Simpson Mania

This is another interesting curio for any collector, released in October 1990 by Consumer Guide at the beginning of the second season of "TV's First Family". The version pictured above is the same as my copy, including the wire-bound spine - there was also a conventionally bound edition at some point, and I can also see evidence of an alternative cover, but I believe this one is the original, and its cover most notably contains the startling revelation that Bartman was appearing on merchandise several months before his first (and, for many years, only) television appearance in "Three Men and a Comic Book". Is the actual book itself as interesting?

The book is a large, glossy, magazine-style look at the show, with a fairly small amount of text per page and a lot of pictures. Its first chapter is "The Story Behind Making the Simpsons", which gets some of the now familiar details wrong - it makes it sound like James L. Brooks always wanted Groening to create some original characters, rather than Groening inventing them on the fly when he realised he didn't want to sign over the rights to Life in Hell - but it also includes tidbits that we seem to hear less often about, such as the fact that Fox originally wanted to make several specials before committing to a full season of the show to better test-market it. There is a look at how an episode was recorded back in the day, which is interesting mostly to compare it to how the show is made now (I'm fairly sure Harry Shearer has recorded all his lines over the telephone for some years now).

There's then a series of character profiles for each member of Our Favourite Family, and again these are mostly interesting to look at when you compare the show starting out at the dawn of the nineties to how it is now - Principal Skinner is referred to as "Mr. Skinner", and Moe's Tavern as "Moe's Bar", perhaps because the more accepted names hadn't been established onscreen yet. Some of the details are, however, the inevitable result of only having 13 episodes to go on at time of writing, with the book making out that playing Scrabble is a favourite pastime of Bart's, and Homer's catchphrase is apparently "Gee, I'm sorry". Bart gets three pages, Homer two, and the three female members of the family just one apiece, perhaps reflecting the writers' original intention that Bart was the star of the show.

Next is a chapter on the roots of the show, which basically just profiles a selection of family sitcoms that predated The Simpsons, and then gives examples of episodes that made the show "hot and in step with the 90s", which is actually quite interesting for pointing out the '50s-'60s sitcom style standards on display in "Homer's Odyssey", or quoting the Los Angeles Times reviewers who described "Bart the Genius" as 'uncomfortable'. This section ends up profiling every episode except "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", which does make you wonder why they didn't just add that, call it an episode guide and be done with it, but hey ho.

The chapter "A Craze in the Making" describes Fox's reluctance for publicity lest the show become overhyped, and the familiar argument as to whether or not the show is suitable for children, as well as covering the glut of Simpsons merchandise (including the astonishing revelation that beach towels sell really well in Los Angeles).

There is then a very familiar biography of Matt Groening, and some slightly less familiar but extremely brief biographies of the main cast members (excluding Hank Azaria, who was not yet a regular at this point) which only refers to Otto as "the local school bus driver". The book also previews some of the guest voices for the then-forthcoming second season, and also names Roseanne Barr and Michael Jackson as people who have publicly stated they want to guest star REST OF SENTENCE REDACTED FOR REASONS OF GOOD TASTE

Erm. Anyway, the book also says Whoopi Goldberg has offered to do the voice of Maggie if she ever talks, and then finishes up with a trivia quiz which zig-zags between "trivially easy" and "surprisingly difficult" (which of these cartoons did Nancy Cartwright also do voices for).

I would be tempted to call this promotional material, were it not for the back cover stating that it was not created or licensed by Twentieth Century Fox or Matt Groening, but it's still comparable, and quite interesting mostly to look back at with the knowledge the show is still going 30 years later.