Shirt Tales
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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 (so called because he spoke using a Humphrey Bogart-style voice). 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, Kip Kangaroo was added to the cast of characters. However, no context was given for her joining the Shirt Tales.
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 occasionally 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.
[edit] Trivia
- The Shirt Tales were featured on the television show Robot Chicken In this second-season skit, it involved some of the characters switching to more inappropriate slogans to attract the kids of the current (at the time) generation. A tiger (possibly T.J. Tiger) has the shirt "Tigga, Please" while saying this reason. Pammy Panda agrees with the slogan "More Trees, Less Bush." Digger Mole wears a shirt with a cannabis leaf and grows the plant in pots. Bogey Orangutan wears the slogan "Female Body Inspector." Rick Raccoon (with no speaking parts) shows the slogan "Pop 'n Lock," a reference to gun use. Then, a local zoo's ranger complains about the STSST buzzing around.
[edit] Voice cast
- Bogey Orangutan - Fred Travalena
- Digger Mole - Bob Ogle
- Kip Kangaroo - Nancy Cartwright
- Mr. Dinkle - Herb Vigran
- Pammy Panda - Pat Parris
- Rick Raccoon - Ronnie Schell
- T.J. Tiger - Sparky Marcus
- Tyg Tiger - Steve Schatzberg
There were also two musical book-and-record sets released by K-tel International under the "Castle Rock" imprint: A Song Saves the Park, and Sunrise Surprise. However, both sets use sound-alikes for the voices, and are presented differently from typical read-alongs.
