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Defictionalization / The Simpsons

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Many of the fictional brands on The Simpsons have been made into real products.


  • Kwik-E-Marts. A few weeks before The Simpsons Movie came out, many 7-Eleven stores throughout the United States were temporarily converted into Kwik-E-Marts. They sold genuine Springfield products like Squishees (Slurpees), Krusty-O Cereal, and Buzz Cola. These items are now sold at Krustyland Amusement Park, at Universal Studios. The iconic Simpsons donut with the pink frosting and sprinkles didn't exist before the movie but became a permanent fixture afterwards. A permanent Kwik E Mart opened in South Carolina in 2018.
  • Duff Beer. This is a tricky one, because Matt Groening doesn't want this particular brand defictionalized — he's worried kids will want to drink it. In the U.S., the only official Duff product you can buy anywhere is an energy drink for this reason. But outside the U.S., there are several Duff knockoffs, including in Mexico, Australia,note  Italy,note  and Francenote . And you can get alcoholic Duff Beer in America, but only in the Moe's Tavern replica at Universal Studios Orlando; it's brewed exclusively for the park.
  • The Clogger, from The Simpsons Movie, through a burger that was nearly identical sold at Burger King to promote the movie.
  • The Albuquerque Isotopes baseball team. They're the minor league farm team of the Colorado Rockies. Two years after "Hungry, Hungry Homer", the Calgary Cannons baseball team moved to New Mexico, and a rename poll had the vast majority of the locals voting on the Isotopes name. As recognition, the Simpson family has statues in their ballpark.
  • Radioactive Man comics. Bongo Comics has published several issues thereof — in Anachronic Order to boot, to more easily mock The Ages Of Super Hero Comics. Usually they're published as part of the existing Simpsons comics. It even includes a little recursive defictionalisation — in "Three Men and a Comic Book", Bart's imaginary superhero identity "Bartman" and Otto's equivalent "Busman" are given their own comics; Busman got an Issue Within an Issue of the Simpsons comic called "The Gnarly Adventures of Busman", and Bartman meanwhile got a 6-issue miniseries in the 1990s, cameo appearances in several Simpsons tie-in video games, and a dedicated crossover story with the Radioactive Man comics.
  • The Gummi Venus de Milo from "Homer Badman".
  • The Tomacco from "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)". It's the first defictionalized lifeform.
  • The "What Badgers Eat" website, which was a minisite on the Simpsons website. But it's expired; the link is to the archive.
  • In the season 8 DVD box set, there is a special feature of a real life Simpsons house created for a contest near Las Vegas. The winner, a retired grandmother from Kentucky, elected to take a cash payment instead of keeping the house. After the exterior was repainted to better fit the rest of the neighborhood, it sat vacant for three years (with some looting of the interior), before a woman who worked for the developer's company bought it and moved in, and did some more remodeling, though the house's cartoony inspiration is still recognizable from the outside. To discourage unwanted attention, the house has been blurred on Google Street View, but plenty of pictures of it exist online.
  • In the movie, Comic Book Guy theorizes that Grandpa's exclamation of "EPA!" refers to "the sound Green Lantern made when Sinestro threw him into a vat of acid". Then, in Sinestro Corps War, "eepa" gets used as a sound effect during a fight scene (although it does not involve Sinestro throwing anyone into a vat of acid).
  • A playable Hockey Dad game, on Newgrounds, by user "Aprime".
  • A playable Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge game, as seen in "Marge Be Not Proud".
  • The exclamation "D'oh!" It's even in the Oxford English Dictionary (even though Simpsons scripts always denote it as "Annoyed Grunt"). And it's used in the same context, even — when people realise they've done something stupid. Matt Groening noticed it himself and commented on it as proof of how ingrained the show had become in popular culture.
  • The word "embiggen", from the Springfield town motto: "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man". It's been added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, and it means what you think it means. Relatedly, from the same exchange, the word "cromulent" has been adopted to refer to words that have entered the lexicon this way — even on This Very Wiki.
  • "Bort" named keychains, which you can get at Universal Studios. And like on the show, they frequently sell out.
  • Here's a collection of several defictionalised arcade games that Bart played on the show.
  • Australia is actually considering changing its currency to the "dollarydoo", like on the Simpsons. Their thinking is that the Australian dollar is kinda stagnating, so by making the Simpsons reference, they might convince people to buy it for the novelty.
  • Homer's electric hammer from "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace". Behold! Someone made a replica.
  • The blog Eats Like A Duck recreates several foods seen on the show.
  • Binging with Babish has defictionalized a number of Simpsons-related food items, including Marge's dessert dogs, the Good Morning burger, Ned Flanders' hot chocolate recipe, Homer's patented space-age out-of-this-world moon waffles, the Krusty Burger ribwich, the stew Principal Skinner was forced to eat in a Viet Cong POW camp, and, naturally, steamed hams in a crossover with First We Feast.
  • A fan of VeggieTales made a fan animation based on the fake episode of the show seen in "The Greatest Story Ever Doh'd".

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