Totally Rad Staff
7. Shirt Tales
Aired: 1982-1983
Network: NBC
Number of episodes: 23
Shirt Tales was based on a line of Hallmark greeting cards featuring cute, cuddly animals wearing T-shirts emblazoned with different messages. While that might seem like an unusual origin, greeting cards were actually fairly common source material for kids’ entertainment in the ’80s — toy/cartoon franchises like Care Bears, Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake all had greeting card roots. For the Saturday morning cartoon, Shirt Tales characters like Tyg Tiger, Digger Mole and Bogey Orangutan (who talked like Humphrey Bogart) wore shirts that expressed their moods and, oh yeah, they fought crime in Mid City. In season 2, the show added a new character, Kip Kangaroo, who was voiced by Nancy Cartwright. Just a few years later, Cartwright would begin her decades-long run as the voice of Bart Simpson.
