Recreations of fictional products from The Simpsons
A promotional can of Buzz Cola for The Simpsons Movie
The long-running television animation The Simpsons has featured a number of fictional products, sometimes spoofs of real-life products, that have subsequently been recreated by real world companies attempting to exploit the popularity of The Simpsons. In 2007, as part of a "reverse product placement" marketing campaign for The Simpsons Movie, real life versions of a number of Simpsons products were sold in 7-Eleven stores. Real cans of Buzz Cola, boxes of Krusty-O's cereal, Squishees, and a special edition (#711) of the Radioactive Man Comic were all sold in stores alongside other The Simpsons merchandise.
Buzz Cola is a brand of cola, and an officially licensed product of Twentieth Century Fox. Its slogan is "twice the sugar, twice the caffeine". The slogan is a parody of the former Jolt Cola slogan "all the sugar and twice the caffeine". A prior slogan used was "There's a little boogie in every bottle (can)".
Sometimes Buzz Cola is used for making a statement of the advertising industry. In "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" (season 11, 1999) the Simpson family is at the movies watching the ads. Here they watch an Allied Forces soldier storm the Normandy beaches and charge a German. The German falls to the ground dead and the Allied soldier reaches for a can of Buzz Cola in his belt pocket. A voice over then says "Buzz Cola: The taste you kill for!" and then the German comes alive again to say "Available in ze lobby". Jonathan Grey writes in his book Watching With The Simpsons that "the cola ad, for instance, scorns the proclivity of ads to use any gimmick to grasp attention, regardless of ethics".[1]
Although a general parody of popular cola drinks, parallels can be observed between Buzz Cola and Pepsi. For example, many of the mock television commercials that appear for Buzz Cola on The Simpsons follow the same youth-oriented approach of real Pepsi commercials. In another example, Homer gets his arm stuck in a vending machine selling "Crystal Buzz Cola", a parody of Crystal Pepsi.[2] In the episode "Dude, Where's My Ranch?," Maggie Simpson dances in her crib with her midriff exposed while a Britney Spears tune plays in the background and produces a can of Buzz Cola at the end of her small dance, parodying the Pepsi advertising done by Spears in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There is also a "Buzz Cola with Lemon" version of the product, with the slogan "damn, that's a lemony cola". In addition, in a later episode, there was an old ad for Buzz Cola, stating that it has the "rejuvenating power of cocaine" in it. In the video game The Simpsons: Hit & Run, aliens Kang and Kodos use a "new and improved" Buzz Cola formula to brainwash the citizens of Springfield into performing stupid stunts for their reality TV show, Foolish Earthlings. They also dump it into the town's water supply, which reanimates the dead and creates zombies.
In July 2007, 7-Eleven rebranded some stores to look like Kwik-E-Marts in select cities to promote The Simpsons Movie. Real cans of Buzz Cola were available at those locations, as well as most other 7-Elevens throughout the United States and Canada.[3] The soda in these cans was produced by the Cott Corporation, which also makes RC Cola outside the United States.[4]
Buzz Cola first appeared in the 1984 movie Surf II.[5]
With its loud-mouthed corporate spokesperson Duffman, Duff Beer is a parody of stereotypical American beer: cheap, mass-produced, poor-quality and heavily advertised. It is Homer's favorite beer and sold in all the bars of Springfield. Its slogan is "Can't get enough of that wonderful Duff".
The chief competitor of Duff Beer is Fudd Beer, which is intentionally spelled with a parallel swapping of the consonants. [citation needed] Homer became aware of Fudd Beer while patronizing a "redneck bar" in nearby Spittle County. It was later revealed to be considered very popular in Springfield's rival town of Shelbyville. Moe said he thought it had been banned "after all those hillbillies went blind", suggesting methanol poisoning.
Lion Nathan, an Australian brewery, started to brew their own ‘Duff’ in the mid-1990s. 20th Century Fox sued, and only a few cans were produced. In the process, the beer became a collectors’ item, with one case selling for $US13,000.[6]
Duff Beer was not sold at 7-Eleven because the promoters wanted to have "good, responsible fun."[3] However, a Duff Energy Drink was released in place of the Duff Beer.[7]
Krusty-Brand Cereal is the catalyst for the episode "'Round Springfield", when Bart swallows a "jagged metal Krusty-O" included in the box as a premium and is sent to the hospital. Later in the episode when Krusty holds a press conference to show that swallowing the jagged metal Krusty-O is not dangerous, he immediately begins to gag before he is informed he swallowed a "regular" Krusty-O, which he claims must be "poison". At the end of the episode, another box of Krusty-O's is shown with the promotion: "Flesh-Eating Bacteria In Every Box!".[8]
The current cost of a box of frosty Krusty-O's is $6.66 according to the cash register in the opening credits of season 16.
