“Human roaches, feeding off each other’s garbage, the only thing you can’t buy here is dignity.” – Mayor Quimby It is the stated position of the Dead Homer Society that the fount of filthy lucre that is crappy Simpsons merchandise is a major reason behind the continued existence of Zombie Simpsons. Merchandise generates twice as much cash as the television show, and the continued production of new episodes has been explicitly linked by people at FOX to licensing revenue. And while one person’s purchasing decisions wouldn’t even register as a rounding error on that mountain of money, why buy things…
Category: Krusty Brand Seal of Approval
Collectable Cookies
“I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why I enjoyed it. And I don’t know why I’ll do it again.” – Bart Simpson Shitty, unimaginative marketers have long taken advantage of the idea of “collecting”. The basic premise is simple enough: you create a group of things, and all but dare people to spend money getting them all. The more they get, the better for you. It’s simple, easy and profitable; and on some level it even makes sense, e.g. all the players on a Major League roster, or all the main characters from a Star Trek…
Collect the Whole Set!
“Maybe the drawings were a little crude, but all the characters were there: Itchy & Scratchy, Grampa Simpson, and Krusty the Klown.” – Troy McClure Look at this picture of a Krusty stuffed animal (it’s the same one I put on our half assed Twitter feed yesterday). That has to be among the worst deviated septums in the history of stuffed animals. His nose is above his eyes! And let’s be clear, the people in charge of merchandising for FOX can’t blame this on shoddy manufacturing at whatever third world factory slapped this thing together for them. The mouth and…
Krusty Brand Seal of Approval: Energy Drinks
“Wow, Trucker’s Choice.” – Lisa Simpson One of the basic positions of this blog is that the continuing production of Zombie Simpsons is due primarily to merchandising. “Simpsons” merchandise generates twice as much revenue as advertising, and with none of the overhead of actually producing the show. Moreover, the success of merchandising is directly related to how fresh the characters remain in the public mind. For a similar example, see this recent New York Times article about Warner Brothers’ efforts to get the likes of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck back into the spotlight: Ask a first grader to identify…
KBSoA: A Mildly Clever Homer Clock
I am opposed to most Simpsons merchandise for a number of reason, it tends to be crappy, it tends to be overpriced, it supports the continued existence of Zombie Simpsons. However, they do occasionally come up with something that is at least a little bit funny. Behold the Homer clock to the left. As the clock ticks Homer alternately raises (and eye fucks) either the donut or the beer. The photo certainly makes it look like a cheap plastic piece of crap, and the price of $40 seems awfully steep. But I’ve got to admit, it is at least a…
Crowd-Sourcing eBay Merchandise
Yesterday I came across a wanted poster for Grandpa Simpson for sale on eBay. As is my custom when I find eBay Simpsons stuff that doesn’t totally suck I linked to it on our pathetic Twitter feed. I thought most of the text was too small to read (image at right), but then Ryan W. Mead (sometime commenter, Twitter follower, and all around good guy) came through in a series of tweets with the text. He has better eyes than I do, a better monitor than I do, or both. Bravo. Full text is below (it’s pretty amusing): Abraham Simpson…
What If I Want a Drawing of Part of Marge’s Arm?
“This? This is a Snagglepuss drawn by Hic Heisler, it is worth something. This? This is an arm drawn by nobody. It is worth nothing.” – Comic Book Guy I come across a fair number of weird Simpsons stuff on eBay but until this week I had never come across an actual production animation cel from the show. In fact, I found the concept so ludicrous that I titled a whole post after it just last Saturday. But this week I found two. The sale for the first has ended, and it’s a good thing too because some yutz bought…
Marketing Horrorshow Coming Soon to a Vagina Near You!
“I want you to hear what Malibu Stacy is telling a generation of little girls.” – Lisa Simpson “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles.” – Malibu Stacy Doll Are you female? Do you like being marketed to by condescending idiots? If you answered “Yes” to the first question then the people behind Simpsons merchandise couldn’t care less about your answer to the second. Behold the unironically stereotypical marketing push known as “Ladies of Springfield”. Fisking time! 20 years on and The Simpsons is still going strong. We take a look at the Ladies of Springfield licensing drive. It may be…
A “Little” Fail
This is a drink tray. It was officially licensed by FOX. Someone in a nice office signed off on this. And yet the simple act of proofreading an eleven word quote, quite possibly the most used quote this side of “D’oh”, was too much quality control to ask. Of course getting the quote wrong takes away from it. It’s not as funny when you add the word “little” because it diminishes the otherwise universal scale of the quote. Shit like this, retailing for a mere £3.99, is the primary reason Zombie Simpsons is still on the air.
