Īfter a preview of TaleSpin aired on The Disney Channel from May 5 to July 15, 1990, the series began its syndicated run in September of the same year. Two years after TaleSpin premiered, Miyazaki released an anime adaptation called Porco Rosso, which Zaslove felt took cues from TaleSpin. Magon and Zaslove also took inspiration from Hayao Miyazaki's 1989 manga Hikōtei Jidai, about a pigheaded man who flies a seaplane and fights air pirates. The decision to add Shere Khan to the cast was not made until later in the show's development.
Deciding to make the show a period piece, the pair lastly decided to make one of the show's primary locations a neutral zone inspired by Rick Blaine's bar in Casablanca, where they inserted the character of Louie in place of Rick. Inspired by Cheers - then one of the most popular programs on television - Magon and Zaslove created the character Rebecca, basing her on the character Rebecca Howe and giving her that character's arc of being an intelligent and headstrong yet inexperienced manager put in charge of a fledgling business. In order to add dramatic tension, they decided to maintain the impressionable son / bad father dynamic which had driven part of the plot of The Jungle Book, replacing the human Mowgli with the anthropomorphic bear Kit. The pair then decided to have Baloo work for an air delivery service, a concept occasionally featured on Disney's successful DuckTales. The show Tales of the Gold Monkey was an inspiration according to creator/supervising producer, Jymn Magon. Nearing the deadline for a pitch without having come up with anything, Magon hit upon the idea of making the story about Baloo, one of the central characters of Disney's The Jungle Book, which had recently been theatrically rereleased. Initially, Disney simply commissioned Magon and Zaslove with creating a thirty-minute animated program for them, with no requirements as to what the show should be about. It is also one of the two animated television series based on The Jungle Book along with Jungle Cubs.
The show is one of ten Disney Afternoon shows to use established Disney characters as the main characters, with the others being Darkwing Duck, DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop, Bonkers, Quack Pack, Aladdin, Timon & Pumbaa and Jungle Cubs. The two words in the show's name, tale and spin, are a way to describe telling a story. The name of the show is a play on 'tailspin', the rapid descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral. TaleSpin is an American animated television series based in the fictional city of Cape Suzette, that first aired in 1990 as a preview on Disney Channel and later that year as part of The Disney Afternoon, with characters adapted from Disney's 1967 animated feature The Jungle Book (namely, some of the film's animals being given an anthropomorphical makeover while the humans are removed), which was theatrically rereleased in the summer before this show premiered in the fall.