Yay! Thanks for having me on your show to talk about some Simpsons stuff I had genuinely never thought about before. I feel like we all kinda just glance at these promo images and forget them, but there is a lot of cool and bizarre stuff in there. (That Lisa's Pony one will never make sense to me.)
the promo for the Springfield Files makes it look like the episode had an abandoned plotline where Homer teams up with Mulder & Scully to rescue Ozzie Smith from Springfields sinister mystery spot.
Interesting to see you guys tackle this often overlooked part of Simpsons history. As a kid I always thought "No way Matt Groening drew all of these himself" just because his name was always there in that distinctive font. Fox basically turned his name into a brand itself.
Maybe it's because I loved DC Comics as a kid but I always just understood that was just a logo and that a lot of artists did the same thing. Bob Kane springs to mind. Even when I was little I knew Bob Kane stopped drawing Batman a long time ago. I saw the artists' names in the comic books. Stan Lee is another one. And sometimes I saw Siegel And Shuster on the odd Superman thing. I also remember seeing Bob Kane's signature in the 1989 Batman movie. So I guess I always just thought of it as a logo
Honestly a lot of these promo images are nostalgic as they were used to represent episodes on the back of the old VHS tapes and dvds of the show over here. The promo image for Cape Feare was even used as the front cover for one tape.
Speaking of promotional stuff, I remember there being radio ads for every episode for the first several seasons and I have no idea if they were archived anywhere.
Thanks bringing back a deep rooted childhood memory for me! On one of the cash register screens of a restaurant I used to go to there was that art of the ape evolving into Homer for some reason 🤷♂️
I remember seeing a lot of the more parodic promo art on t-shirts and binders, because they were so cool The ones that mystified me the most have to be the "Rosebud" one (since Homer never interacts with the Ramones in the actual episode) and "Jazzy & The Pussycats" (because, again, Milhouse isn't even present at the scene where The White Stripes make their cameo)
Gotta be careful just tossing Muscle Marge at me like a flashbang, it already awakened something in me once and I do not know if I could survive a double tap
I always loved this kind of promo art for these shows. And I've always really dug those movie posters that came with a lot of animated short subjects many decades ago. That's what this reminds me of.
Speaking of promo stuff, one thing I've thought about that also isn't discussed much are promo animations. As in original animations studios create to promote animated movies, particularly CG ones, with some of my favorites coming from Turning Red. I wonder how much of the staff on these films had to animate those on top of the film itself.
I remember as a kid being misled by the box art on the Star Wars themed episodes VHS. It depicted Bart as Luke and Homer as Vader and I assumed it was like some cool ‘Blue Harvest’ sorta parody. Instead the closest thing we got was Mark Hamil saying “use the fork”
Have you read many of the Bongo! comics? They're pretty fun. The Bartman and Radioactive Man books are legitimately good. Especially Bartman. I had both Bartman trades as a kid. I've not read them in years but I love them The Treehouse Of Horror comics are kind of hit or miss but overall good too. I've not read many Futurama comics but I plan to get to them eventually. They did two crossovers. The first one is a lot better than the TV version. The second is okay too. But definitely people should check out the comics if they haven't. I'm always happy to hear people mention them
A lot of the earlier images were simpler than those of later seasons because they were seen by most people as uncolored line art in TV Guide. 10:45 Are they going to stop putting this "Lizzo" person in every TV show, now? Matt Groening's had his name removed from The Critic crossover, but allowed it to appear on the Playboy drawings of the character named after his mom and in the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs.
I've always known of these, and actually my cable service sometimes uses the promo images in the TV guide too (others it's just a screenshot or the season DVD boxart). I find it funny that my favorite episode, Deep Space Homer, has one of the most boring promo arts in the show's history lol but at least they didn't try to shoehorn the cameos in it I suppose. The one for Dude, Where's My Ranch? is kinda a perfect summary tbh, for me at least, cause I mostly cared for that episode because of the Everybody Hates Ned Flanders song and the rest is filler for me lol I don't hate the episode but it's not really stellar either
Really liked the video, but I do have to make one correction: I don't believe its Hoover holding the gun in that Who Shot Mr Burns image. The angle that the gun is held at and the inclusion of a silencer, which he had in the episode, makes me think it's Skinner's gun, just being held aloft near Hoover.
You better make a joke about how it's been almost a year since you said 'Why do I consider making the next part next year, so don't get as burnt out?", that would be hilarious.
I have to disagree with your statement pertaining to not being able to tell apart animation from the 2010's and 2020's. I know you already mentioned backgrounds, but the animation itself has also improved a lot in comparison the the 2010's. It's a lot more fluid, bouncy, and expressive while the 2010's HD era animation was a lot stiffer and less dynamic. While the stylization hasn't changed all that much, the animation quality defiently has and it's easy to pick out between the time periods.
If we’re gonna get nitpicky, the animation quality started to pick up in the way you’re talking about it around Season 27 (I started noticing it in “The Town”) so no, I don’t think that’s the main difference between the two decades. Fair point though! This video is also moreso about design evolution in the show too, that’s just where my brain was at.
I hate the promo images with just celebrities standing around in voids with the Simpsons or on their own. Besides some sectors of movie stars and childhood media, I've never been a celeb savvy person, so for the majority of these I have no clue who these people are! Sure the same applies within the episodes, but at least there I get learn something about them and see them interract with the Simpsons characters, even if I end up disliking them. These promos are not only cheaply produced and boring, but it's creepy to see realistically drawn characters smirking at me or judging the Simpsons with zero context and that puts me off watching the episode! The opposite of what promos or I want to do!
