Simpsonize Your Life

As expected, the hype-machine for The Simpsons Movie is out in full force. The Simpsons are a television institution, containing around 10 seasons of the best stuff ever to be on television. However, there’s plenty of people (including myself) who are skeptical of the movie’s quality due to the lack of quality on the show in recent years. Of course, the advertising for the film is not going to speak to that: it’s just trying to get as many people aware of the movie as possible.

However, despite my skepticism, I remain a die-hard Simpsons fan, and so I looked at some of the promotions related to the film that I found interesting. As it turns out, they run the gamut from clever to broken.

Several 7-11 stores have been completed converted into Kwik-E-Marts, and luckily for me, one of them is only a few minutes from work. I stopped by there last night, and the conversion is pretty impressive. The front of the store has been painted and converted, and contains several plastic Simpsons characters inset into the building. On the inside, there are more Simpsons character standups, and stickers all over the place with Apu sayings (carefully chosen as to not reflect poorly on anyone.) Of course, it really is just a 7-11. They didn’t redo the layout to make it look as we all know the interior of the Kwik-E-Mart does.

However, they do have a number of Simpsons products for purchase, which is a really good idea. I picked up a 6 pack of Buzz Cola, a box of Krusty-O’s Cereal, and a special issue of Radioactive Man. All this ran me around $13. They also had cups for Slurpees that said “Squishie” (but only up to the medium size) and pink-frosted donuts with sprinkles that resemble Homer’s favorite. These two items you can buy at most 7-11’s.

The Buzz Cola tastes like any generic store brand Cola, and the Krusty-O’s are Fruit Loops. And being that you’re buying them at a 7-11, there’s a big markup. But you’re not buying it for the product, you’re buying it for the tie-in. Seems like win-win products for everyone.

I was pleasantly surprised of the quality of the Radioactive Man comic. This special issue was put out by Bongo Comics, who currently put out the Simpsons and Futurama comics. Normally I don’t like their comics, but this one was surprisingly funny while poking fun at other comics. The story at the end about the “Strange-O’s” was particularly amusing. Definitely recommended, both as a collector’s item and as a good comic book for Simpsons fans. However, don’t go in expecting the same Radioactive Man origin that we saw in the show and caused strife between Bart, Martin, and Milhouse.

A coworker showed me a picture of her “Simpsonized” and said that anyone could go online, upload a photo, and be turned into a Simpsons character. Of course, I couldn’t pass it up. A few quick searches found the Simpsonize Me page, which is part of the Burger King ad campaign for the movie. But then I quickly discovered that the site is, to put it simply, broken. It took over an hour to be able to access the page at all. Then once there, I kept receiving all kind of error messages.

In the meantime, I headed over to the official Simpsons movie site, and found an alternative to the Simpsonizer, but Mii-style. You put together a Simpsons character from limited options and it ends up vaguely resembling you. Kinda cool, but I still wanted to try the Simpsonize technology. To the side here is the version I created on the movie site.

So back at the Simpsonizer, I finally waited long enough for it to load. The site is completely Flash, and takes forever to do anything. The first screen tells you what photos are appropriate for it. Well, to make a long story short, it took around 10 photos for it to finally accept one, including new ones that I shot using their criteria on my camera phone. Whether this was because it didn’t like the photos or because the site kept having all sorts of loading issues, I’m not sure.

Finally I got one to process, and while it needed some tweaking, it wasn’t bad. Unfortunately, I quickly found that the site’s brokenness continued to cause problems at every step. Some of the customizations wouldn’t load, text wouldn’t input, and worst of all, I couldn’t get the image to save in any form. While a dialogue box popped up asking me to save, no files made it to my hard drive, nor did it save on its end, as I found when I tried to log back in.

I managed to snag a screenshot of my character before closing it out. That was the best I would end up with. The next day, when I tried the Simpsonizer again using the same photo that worked before and other photos, the only face it would return was this:

At that point, I decided I was done with the Simpsonizer. It’s frustrating, and you’d think that they’d be able to handle the traffic and make their site work, but it’s not enough to make me want to boycott the movie or Burger King.

So while the advertising for the movie is interesting (or frustrating), it hasn’t changed anything about the movie for me, and I wonder how much effect it has on anyone. Where it has been effective is getting me to spend more money at 7-11.