Malibu Stacy
Malibu Stacy is a doll brand based on Barbie which is the main topic of the episode "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy".[9] The release of the 2023 film Barbie coincided with the 30th anniversary of the episode.[10]
Radioactive Man is within the show a long-running superhero comic book series featuring Radioactive Man and his sidekick, Fallout Boy. According to one episode, there are 1,000 issues of the comic book. In the real world, Bongo Comics has produced a smaller number of issues of Radioactive Man.
Radioactive Man is one of the four 'premiere' series released by Bongo Comics in late 1993.[11] The series has been released in two volumes, an early run from 1993–1994,[12] and the current run that has been published since 2000. Smaller Radioactive Man stories have also been published in Simpsons Comics.[13] As a tie-in promotion of The Simpsons Movie a special "Radioactive Man Comic Book Edition #711" was sold at 7-Elevens as part of their Kwik-E-Mart promotion.[14]
Within the Bongo Comics, Radioactive Man is secretly Claude Kane III, a millionaire playboy whose personality was well-intentioned, but bumbling and not overly bright. In addition (which became a recurring storyline element), Claude's personality was permanently stuck in a conservative 1950s outlook on everything, no matter what the time era in question was. A running gag is that in order to preserve his secret identity, Claude is constantly wearing various types of hats, in order to conceal the lightning bolt-shaped shrapnel sticking out of his head.[15]
Issue #1 of the Bongo comic differs from Radioactive Man #1 as seen in The Simpsons episode "Three Men and a Comic Book". While featuring a similar scenario and accident (Claude getting his trousers caught on barbed wire just before a mega-bomb explodes is a parody of Bruce Banner getting caught by the Gamma Bomb in the Incredible Hulk #1), the Bongo series' Claude was not wearing tattered clothes. In the comic book, Claude's survival is due in part to a large thunderbolt-shaped shard of metal embedded in his head by the explosion. Claude would attempt to remove the bolt throughout the book series, but each attempt has nasty consequences which results in it being put back in his scalp again. Additionally, the bolt's presence would save his life numerous times in increasingly bizarre ways.[15]
Maintaining the satirical standards of the television show, these comics often parody genre comic books, and the reader can follow the evolution of Radioactive Man from a 1950s irradiated hero through the politically reactionary or radical years of the 1960s and 1970s, and the dark, troubled years of the 1980s and 1990s comic book hero. Indeed, one comic displays a startling similarity to Alan Moore's Watchmen, with Radioactive Man taking the part of state-supported hero Doctor Manhattan.[citation needed] The comics are published as if they were the actual Simpsons universe's Radioactive Man comics; a "1970s"-published comic features a letter written by a ten-year-old Marge Bouvier, for instance. The comic also takes the idea that the title has been running since the 1950s and each issue of the real series is a random issue from that run. So one issue might be issue #357, the next #432 and the next #34, etc.[13]
Squishee
Squishee (sometimes spelled Squishy or Squishie) is a frozen slushie from The Simpsons TV series, usually purchased at the fictional Kwik-E-Mart which is managed by Apu. It is an apparent reference to 7-Eleven's Slurpee. In the thirteenth-season episode "The Sweetest Apu", Apu has the Squishee machine replaced with one of a similar drink called the "Smooshie," whose flavors reportedly include "shopping bag" and "dog fur".
The fictional version of Squishees are reputed for being dangerous to health—Squishee flavorings have, if ingested in sufficient quantities, hallucinogenic properties. According to the Simpsons comic, Squishees allegedly contain no natural ingredients (not even pure water), create dangerous cases of brain freeze, and are even described as "a thick, gloopy, tooth-rotting mixture of crushed ice and syrup". Flavors include: blue, red, lime green, Chutney, Wheatgrass, Champagne, cherry, and the Twenty-One Syrup Salute.[16] Bart and Milhouse on one occasion went on a "Squishee bender" after drinking a squishee that was made entirely from syrup.[17] Many other random flavors appear in the comics, including Chinese New Year, Plum, Raita and the black-colored "Squish of Death" (which causes spontaneous vomiting), which actually turned out to be just a mixture of the red and blue flavors.
