In order to make sure that my child does not lack in his appreciation of the finer things that our culture has to offer, sometimes I’ll sit with him and make sure he takes in some of the important foundational pillars of modern culture: the soothing, life-affirming paintings of Otto Dix, for example, or perhaps the melodious sounds of GWAR, or even, as was in the particular case I want to talk about now, watching old episodes of The Simpsons.
In this particular case, we were watching an episode from 1999: season 11, episode 5, known as “E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt).” Most historians and anthropologists know this episode primarily as “the one about tomacco.” And while there’s a great deal of cultural impact tied up in this episode, the part I want to focus on is something I only just noticed now, decades after the episode first ran: there is a Ford Aerostar-based luxury limousine in the episode.
That’s an extremely unlikely choice for a luxury vehicle, but I suppose in the context of the episode, it almost makes sense. You see, in the episode, a group of wealthy and powerful tobacco industry people have gotten together to try and secure the rights to tomacco, a hybrid tomato/tobacco crop that Homer Simpson had developed. The group needed, effectively, a mobile meeting room that matched their status and prestige, and, for some reason, settled on a stretched and highly modified Ford Aerostar:
That’s our first view of the limo-van, and what it’s actually based on – if any real-world car at all – isn’t clear. But then we get a closer look:
Okay, that’s definitely an Aerostar. Now, it’s not perfect, by any means: the rectangular headlamps seem to have round elements inside them, the front indicators have disappeared into the gray/chrome front “mask” and it’s all wildly simplified, of course – this is a cartoon after all – but I’m pretty confident that the basis for this was an Aerostar. I mean, look:
The front fascia shape, the whole A-pillar with that little triangular window, the three-bar grille – this is an Aerostar. A van never marketed in any upscale context whatsoever. And yet, somehow, these fictional and animated tobacco industry executives, who had their pick of any fictional, animated van platform to start from, chose an Aerostar.
Let’s watch an Aerostar ad to celebrate this choice!
Oh, and I just checked – it looks like IMCDB agrees with this assessment, and they’re the authority, so there.
Inside, the Aerostar Mobile Big-Time Dirty Dealings Conference Room is quite well-appointed, with a large, seven-seat conference table, each equipped with an ashtray. There’s even a bathroom on board:
All of this refinement and luxury seems to suggest something more like one of those Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van conversions:
…but I’m not entirely sure those were a thing back in 1999? Did this fictional Aerostar luxury stretch van predict the Sprinter Luxury Stretched vans that were to come later? It wouldn’t be the first time The Simpsons predicted something that later actually came to be, after all.
You know what else I learned because of this old Simpsons episode? Tomatoes actually do have nicotine in them! Both tobacco and tomatoes are members of the Solanaceae or nightshade family, and tomatoes do have nicotine in them, albeit in trace amounts. A 1959 article in Scientific American described how nicotine could be detected in tomatoes after grafting it with tobacco plants, and in 2003 an actual strain of tomacco was cultivated by Rob Bauer of Oregon, who successfully grafted tobacco and tomato plants, and that plant bore tomaccoes for a year and a half.
What a world we live in.
Top graphic images: Ford; The Simpsons/20th Century Fox
Those who know me know full well that I’m a madman.
That said, the same frame and underpinnings of the first gen Ford Ranger are under the Aerostar, which means that a Vulcan V6 4×4 Aerostar overlanding rig is do-able here.
Proud elder Millennial here that I knew from the headline, without noticing Homer in the topshot, which episode this was about. Proud, and also a little alarmed about what almost certainly more useful information my brain has let go of to maintain its Simpsons database.
How can you talk about this episode without bringing up Sneeds Feed and Seed (formerly Chucks)?
Dirtiest joke the show ever told. Easy to miss in the times before you could get a clear picture during a pause. I know I didn’t even notice it until I heard about it, and I’d seen the episode when it was new.
Not to mention that some of us just weren’t clever enough to figure it out. The jokes were so dense, by the time we pieced together “Chuck’s Feed and Seed makes no sense, what are they…” another joke or three had come and gone and we moved along.
Seriously, I think I saw that episode a dozen times before I figured it out.
I just looked that up. That’s hilarious! Thanks for sharing!
Good work, Jason. I thought it was an Aerostar then, and your digging has brought me vindication. If only I still talked with all the philistines and naysayers that called me crazy back in those days, I’d give them such an I-told-you-so…on second thought, I’ll just be quietly smug. Ahhhhhhh.
Hybridize pot and tomaccos and then you’d get the “devil’s fruit” instead of the “devil’s lettuce”/veggies…
But then you’d get random super powers when you ate one
That’s not going to dissuade some of us
I suppose it really depends on the super power, I really don’t want to be rubber-man
I think that was in the marinara that made “shower spaghetti” seem like a good idea.
Too bad this vehicle isn’t available to use (steal) in Hit and Run.
My young daughter had a lot more fun watching me play that game than I had playing it. And a decade later, she STILL suggests we dust off the PS2 for hell that is The Simpsons Game.