Toy Painting: Roll Over Mouse belongs to Andy Warhol’s charming and increasingly sought-after Toy Paintings series of the early 1980s, a body of work that reimagined vintage toy packaging as fine art. Commissioned for an exhibition benefiting children, the series allowed Warhol to merge nostalgia, humour, and Pop sensibility into playful yet sophisticated compositions.

In this unique painting, Warhol transforms the graphics of a “wind-up toy” mouse box into a vibrant, high-energy Pop tableau. Bold outlines, exaggerated contours, and a dynamic colour palette of electric blues, bubble-gum pinks, and pale mint create a sense of movement befitting the toy’s gimmick—rolling, flipping, and scurrying across the surface. The silkscreened text, slightly offset and doubled in places, evokes the feel of mass-produced commercial packaging while simultaneously revealing Warhol’s hand in the layering of acrylic and screen print.

As with the broader series, Warhol uses childhood imagery not simply as a source of nostalgia, but as a commentary on consumer culture, the aesthetics of advertising, and the blurred line between innocence and commodification. The result is a work that is both lighthearted and sharply Pop, encapsulating Warhol’s late-career fascination with toys as cultural artefacts.

This piece is a unique painting—distinct from the editioned screenprints—and bears Warhol’s signature and date, underscoring its importance as an original artwork within his oeuvre. Compact in scale but rich in detail and character, Toy Painting: Roll Over Mouse exemplifies Warhol’s ability to elevate everyday commercial imagery into an object of lasting artistic significance.