80s Character T-Shirts

Characters from the 1980s, when the toy came first and the show was built to sell it.

In 1984 the Federal Communications Commission stopped restricting programme-length commercials aimed at children, and within two years the American schedule had been rebuilt around toy lines. He-Man, Transformers, My Little Pony and Care Bears were products with a series attached rather than the other way round.

That has a direct consequence for what these characters look like on a shirt. A character designed to be injection-moulded and sold from a peg has to read at arm’s length in a shop: bold silhouette, strong colour separation, symmetry, very little fine detail. Those are precisely the qualities a screen print needs, which is why eighties properties reproduce better on fabric than almost anything designed since.