Crappy Simpsons Merchandise Comes to the iPhone
There’s a repetitive and unoriginal game for the iPhone which happens to feature the Simpsons. Here’s the nut of it: In The Simpsons Arcade, you play as Homer, who is on a quest to chase down a mysterious doughnut which also happens to be host to a USB flash drive that holds some kind of secret information that nearly the entire population of Springfield seems to be in on. […] The gameplay in The Simpsons Arcade isn’t anything to write home about. There are much better arcade-style beat-em-ups on the platform with better animations and more depth such as the…
Weird Batch of eBay Simpsons Stuff
Oh eBay, you make it so easy for people to sell the most entertainingly oddball stuff. First up we have this wind up Maggie novelty item that, according to the seller, “WORKS STILL”: Next on the block is this rather frightening looking “walking” Homer robot: That thing looks like a cross between Homer and that stupid robot FOX has on during football. The combination of the distorted, semi-muscled torso with the blank stare and strange grin on the head is really unnerving. Finally, how about some novelty Euro notes with Simpsons characters on them? There’s a 20 Euro note…
How Not to Photoshop Your Crappy Merchandise
“Ohhh, The Tinkler. I like the sound of that.” – Homer Simpson The image at right is for an AM/FM radio in the shape of Homer. On the product website it is listed as “no longer available”, which is no great loss. What I’d like to draw your attention to, however, is the remarkably smooth line the “water” makes as it runs along Homer’s torso. And I mean really, remarkably smooth, as in no variance whatsoever. It’s one thing to advertise crappy Simpsons merchandise, lots of links I come across do that. It’s another to not even bother to photograph…
Zombie Bart
Hey look, another relevant t-shirt with a delightful portmanteau for a name: “Zombart.” You can even buy it from Single Second for twenty-eight whole Canadian dollars. Officially, it’s billed as a tribute to “both Zombies and our childhood,” but really it’s another indicator of the public’s increasing awareness of shitty, shitty Zombie Simpsons. We will prevail, DHS readers. Have patience.
Serak Is Sad
“Well, if you wanted to make Serak the Preparer cry, mission accomplished.” – Kang Do you have $30 dollars you don’t need? How about $60? Want a pair of 6-inch Kang and Kodos dolls? They come out next month, so start saving your pennies. Here’s the kicker though, they come “blind boxed”, which means you don’t know which one you’re going to get. Question: if you order two are you guaranteed one of each? They aren’t officially for sale yet so I couldn’t find an answer on the website. Are they greedy enough to make you keep ordering? Do the…
Lisa & Bart Figures
Back at the beginning of the summer we had a post about someone who was trying to sell a life size fiberglass Simpson family (complete with couch!) that was used as a theater-lobby promotion for the movie. Now there’s a craigslist ad for just Lisa and Bart. The whole family was going to set you back five grand, but, provided you live somewhere in or around Los Angeles, Bart and Lisa can be yours for just $195 each. By the way, Bart’s not doing the Bartman there or anything. When these things were on the couch Bart was watching upside…
But Can I Put a Dead Fly in Them?
Want to put Homer’s face in your glass and suck on him until he melts? Well, now you can. The order link doesn’t seem to work at the moment though, so you’ll have to maintain the impulse buying urge for longer than usual (via).
Crappy Merchandise: Cufflinks
Do you often think to yourself, “What I really need is a good pair of humorous cufflinks”? Is there someone you love who may be a great person but whose life is clearly lacking in this critical way? Fear not, for the Cufflinks Depot is here! For just $45 American you can purchase one of these fine novelty items, sure to produce that always entertaining mixture of fake gratitude and suppressed disappointment on the face of the recipient. (And make no mistake, these are gag gift only items, the websites that peddle them all but beg you to use them…
Simpsons Fandom: Ur Doin It Wrong
“So, what do you think of the Lady Krusty Moustache Removal System now, Angelique?” – Johnny Unitas “It’s Krusteriffic, Johnny Unitas. But is my upper lip supposed to bleed like this?” – Angelique “Probably.” – Johnny Unitas A guy in the UK has what may be the largest collection of crappy Simpsons merchandise on the planet. According to thisisbristol.co.uk: A Bristol man believes he has the biggest collection of Simpsons memorabilia in the world. Glynne Williams has more than 30,000 items linked to the popular cartoon TV series, but they are currently all in his loft in Patchway. The 42-year-old…
Your $5,000 Ass Here
Via MTV’s Movies Blog comes the mother of all Simpsons merchandise. If it looks familiar that’s because this is one of the promo pieces that were shipped to theaters for the movie. I don’t recall the one at my local multiplex having an extra seat next to Homer (there was a rope around it to keep people from breaking it), but what do I know? It is neither cheap nor small, the eBay description lists it as 12 feet long and weighing in at approximately 400 lbs and the “BuyItNow” price, before shipping, is $5,000. Somewhat bizarrely, that’s not a…
The Blueprint of the Enemy
“Hey, this is the only paper in America that’s not afraid to tell the truth, that everything is just fine.” – Homer Simpson There was an article in USA Today last month about the merchandising future of The Simpsons. It is a fucking horror show for anyone who understands the concept of Zombie Simpsons. The whole thing is worth reading, but there are a couple of very frightening passages that deserve special attention: Consumers worldwide spent more than $750 million on Simpsons-related licensed merchandise last year, about half of that coming from the U.S., Fox says. In addition, advertisers spent…