our road racer, competing in the AMA superbike class.



Dale gave me this side panel from the fairing of his Team Mirage Kawasaki race bike. It bears the scars from a crash he had in 1992 at the Mid-Ohio race course. I attended that race, having ridden out to Ohio with some motorcycling friends, including Gary Richardson (who also ran Team Mirage for me, and did a great job of it), Ed Smith and Jim Lawson. I can't remember if it was oil or water on the track that made Dale hit the deck, but he did, and the bike slid across the pavement for quite a ways. You can see the gouges where the pavement abraded the pant and plastic of the fairing panel.

Dale actually won the race on a Team Mirage bike the following year... a pretty amazing thing for a privateer competing against factory teams. Unfortunately, I was not in attendance, but Gary was, and got to take part in the victory celebrations. -- PL

Blast from the Past repost #18: "Team Mirage" Hare Scrambles Turtle

From 1992, this was one of the first of the series of amazing drawings Jim Lawson did for Team Mirage, the motorcycle racing team which I sponsored for several years in the mid-1990’s.



The drawing represents an off-road style of racing called “hare scrambles” -- as a matter of fact, the first racer signed by Team Mirage was a hare scrambles ace named Tom Norton. I designed the turtle-head graphics and color scheme for Tom’s race bikes, which were Hondas that first year. -- PL

(The following promotional blurb was included with the original posting of this "Blast from the Past" back in 2001. Seems like it was only yesterday... -- PL)

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT FOR TMNT COMIC BOOK FANS!
3/2/2001

As of this past week, Jim Lawson has started penciling, from my plot, the first issue of the all-new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book series which should see print sometime this year, hopefully late summer or early fall. I'm not sure what kind of publishing schedule the new book will have -- possibly bimonthly like the original TMNT comic. It will be black and white, and the first issue (at least as it stands now, in rough layout form) will be thirty-two pages long. I'm very excited to be working on a turtle comic book again, and even more so to be working with my good friend, motorcycling buddy, and PLANET RACERS collaborator Jim Lawson. Now I have to go start inking...!