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