TV I Don't Remember: Shirt Tales (1982-1984)

You know how some television shows for kids are pretty much just commercials for toys? (For example, I'm pretty sure the entire He-Man universe was created as a workaround for the fact that Mattel couldn't get the merchandising rights for Conan the Barbarian. That's not a joke I just made up: I'm pretty sure it's actually true!) Well, I Googled Shirt Tales a while back and found out that it started out not even as a line of toys but as a line of greeting cards. With origins like that, how could the show not be good?

I remember that these were a bunch of knee- or waist-high talking animals wearing different-colored T-shirts that would all turn the same color (blue?) when they needed to...um... OK, I have no idea what was different when the T-shirts changed colors. I think it was set up like a superhero thing—or, you know, like the way Voltron would assemble and then kick ass—but I'm not sure anything actually happened when it happened: it really might have been all convention, no content. They had some kind of batmobile they'd drive out of their tree (because they lived in a tree), and they were maybe in a park or a zoo with a groundskeeper who was always trying to catch them and lived in a house with his family. There was a girl panda and a boy monkey (who talked like Humphrey Bogart, whom I first learned about via Shirt Tales). Maybe their batmobile flew? I'm pretty sure my parents hated this show. Hated.

I'm sorry, what's that fucking possum's name?!
Oh...Digger. OK.