The phenomenon of "urbanized" cartoon-character tees exploded in the early '90s, and its figurehead was Black Bart Simpson. Black Bart wasn't the first case—a Washington Post article from June of 1990 reports that "Afro-Americanized" Mickey Mouse tees predated him by a little bit—but he was the biggest. As the official Simpsons merchandising monster grew, a sublegal counterpart sprang up. Seeing an easy buck, bootleggers produced straight-up rip-offs of licensed Simpsons gear, but things quickly got more interesting. The history of unofficial Bart shirts plays out in large part as a greatest hits of early-'90s trends and headlines: Some shirts paired Bart with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; some paired him with the recently freed Nelson Mandela or cast him as an anti-apartheid agitator; some had him reciting popular rap lyrics of the time; many envisioned him as "Air Bart," dunking with his tongue out, Jordan-style, and wearing a Bulls jersey.