China

With our trade relationship with the People's Republic being so prominently featured in the news lately, it reminded me of a project I worked on once that involved toy packaging. The toy was a 'finger skate' that we would place our own artwork on, and the vendor was in China. That basically meant sending any and all art files to China, which was always a bit nebulous and chaotic. This was back in the 90's so, our systems of trade weren't exactly 100% yet.

The project ended up being canceled, and an actual toy company ended up released the 'finger skates' , now called 'Tech Decks'. My original package design had included a somewhat silly instructions on the back that were more of a 'I wonder if they'll actually print this?' type of thing.

Years later, I'm living in  another city, and I'm at a '99 Cent store'. I just happen to stumble upon a generic looking finger skate toy on the shelf with some cheesy design on the front. I look at the back of the packaging, and lo and behold, it's my artwork! My guess is, the disc the art was on floated around a Chinese factory, and ended up being up for grabs.