In 2007 as part of the Kwik-E-Mart promotion for The Simpsons Movie, Slurpees at 7-Elevens were renamed "Squishees" and sold in special collector cups.[3]
Tomacco
Tomacco was originally a fictional plant that was a hybrid between tomatoes and tobacco, from a 1999 episode of The Simpsons titled "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)". The method used to create the tomacco in the episode is fictional. In the episode, the tomacco was accidentally created by Homer when he planted his fields with tomato and tobacco and fertilised them with plutonium. The result is a tomato that apparently has a dried, brown tobacco center, and, although being described as tasting terrible by many characters, is also immediately and powerfully addictive. The creation is promptly labeled "tomacco" by Homer and sold in large quantities to unsuspecting passersby. A cigarette company, Laramie Tobacco Co., seeing the opportunity to legally sell their products to children, offers to buy the rights to market tomacco, but Homer demands one thousand times as much money as they wish to pay him, and the company withdraws. Eventually, all of the tomacco plants are eaten by farm animals— except for the one remaining plant, which later goes down in an explosive helicopter crash with the cigarette company's lawyers.
The process of making tomacco was first revealed in a 1959 Scientific American article, which stated that nicotine could be found in the tomato plant after grafting. Due to the academic and industrial importance of this breakthrough process, this article was reprinted in a 1968 Scientific American compilation.[18]
A Simpsons fan, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, was inspired by the episode. Remembering the article in a textbook, Baur cultivated a tomacco in 2003 by grafting together tobacco and tomato plants. The plant produced fruit that looked like a normal tomato, but Baur suspected that it contained a lethal amount of nicotine and thus would be inedible. Testing later proved that the leaves of the plant contained some nicotine, though a sample from the fruit was unable to be examined by the same laboratory.[19] Both plants are members of the same family, Solanaceae or nightshade.[20] The tomacco plant bore tomaccoes until it died after 18 months, spending one winter indoors.[20] Baur was featured on the "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)" audio commentary in the Simpsons Season 11 DVD box set discussing the plant and resulting fame.[21]
The 2004 convention of the American Dialect Society named tomacco as the new word "least likely to succeed."[22] Tomacco was a wordspy.com "Word of the Day".[23]
Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky, better known by his stage name Krusty the Clown, is a recurring character on the animated television series The Simpsons. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta. He is the long-time clown host of Bart and Lisa Simpson's favorite TV show, a variety show consisting of various kid-friendly sketches and often highly violent cartoons, most notably The Itchy & Scratchy Show. Despite his cheery onscreen persona, Krusty is actually a cynical, burnt-out, addiction-riddled smoker who is made miserable by show business but continues on anyway. He has become one of the most frequently occurring characters outside the main Simpson family and has been the focus of many episodes, some of which also feature Sideshow Bob.
Apu Nahasapeemapetilon is a recurring character in the American animated television series The Simpsons. He is an Indian immigrant proprietor who runs the Kwik-E-Mart, a popular convenience store in Springfield, and is known for his catchphrase, "Thank you, come again". He was voiced by Hank Azaria and first appeared in the episode "The Telltale Head". He was named in honor of the title character of The Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray.
Springfield is the primary fictional setting of the American animated sitcom The Simpsons and related media. It is an average-sized, fictional city within an unknown state in the United States. The fictional city's geography, surroundings, and layout are flexible, often changing to accommodate the plot of any given episode.
The Kwik-E-Mart is a convenience store in the animated television series The Simpsons. It is a parody of American convenience stores, such as 7-Eleven and Cumberland Farms, and depicts many of the stereotypes about them.
The Simpsons: Hit & Run is a 2003 action-adventure game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Vivendi Universal Games. It is based on the American animated sitcom The Simpsons, and is the twenty-second installment in the Simpsons series of video games.
Songs in the Key of Springfield is a soundtrack/novelty album from The Simpsons compiling many of the musical numbers from the series. The album was released in the United States on March 18, 1997, and in the United Kingdom in June 1997. This was the second album released in association with the Simpsons television series; however, the previous release, The Simpsons Sing the Blues, contained original recordings as opposed to songs featured in episodes of the series.
