The whole “Marge in Playboy” thing was not enjoyable from a Simpsons-blogger point of view.  With all the tweets, blog posts, articles and other manner of electronic detritus the signal to noise ratio of Simpsons stuff on the internet dropped like a stone.  And most if it was little more than “Marge in Playboy! OMG!”.  (That the end result was lame and tame didn’t help.)  Among the more perceptive of the widespread opinions was that it was a kind of doubly sad milestone: two aging, largely irrelevant franchises trying to reinvigorate each other, if only for a moment. 

I liked that because it implied a desperation on the part of Zombie Simpsons.  Then a few months ago Al Jean dumped some cold water on that:

"The episode idea came first, because we work a year ahead. The Playboy thing (Marge was the cover girl for the November issue) was an independent offer from Playboy. But we thought, to be smart, we should probably have them come out around the same time."

“An independent offer from Playboy”, you say.  Hmmm, that’s very interesting, especially in light of this profile of a Playboy executive from Chicago Magazine:

For example, when a PR person for The Simpsons called to ask about a possible tie-in with Playboy as part of the show’s 20th anniversary season—maybe a pinup featuring Marge—Jellinek took the idea to a new level: “You think we can get them to do the cover?” he asked the deputy editor, Stephen Randall.

So whose idea was it?  Granted I’m biased, but of the two stories I find Playboy’s a little more credible.  That Zombie Simpsons was working on an episode where Marge gets photographed in racy poses and then Playboy just happened to call doesn’t quite pass the smell test. 

But who called who first almost doesn’t matter.  It’s just funny that neither party wants to be seen as the originator of such a desperate media ploy.  “Oh sure, we were happy to do it!  But it was their idea!  We were doing just fine already.”