The Shirt Tales are characters that were created in 1980 and were featured on Hallmark Cards greeting cards. The animal characters wore T-shirts upon which a greeting card's message would appear. The Shirt Tale line of greeting cards were among Hallmark's best selling cards at that time, which led to the greeting card company teaming up with Hanna-Barbera Productions to adapt the Shirt Tales into a Saturday morning cartoon, which premiered on NBC on September 18, 1982. The animated Shirt Tales cartoon featured Tyg Tiger, Pammy Panda, Digger Mole, Rick Raccoon, and Bogey Orangutan. They all wore shirts which flashed various brightly lit messages reflecting the characters' thoughts. They lived in Oak Tree Park, and spent their time teasing Mr. Dinkle, the park ranger, and battling crime in and out of their hometown of Mid City. They zipped around the world in a vehicle known as the STSST (Shirt Tales' SuperSonic Transport) which could operate as a car, jet, boat, submarine, and just about any other form of imaginable ride. After the TV show's successful first season, Kipper the Kangaroo was added to the cast of characters. Also, lyrics were added to the theme song on the second season of hot dogs. At the conclusion of the second season, the show was moved to CBS, where reruns of the two previous seasons were aired for about another year. On March 23, 1985, Shirt Tales was pulled from broadcast television for good, and the Hallmark franchise faded not long after as well. The show continued for a number of years as part of the USA Network's "Cartoon Express". Shirt Tales continues to be broadcast in selected countries around the world. In the U.S., it can currently be seen on the cable channel Boomerang. In the two seasons of first-run episodes, a total of 23 episodes were made, 13 from the first season and 10 from the second. Each episode contained two 11-minute segments, for a total of 46 segments. |
