This reminds me of that in 1987 when Universal announced they were building a theme park in Orlando they brought Woody Woodpecker to Disney World to meet Mickey Mouse in a sign of friendship. Other mascots aren’t allowed in the park so they agreed to meet at the monorail station.
ALT Clipping from a 1987 Orlando Sentinel newspaper captioned “Woodpecker gets a polite greeting Thursday and finds out who’s boss at the Magic Kingdom”.
According to former Sega employee Mike Fischer, when Sega signed on to publish Gamecube games, Nintendo posted a guy in a Mario costume to greet the Sonic mascot