Glass Toonagerie

I'm not in the market for any new glasses right now...but wait a few weeks and our son Joey will break a couple and we'll have room in the cupboard for a few more. Either way, I'm always taking a look at the cartoon themed drinking glasses that can be found at yard sales and flea markets. This past weekend I found not one...but two rare glasses that I haven't seen in my travels before. First, we have our good buddies the Shirt Tales. All five of the friends that appeared in the TV show are featured on this glass. They're all sitting around the big tree that, as you may recall, housed all their gadgets and computers to help the police commissioner solve crimes. Ah...the 80's! I'm not even sure where this glass came from, if it was from a fast food joint or somewhere online it was suggested that these glasses were a promotion with Hallmark Stores. Could be!?

The other glass has got on it a forgotten, but dearly loved 80's toon - Party Popple of The Popples! The Popples was one of the rare cartoon series that didn't have any bad guys...it was just a bunch of these little fur balls running around having fun. Yes, it was a great show. You don't see much of The Popples these days, but at one time they were popular enough to warrant their own Pizza Hut promotion - which is where this glass if from. I can honestly remember only going to Pizza Hut ONCE as a child, so I'm not surprised that I'd never seen this glass before.

I passed on buying either of this gems, but the guy who owned the stand at the flea market was kind enough to allow me to snap a pic for all my blog buddies!

Shirt Tales Live at Six Flags

We've mentioned before the Shirt Tales brief stay at the Six Flags parks back in the mid-80's. Today, the WWoB crack research team has unearthed video of the Shirt Tales appearing live at Six Flags Astroworld all the way back in 1985. The audio is so low, you can't really hear it but enjoy a minute and a half of a group of teenagers getting paid minimum wage to dance around in these gigantic costumes...

The Land of the Shirt Tales

First off, if you need a refresher course in Shirt Tales 101 then click on the title of this post for an archive of all Shirt Tales related posts on WWoB. Oh, it's good reading!

Now...if you're still with us, today we're proud to present this scan from a 1984 Six Flags Great Adventure brochure for their new Shirt Tales Land attraction. In 1984, things like ball pits, net climbs and giant tubes to crawl through were considered state-of-the-art entertainment that you could only find at a big fancy amusement park. Nowadays you can walk down to the corner mini-golf place and do all that stuff for five bucks! BUT...you won't get the Shirt Tales!

Shirt Tales Land featured unimaginatively named attractions like "Tyg's Gymnasium", "Rick's Ball Crawl", and "Bogey's Adventure House". It's always kind of lame when the best a park can do is attach a character's name to a ride and that's the end of the themeing. At least "Digger's Underground Climb" makes a little sense, since he's a mole...and he digs...underground!?!

The Shirt Tales seemed like such a quick blip on the pop culture radar, yet they managed to anchor the kids section of most of the Six Flags parks back in the 80's. Today, Bugs Bunny and his gang are the mascots in the kiddie area of a Six Flags park. You'd be hard pressed to find alot of the same physical activities for kids. Motorized rides have replaces these giant playgrounds at so many theme parks because of the public's changing tastes and also for insurance reasons! Kings Dominion used to have a huge Flintstones themed play area, which is now a quarter of the size and re themed to a construction site. How much does that eat me up inside!?