“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 ripoffs of licensed Simpsons gear, but things quickly got more interesting.”