My buddy Diana "The Doc" Thomas is a rare treasure. In her Drag Racing Underground blog, she takes on those she calls the "bona-fide blowhards" and "whiners, complainers, geriatric keyboard half-wit wasted has-beens, and the usual brand of lame-brained losers" lurking around drag racing. Somehow she managed once to weave a line about qualifying being "hairier than a giant-sized ape taking to the mall on roller skates" into her Raceway Park coverage from Englishtown, N.J. And she's full of terrific ideas.
Now, with Super Bowl approaching, she has a fresh idea to chew on: drag-racing themed Pizza Prints. That's Pizza Prints™, from the line of Edible Image® decorations from Lucks Food Decorating Company of Tacoma, Wash., the same company that invented edible pictures on cakes.
Would you want John Force's likeness melted into your pizza pie?" Thomas asked after watching several cable-television ads. "How about a grinning Larry Dixon to spice up your pizza? Or why not a Pro Stock pizza with Greg Anderson and anchovies? How 'bout Don Prudhomme with your pepperoni and peppers?"
"When your pizza is hot, you simply apply the Pizza Print image right on top of the hot cheese. The pizza image then melds with the cheese, so you're able to eat your pizza with your favorite NFL team's image melted into it. Yum Yum, ya think?" she wrote. "I dunno -- I have no idea of what it actually tastes like. However, I do know that lots of NFL football fans are buying this new novelty item in droves, especially in anticipation of the Super Bowl. "I have to ask, if this is such a huge hit with NFL football fans, would this sort of thing also appeal to NHRA drag racing fans?" she asked. Pizza Prints are available -- and selling quickly -- with National Football League logos. They're available in pizzerias around the country, online at
That's a shame, because Hot Rod Fuller's DiGiorno Pizza sponsorship for his Top Fuel Dragster served up some mouth-watering excitement this past season. If the DiGirono /Nestlé folks teamed with Pizza Prints, they could start a drag-racing pizza party craze. Top Fuel team owner-racer Morgan Lucas could impress his Indianapolis Colts buddies by having his own logo, too. Maybe next month when he's watching the Super Bowl from his family's suite at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Colts and host to the NFL championship game, he can have a slice of pizza from a pie with a Colts logo and from one with his own likeness. Thomas wrote, "I guess in reality, drag racing isn't quite mainstream enough for us to ever expect the Pizza Prints people to cater to our whims with a frequently running TV commercial. We're not quite as massive of a market as professional football." Wait a minute, Diana. The folks at Lucks just hadn't thought about the drag racing segment of the market yet, until you posed your question. But they're intrigued. "It's something we would definitely be interested in looking at if there's a market for it," Andy Sachs, Pizza Print National Account Manager for Lucks, said in a phone conversation from his Connecticut office. "Yeah -- we'd certainly look at that. It can't hurt to explore. It's certainly worth discussing. Why not?" Thomas spiced the conversation with her own fantasy order. "I think if I was given my choice of drag racing oriented Pizza Prints, I'd like an outlaw doorslammer version with Dave Hance's face gracing my pizza, or maybe a 'nostalgia' pie with Bruce Larson's likeness -- or better yet, NHRA's winningest drag racer of all time, Frank Manzo's magnificent mug perfectly placed to gallantly garnish my mightiest of meatball pizza pies." That's a mouthful. And no matter how you slice it, drag racing Pizza Prints would be fun. # # #