Tina's Pals

Tina's Pals
The main characters in their current design.
Publication information
Publisher	Editora Abril, Editora Globo, Panini Comics
Schedule	monthly
Format	Ongoing
Main character(s)	Tina Curly (Rolo) Puff (Pipa) Steve (Zecão) Flip (Toneco)

Tina's Pals ("Turma da Tina") is a Brazilian comic strip series, part of the Monica's Gang series, created in 1970. The stories are aimed at a more teenage group of readers, rather than the kids who would read other Mauricio de Sousa's works and thus center around teenagers. However, Mauricio prefers not to mention drugs, sex, alcoholic drinks, or other similar subjects, which are very popular among teenagers. Instead, the strips are written with themes related to school or university, dating, problems with parents, etc.

Originally the stories recounted the life of Tina and her family living in Salvador, Flip (Toneco) was the original protagonist. The stories changed when Tina joined the hippie culture and started to act alongside Curly (Rolo). In the late of 1970s, Mauricio left the hippie style and started to work with a less particular way of life for them, making the characters become more modern and changing their personalities over the years.

During the year 1970, during the debut of Monica's first comic book series Mauricio de Sousa decided to create a new comic strip series to replace the absence of his characters in the newspapers. That same year the character Flip was created along their siblings Toim and Tina (that was a hippie kid in the first stories) living in the city Salvador, Bahia. The comics also began to be published in the Monica's comic book. After a few years Mauricio de Sousa began to be more interested in creating stories involving Tina, and later created their friends Curly (which was also another hippie character) and Puff in 1972.

By the late '70s the comics had several changes, Tina and her friends become teenagers and have abandoned the hippie culture, the art style has also changed and appeared new characters like Puff's boyfriend: Steve, while others like Toneco, Toim and Granny were removed, until the '90s. Since the '80s the comics have become one of the most popular franchises created by Mauricio de Sousa, continuing to have more modern stories and having special titles and miniseries over the years. The main characters in the series currently fixed are Tina, Curly, Puff and Steve.

In 1971 a song to Tina was composed for the album "A Bandinha da Turma da Mônica". The series had some special comic books (as part of the series Gibizinho) in the '90s by Editora Globo, four starring Tina, four starring Curly and one starring Puff.