Bongo Comics Group was a comic book publishing company founded in 1993 by Matt Groening along with Steve & Cindy Vance and Bill Morrison. It published comics related to the animated television series The Simpsons and Futurama, as well as the SpongeBob SquarePants comics, along with original material. The company was named after Bongo, a rabbit character in Groening's comic strip Life in Hell.
"E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)", also known as "E-I-E-I-D'oh", is the fifth episode of the eleventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox Network in the United States on November 7, 1999. In the episode, inspired by a Zorro movie, Homer begins slapping people with a glove and challenging them to duels to get whatever he wants. When a Southern gentleman accepts Homer's request for a duel, the Simpsons run off to the old farm Homer lived in with his parents and breed a dangerously addictive but successful tobacco/tomato hybrid called "Tomacco". The episode was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham and directed by Bob Anderson.
"22 Short Films About Springfield" is the twenty-first episode of the seventh season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox Network in the United States on April 14, 1996. It was written by Richard Appel, David X. Cohen, Jonathan Collier, Jennifer Crittenden, Greg Daniels, Brent Forrester, Dan Greaney, Rachel Pulido, Steve Tompkins, Josh Weinstein, Bill Oakley, and Matt Groening, with the writing being supervised by Daniels. The episode was directed by Jim Reardon. Phil Hartman guest-starred as Lionel Hutz and the hospital board chairman.
"Homie the Clown" is the fifteenth episode of the sixth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on February 12, 1995. In the episode, Homer becomes a Krusty the Clown impersonator, but is mistaken for the real Krusty by the Springfield Mafia. Joe Mantegna returned as Fat Tony, while Dick Cavett and Johnny Unitas guest starred as themselves.
"Homer and Apu" is the thirteenth episode of the fifth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on February 10, 1994. In the episode, Homer participates in a hidden-camera investigation of spoiled food being sold at the Kwik-E-Mart. The chain's corporate office fires Apu and replaces him with actor James Woods, who is doing research for an upcoming film role. Apu misses his job, so he and Homer travel to India to persuade the head of the Kwik-E-Mart corporation to rehire him.
Media is a recurring theme of satire on The Simpsons. The show is known for its satire of American popular culture and especially television culture, but has since its inception covered all types of media such as animation, journalism, commercials, comic books, movies, internet, and music. The series centers on a family and their life in a typical American town but the town of Springfield acts as a complete universe. The town features a vast array of media channels—from kids' television programming to local news, which enables the producers to make jokes about themselves and the entertainment industry.
The Simpsons Ride is a motion simulator ride located in the Springfield areas of both Universal Studios Florida and Universal Studios Hollywood. Based on the animated television series The Simpsons, the ride was announced in 2007 as a replacement for Back to the Future: The Ride at both parks. It first opened at Universal Studios Florida on May 15, 2008, and then a few days later at Universal Studios Hollywood on May 19, 2008. The producers of The Simpsons contributed to the design of the ride, which uses CGI animation, also worked on the ride's 2D animation. At the time of its opening, the ride featured state-of-the-art projection and hydraulic technology.
The Simpsons is an American animated comedy franchise whose eponymous family consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The Simpsons were created by cartoonist Matt Groening for a series of animated shorts that debuted on The Tracey Ullman Show on Fox on April 19, 1987. After a three-season run, the sketch was developed into The Simpsons, a half-hour prime time show that was an early hit for Fox, becoming the first Fox series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990). The popularity of The Simpsons has made it a billion-dollar merchandising and media franchise. Alongside the television series, the characters of the show have been featured in a variety of media, including books, comic books, a magazine, musical releases, and video games.
"Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart" is the fifteenth episode of the twenty-third season of the American animated television series The Simpsons, and the 501st episode overall. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on March 4, 2012. In the episode, Bart is punished by Homer after letting a rabbit loose in the house. He gets revenge on his father by spray-painting images of him with the word "dope" all over Springfield. Street artist Shepard Fairey encounters Bart one night and offers him a gallery show of Bart's artworks. However, Chief Wiggum suddenly appears during the show and arrests Bart for covering the town in graffiti. It turns out that Fairey is an undercover officer working for Wiggum.
Springfield is a chain of themed areas at Universal theme parks in Florida and Hollywood, based on the town of the same name from the long-hit American television animated sitcom, The Simpsons.
References
Grey, Jonathan (2006). Watching with the Simpsons. Taylor & Francis. ISBN0-415-36202-4.
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