​Deep within a dark warehouse in Hillsborough, North Carolina, there sits a severed head. Encased in plastic, perfectly preserved and seemingly begging to be reanimated, it belongs to an American soccer legend.For a seismic summer 32 years ago, Striker the dog was more ubiquitous than any of World Cup 94’s players, plastered all over billboards, Coke cans, key chains, caps and hundreds of other items. Kids carried around Striker dolls. Grown men played Striker-themed pinball machines and Super Nintendo games and posed for photos with the pup in stadiums.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAs Striker’s remains – the foam and felt head, torso and limbs – lie in darkness at the US Soccer Hall of Fame archives, this summer’s World Cup has had its own trio of mascots. Canada’s Maple the Moose, America’s Clutch the Bald Eagle and Mexico’s Zayu the Jaguar seem caught in some bizarre liminal space between realism and cartoon fantasy, residents of a mascot version of the uncanny valley.That trio feel like AI slop, though. Striker? US Soccer chose a much simpler path with him, whipping together a cartoon dog. Years later, that choice has made him the one of the most memorable mascots in World Cup history.***John Over and Joey Banaszkiewicz are responsible for some of the most well-known pieces of American animation of the late 20th century. They were young artists at Warner Brothers in the mid-90s, right around the time Steven Spielberg was leading that studio through an animation renaissance.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe two had a hand in crafting the storylines and artwork for Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures, drawing characters that would become familiar to an entire generation of American children. Their work wasn’t always for kids – the first episode of Animaniacs that Over ever worked on was quickly pulled after Buster Bunny and Plucky Duck got drunk and stole a police car.The culture at Warner Brothers back then, Over and Banaszkiewicz will tell you, was something akin to the island of misfit toys.“I feel like some people got there right out of prison,” says Banaszkiewicz, who landed at the studio after graduating from Cal Arts. Over arrived after working for John Kricfalusi, the creator of another iconic piece of 90s animation: the Ren and Stimpy Show.“The currency there was ‘how hard could we make each other laugh,’” Over says. “We were just a bunch of 20-year-olds that were let loose. People were just doing foul drawings of each other and seeing how far you could milk a joke or an embarrassing situation. But it was fantastic, because that’s really how you get your creativity built up.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIn the summer of 1992, in between seasons of Tiny Toons and Animaniacs, animators found themselves with nothing to work on. For a few weeks, they’d pass the time by taking hours-long lunch breaks or “playing several rounds of miniature golf across the street”, Over r