Snake vs. Mongoose: The Rivalry That Became a Business
Tom McEwen Figured Out That Racing the Snake Was Only Half the Opportunity
Tom McEwen had a Don Prudhomme problem. Prudhomme was faster, which is an inconvenient arrangement when both men are trying to make a living by reaching the other end of a drag strip first.
By the late 1960s, Don already had one of the best nicknames in racing: the Snake. McEwen eventually picked up the Mongoose, which was wonderfully convenient because a mongoose is one of the few animals willing to pick a fight with a snake and occasionally come out ahead.
Tom still needed to beat Prudhomme, but now he had something nearly as useful as a quicker race car.
He had a story.
The Snake Had the Speed
Prudhomme approached racing like a fellow who considered everything except winning a distraction. The car needed to be quicker, the tune-up needed to be better and whatever happened last weekend needed improving before the next pair rolled into the water box.
McEwen wanted to win too. He simply understood that the stopwatch was not the only machine at the racetrack capable of producing money.
A race lasted a few seconds. A rivalry could sell tickets all week.
The Snake and Mongoose began appearing together on the match-race circuit, where promoters were less interested in season-long points than in whether two recognizable names could fill the grandstands on Friday night. Prudhomme usually had the performance advantage, but McEwen understood how to make people want the rematch.
That turned out to be a very profitable division of labor.
Then Tom Went Looking for Somebody With Money
Drag racing had no shortage of ways to spend money. Racers traveled constantly, rebuilt engines regularly and could turn prize money into replacement parts before the check had much chance to cool off.
McEwen had already shown an unusual talent for finding sponsors outside the usual collection of oil companies and speed-equipment manufacturers. Then he started looking at Mattel.
Hot Wheels was exploding across the toy business. Kids were already sending miniature hot rods down orange plastic tracks across living-room floors, and McEwen had family connections that helped him get through Mattel’s front door. His mother worked there, and his stepfather had legal connections with the company.
That got Tom a meeting with Mattel executive Art Spear. Getting through the door was the easy part. Now he had to explain why a toy company should hand money to two men who spent their weekends converting nitromethane into noise, smoke and broken parts.
Fortunately, McEwen had already prepared the sales pitch.
Snake versus Mongoose.
Mattel Didn’t Just Buy a Decal
The idea was almost embarrassingly good. Two drivers, two animal nicknames, two brightly colored race cars and two miniature versions that children could race against each other at home.
In 1970, Mattel signed Prudhomme and McEwen to a major Hot Wheels sponsorship. This was not the usual arrangement where somebody mailed a check, received a decal on the quarter panel and hoped television happened to point a camera in the right direction.
There were Funny Cars, dragsters, toy versions, racing sets, personal appearances and match races all over the country. Kids who had never been close enough to a nitro engine to know whether they liked the smell already knew the Snake and Mongoose because both were sitting in the toy box.
The racers had become characters, and McEwen had found a sponsor that could sell the rivalry to people who had never purchased a drag-racing ticket.
There Was One Slight Problem With Nature’s Script
The basic promotional idea called for the mongoose to fight the snake. Nature had already supplied that part of the advertising department.
Prudhomme was less cooperative.
When the two actually raced, Snake usually won. That could have been awkward if McEwen had allowed race results to interfere with a perfectly good business arrangement.
He didn’t.
The rivalry was genuine. They wanted to beat each other, they argued and their personalities were hardly interchangeable. But the promotion did not require Mongoose to win every Saturday night. It required enough people to care about the result that they would buy another ticket when the two came back.
Every Prudhomme victory gave McEwen another reason to demand a rematch.
There have been worse business models.
The Rivals Became Business Partners
This is where the whole thing became properly backwards. Snake and Mongoose were being sold as opponents while operating under the same promotional umbrella.
They formed Wildlife Racing and toured together. The fellow in the other lane was the enemy for a few seconds at a time and a business partner during the rest of the week.
McEwen needed Prudhomme because Snake’s speed and reputation made the rivalry valuable. Prudhomme benefited from McEwen because Tom knew how to turn that reputation into sponsorship and bookings on a scale drag racing had rarely seen.
They could spend Saturday afternoon trying their hardest to beat each other, then both benefit when another few thousand children bought Hot Wheels on Monday.
There are simpler ways to organize a race team.
Few of them sold that many toys.
Then the Toy Company Started Designing Race Cars
The Mattel relationship eventually became so complete that the direction of influence started running backward. Instead of merely making toys that resembled existing race cars, Mattel wanted full-size machinery that fit the Hot Wheels promotion.
Colors and body shapes now had to make sense not only at 200 mph but hanging from a peg in a toy department. Prudhomme, whose reputation had been built heavily in Top Fuel, also found himself driving Funny Cars because recognizable full-bodied machines worked particularly well in the toy business.
The arrangement eventually reached the point where Mattel’s needs influenced the appearance of the full-size dragsters themselves.
Normally the toy follows the race car.
Snake and Mongoose had reached the financial stage where the race car occasionally had to cooperate with the toy.
That is a sponsor with some leverage.
Three Years Was Enough to Change the Business
The main Mattel Hot Wheels arrangement ran from 1970 through 1972. Three years does not sound like much until you look at what the deal demonstrated.
A company with no particular need to sell pistons, tires or motor oil could use drag racing to sell an entirely different product. Racers, meanwhile, could offer sponsors more than a fast automobile carrying a company name down the quarter-mile.
They could sell personalities, rivalries, characters and stories.
McEwen understood that earlier than most of the garage. Prudhomme happened to be the perfect fellow to put in the other lane because he supplied the one thing every manufactured rivalry desperately needs.
A competitor worth watching.
Then the Mongoose Finally Got Him
The Hot Wheels partnership ended, but Snake and Mongoose kept racing each other. By the middle of the 1970s, Prudhomme had become nearly untouchable in Funny Car and would win four consecutive championships from 1975 through 1978.
McEwen never accumulated anything resembling Snake’s trophy collection.
Then came the 1978 U.S. Nationals.
McEwen arrived at Indianapolis carrying considerably more than another racing rivalry. His teenage son Jamie had died earlier that year, and Snake and Mongoose worked their way into the Funny Car final together.
Prudhomme had the quicker car. Nobody needed a press release to explain that possibility.
Then Snake smoked the tires, and McEwen went by him.
The Mongoose won Indy.
After years of advertisements, toys, match races and artwork showing a mongoose fighting a snake, Tom McEwen had finally beaten Don Prudhomme in the biggest final round of his career.
No marketing department needed to improve that one.
McEwen Sold the Race Before They Ran It
Prudhomme became one of the greatest drivers drag racing ever produced. McEwen accomplished something different: he demonstrated that making people care about the race could be almost as valuable as winning it.
Snake versus Mongoose worked because the rivalry was real. It became enormous because McEwen understood what could be built around it.
Mattel sold the toys. Promoters sold the tickets. Kids staged the same race again on orange plastic tracks at home. Then the real cars showed up somewhere else and gave everybody another reason to do it again.
Prudhomme usually had the faster race car.
McEwen figured out how to sell the rematch.