Dead Homer Society

“Oh, Marge, sitting next to the boss, the best night of the year and it’s ruined!” – Homer Simpson

Last year Simpsons Day fell on a Saturday and I got to spend the whole thing sitting on my ass and watching cartoons.  Sadly, today is a work day, but there’s still plenty of great, old Simpsons stuff to enjoy on-line.  For starters, check out this 1990 interview with Groening, Brooks and Simon:

Near the end, the interviewer asks about all the merchandise (remember, this was the absolute height of Bartmania), and Groening plugs some of the upcoming licensed crap:

We’ve got some great stuff on its way out, just stay tuned for the Nintendo game, and the Simpsons pinball machine, the official Bart Simpson vehicle of destruction, that’s a skateboard, and lots more.

The great big flashing neon irony of the video comes when Groening is asked about the origin of the show and, referring to the original bumper shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show, says:

I think it’s a very insidious way of keeping people paying attention to a TV show is to make little short cartoons about the length of a commercial so people had to pay attention.  If you blinked you’d miss them when they were on the Tracey Ullman show.

The interviewer then asks, “Did you draw them immediately the way they are now?”, to which Groening responds:

Well, if you watch them on Lifetime, cable, you’ll see that the Simpsons have transformed quite a bit since the early days.

Ha!  Now 1990 is the early days, far more so than 1987 was at the time.

Speaking of 1990, to give you an example of just how immensely popular and phenomenal the Simpsons were at the time, here is a “video yearbook” from some high school’s 1989-90 school year:

Season 1 had just finished airing when this was made, and Bart not only gets the last word (it’s right at the end), but he also gets about as much time as the Berlin Wall coming down.  In a similar high school vein, take a look at this marching band performance of the opening theme in 1990:

The cameraman isn’t doing anyone any favors here, but note the big cheer that goes up from the crowd at the 15 second mark when they recognize the theme.  It’s much bigger than the cheer that the band got before they started playing Elfman’s catchy masterpiece. 

Finally, this is a video from 1990 produced by British Sky Broadcasting for “dealers”, which I presume means the middlemen who have to decide whether or not to carry the channel.  Basically, it’s an in-house promo for how great their programming is and why it’s worth carrying.  At the 7:30 mark they talk about Sky One and how it reaches tons of younger viewers, and they specifically cite The Simpsons as a big reason why. 

When the promo starts, it not only calls the show “the smash hit of the 90s”, but it contains this rather amazing slice of 1990, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney holding a Bart Simpson doll while Colin Powell stands behind him:

Wow.

I’ll hopefully have more a little later.  In the meantime, happy Simpsons Day, everybody!