Air Taco Moodmat
A grinning taco monster with stalked eyes and flung sauce, die cut on eight inches of recycled rubber so the sauce is part of the outline. Jimbo Phillips artist series, UV reactive, run of 150.
The Print
A Taco With Eyes on Stalks
Read it left to right, because it is drawn as a creature moving rather than a taco sitting still. At the left end the shell narrows into a rolled yellow tube patterned with red cross hatching, and out of that tube rise two eyeballs on stalks, green irises, black pupils, a white glint in each, both angled forward the way a snail carries them. The body is the shell itself, a folded yellow tortilla with a speckled brown interior, seen side on and tipped slightly left, split open into a wide grin lined with square yellow teeth. A long red tongue with a lighter center stripe hangs out of the mouth and drips. Along the top crest the filling erupts: red chunks, green flecks, small white cubes, and a looping lasso of yellow cheese laid over the top of all of it. Off the right end the sauce goes flying, ropes of yellow and red thrown clear of the body and trailing into loose hanging drips.
The print is five colors and no more: yellow, red, green, brown and white. There is no black ink on this mat. Every outline you see is the bare rubber showing through the gaps in the artwork, which is a specific way to separate a design for screen and it is the reason the black reads so solid next to the flat spot color. Registration is clean in both photographs with no ink offset and no halo along the yellow, which on a five color job with outlines this ropy is the thing most likely to go wrong. The bare rim following the die runs about an eighth to a quarter inch and the print does not bleed to the cut edge anywhere.
Then the blacklight, and this is where the mat stops being a joke about a taco. Under UV the yellows fire lime green, the reds go hot magenta pink, the green flecks go mint and the whites read pale blue lavender, while the brown shell interior, the outlines and the bare rubber all drop to near black. The effect is that the shell disappears into shadow and the tongue, the toppings and the flung sauce hang in the dark on their own. Worth being precise about what that is and is not: this is a UV reactive print, so it needs a blacklight running to do anything. It is not glow in the dark. No lights out photograph of this design exists, so we make no claim about phosphorescence in either direction.
Designed By
Jimbo Phillips
Credited on the maker’s product page as Jimbo Phillips, a named individual and a working illustrator, which is why this row carries the Artist Series badge rather than falling through to a run number. Nothing further is claimed about him here. What the mat supports is somebody who draws for screen rather than for a monitor: ropy black outlines that are actually gaps in the ink, five spot colors chosen so they separate cleanly, bulging stalked eyes, a lolling tongue and flung drips, all of it built to survive being printed on rubber at eight inches. The character is his own. It is not a licensed property and this listing does not imply otherwise.
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Made in New Jersey Since 2009
Rubber That Already Had a First Life
Moodmats started with scraps from old wetsuits and discarded scuba and surf neoprene, material that was headed straight for a landfill. That became Lava Rubber, and Lava Rubber is what every Moodmat is cut from. The feedstock now comes from wetsuits, gaskets, weatherstripping, seat molds, and other clean scrap that gets collected or donated. More than two tons of it moves through the New Jersey shop every month, gets pressed into sheet stock, then die-cut and screen printed. Keeping that material out of the ground has been the point from day one.
Closed-Cell Neoprene
Closed-cell rubber does not drink up what you spill on it. Water, reclaim, and terp splash sit on the surface instead of soaking in, so a wipe with soapy water puts it back to new.
It Stays Put
The rubber grips whatever it is sitting on and grips whatever you set on top. A rig that would skate across a glass table or a finished desk stops moving the second it lands on a Moodmat.
Tough and Self-Extinguishing
Heat resistant, self-extinguishing, and built out of material that already survived a first life. This is not a printed coaster that curls after a month on the table.
Where People Actually Put These
It Does Not Have to Hold a Rig
A Moodmat protects a surface and grips what sits on it. Whether that thing is a banger, a camera, or nothing at all is up to you. They are called Moodmats for a reason. Pick the one that matches how you feel and put it wherever it belongs.
Rig and Glass Pad
The job it was built for. Keeps glass off hard surfaces and keeps hard surfaces off your glass.
