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Cartoon
The Shirt Tales

Animal
Mole

Outfit: mood shirt

Tagline: "Shirt Ta-ta-ta-Tales!"

Plot summary: The Kafkaesque legacy of the Shirt Tales began as a line of Hallmark greeting cards in the early eighties.  Each card featured animals wearing t-shirts that expressed their mood.  For example, in the picture above, the mole wants to be hugged.  The cards and merchandise were such popular sellers amongst Hallmark customers who were SO GOD DAMNED SICK OF PRECIOUS MOMENTS that Hanna-Barbera productions based a cartoon around them, debuting "The Shirt Tales" on NBC Saturday Mornings.

The show took five of the most popular animals (a tiger, a panda, a raccoon, an orangutan, and a mole) and their shirts and put them into crime fighting scenarios.  You can't possibly maintain a single mood during a robbery attempt, and you can't be expected to lug around a suitcase full of t-shirts that say things like "happy" or "sad" or "fuckin A" to fit your mood.   So the Shirt Tales became magical, and their catchphrase of SHIRT TA-TA-TA-TALES changed the message on their shirts for them.  And it also made everyone think they had speech problems.  Or Turrets.  The Tales lived in a public park where they were bossed around by a park janitor, Mr. Dinkle, who may have just been on a severe amount of drugs and making the whole ordeal up in his head.  (more)

User Comments: Digger was my favorite because he was the cutest, and I enjoyed having homosexual sex when I was a small child.  Look at him, he's adorable.  If you were trying to steal an old lady's purse and that thing walked up to you with a T-shirt reading "I Love You" on it, what are you going to do?  You're either going to feel bad for committing a crime or you're going to be so fucking freaked out that your brain will collapse and you'll get your butt kicked by a monkey who sounds like Humphrey Bogart.  The entire concept is bizarre.   Like trying to stop drug trafficking by throwing Precious Moments figurines at minorities.  I appreciate something this trippy, but only when organized by overweight middle-aged ladies for trinket stores.  So you could say I Dug Dig.

I feel bad for the little guy, though, because that's the only shirt he has, and unless he wants to be naked in front of everyone and lacks the shame that comes along with having human characteristics, he's going to have to sacrifice subtlety.  Unless you find it socially acceptable to share a tree with a mole who has "HUGE BONER" written across his shirt.

User Rating: 8.0/10 (344 votes)