The series TaleSpin (1990) was originally intended to be a Duck Tales spin-off featuring Launchpad, hence the word "Tale" in the title of that series.
In the Carl Barks comics, Scrooge McDuck was much greedier and meaner, who could be portrayed as much an antagonist as a protagonist. He was considerably toned down in this series to be more affectionate and kindhearted.
When the initial ideas for DuckTales were being brainstormed, Disney was also considering a TV series inspired by Indiana Jones, about a team that would go on adventures worldwide searching for treasures. After rereading the Uncle Scrooge comics by Carl Barks, Michael Eisner realized that many of these adventure elements were already incorporated into their story lines. The two ideas were merged together into one show, which ended up being DuckTales.
Uncle Scrooge's nemesis Flintheart Glomgold is portrayed in this series as a Scot. In the original comics, he was portrayed as South African; this was removed due to the apartheid regime that was part of that country's history.
The series was the first Disney cartoon to be produced for syndication. The studio gambled on the idea that a larger investment into quality animation could be made back through syndication - a concept that worked well with live-action TV reruns, but which had only been used with inexpensive cartoon series that either recycled theatrical shorts from decades past or only featured limited, low-budget animation. However, this show was a big hit and paved the way for future Disney cartoon series, such as Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers (1989), TaleSpin (1990), and Gargoyles (1994).