Display Surface
Figures, models, controllers, dice, cameras, watches. Anything worth setting on something intentional.
Wall Art
Plenty of these never touch a table. Hang it, frame it, or pin it behind the setup and let the print do the work.
Desk and Everyday
Trivet for hot pans, landing spot for keys, pad under a pet bowl, cushion on a camp table.
Why It Matters
Runs End. Prints Do Not Come Back.
Moodmats print in runs, and runs end. Once a design is out, it is out. Artist collabs and drop exclusives regularly land in quantities of ten to twenty five pieces, which is why the people who collect these track drops, trade them, and frame the ones they will never put a rig on. If this specific print matters to you, the time to grab it is while it is still on the shelf.
A Run of 150, and Two of Them Here
One hundred and fifty is the whole production for this design according to the maker. Nothing on the printed face carries a hand inked figure, we have no photo of the back of one, and we are not going to invent a position inside the run, so the run size is what we quote and it is where we stop. Two came in on our first wholesale order, which on this design means one can be opened and put under a blacklight without touching the sellable unit.
No Reprints
Moodmats does not go back and run a sold-out design again. When this one is gone from our shelf and theirs, the only way to get it is from somebody who already has one.
Worth Hanging
A print this limited does not have to earn its keep under a rig. Plenty of these end up on a wall, in a frame, or stacked with the rest of a collection.
The Details
Specs and Care
| Size | 8 inches at the widest point, approximate |
| Shape | Die-cut to the artwork, sauce ropes and eye stalks included |
| Material | 100% upcycled closed-cell rubber, Lava Rubber stock |
| Screen printed, five spot colors, outlines are bare rubber | |
| UV | UV reactive, verified from the maker’s blacklight photo |
| Artist | Jimbo Phillips, credited by the maker |
| Edition | Run of 150, not individually numbered |
| Origin | Made in New Jersey, USA |
Wipe it down with warm water and a little dish soap, then let it air dry flat. That is the whole routine. Do not run it through a washing machine or a dryer, do not scrub the print with an abrasive pad, and do not rest a lit torch or a glowing-hot banger directly on the surface. Use a stand or a puck for anything still at temperature.
Straight Talk
Know Before You Buy
Upcycled Means Variation
The rubber is reclaimed scrap, so base color, speckle, and surface texture shift slightly from sheet to sheet. Two mats of the same design will not be photocopies of each other. That is how you know it is the real material and not virgin stock.
Heat Resistant, Not Heatproof
The rubber is self-extinguishing and handles warm gear without complaint. It is not a torch pad. Park anything still glowing on a proper stand or a quartz puck, not on the print.
UV Reactive Is Not Glow in the Dark
These get mixed up constantly and they are two different things. UV reactive means the ink answers a blacklight while the lamp is switched on, which is what the second photo shows and what the copy describes. Glow in the dark means a pigment holds light and releases it with everything switched off. We have no lights out photograph of this design and no statement from the maker about glow, so we are not claiming any. If you want the effect on this mat, you need a blacklight in the room.
Those Thin Tabs Are the Whole Point
Cutting the sauce into the outline is what makes this mat worth the die cut, and it also means the mat has narrow protruding tabs of rubber at the right end and two eye stalks at the left. They are the thinnest parts of the piece. Store it flat rather than rolled or folded over them, and remember that eight inches is measured across the widest span including the sauce, so the taco itself is smaller than the number suggests. Measure your space if it is tight.
These Are the Maker’s Photos For Now
Both images on this page are the manufacturer’s rather than pictures of a mat in our hands. The first is a clean studio shot on white, the second is a handheld blacklight shot on a purple lit wood plank, and they are the same physical unit. Read them as an accurate look at the print and at how it behaves under a lamp, not as a picture of the exact sheet you will get. The rubber is reclaimed scrap and the base speckle shifts from mat to mat, which matters more here than usual because on this design the rubber is doing the job of the outline. Two on hand, and our own photos are on the list.
Set the Mood
Recycled rubber, made in the USA, printed with art worth looking at. Free shipping on orders over $75, and every order ships from a veteran-owned small business.
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