I saw this on Boing Boing just now:

I’d never heard of “Hai Karate” as an aftershave, but the words instantly pinged the roughly 2/3 of my brain devoted to storing Simpsons quotes.  In Season 3’s “When Flanders Failed”, Akira’s closing line in his commercial is, “High karate, at low, low prices.”  A search of the episode pages on both SNPP and Wikipedia turned up nothing.  Despite a long “Pop Culture References” section, Wikipedia’s Hai Karate article does not mention Simpsons.  The question is: Was that an intentional reference? 

I’m inclined to say that it was.  The rather extensive list of pop culture appearances on Wikipedia means that Hai Karate was easily in/famous enough to merit a reference.  And Akira’s phrasing there has always sounded a little strange.  After all, what is “High Karate”?  (Other than a brilliant idea for a post-Prop 19 martial arts school in California.)  I get the juxtaposition with “low, low prices”, but it makes much more sense as that plus a cultural reference than it does as just a contrast with the prices. 

Add those things up and it doesn’t feel like a coincidence to me.  I could be wrong, of course, and I’m much too cowardly to assume that I found something that eluded both SNPP and Wikipedia all these years, so I submit this to the greater wisdom of the readership.  Sly reference, or coincidence? 

Note: Sure it’s fun to point and laugh at ye olde commercials like this one, but let’s not forget that in our time the Axe people have made untold millions with ads so similarly idiotic to this one that they might owe somebody a royalty check.  There, but for the grace of Hai Karate, go us all.