Me and RIT dye go back a long way.
Back in the old days of the plastics business I made the face guards for football helmets. NFL, College and high school...I pretty much had that market sewed up. We molded them in natural colored nylon and after a couple of law suits figured out that they needed to be "annealed" by boiling them in water for about an hour to relieve the stresses caused by the injection molding process to keep them from breaking. One day one of my employees came by and saw the big kettle of boiling water (this was WAY before OSHA) with all of the face guards in it and said "You know, you could probably dye them different colors with RIT dye". We tried it and it worked. Our sales went up by about 35% because we could offer pretty close to school colors by mixing different color dyes. I gave the employee a $0.25 per hour raise and eventually made him my partner (he is my younger brother by the way!).
I think the plastic for the gear cover is either Polypropolyne or polyethelene and I would be very interested in knowing if anyone has success in dying them with RIT dye.
Mofroggy
P.S. I sold the face mask business to someone dumber than me that had deep pockets with a staff lawyer who convinced them that law suites were not a big thing! They went broke in less than 6 months!