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It has been in the news, as in this from July 1 -
(AP) LOS ANGELES - Just like the Simpsons, real people now have a chance to buy Buzz Cola and Squishees at the local Kwik-E-Mart.
This weekend, 7-Eleven turned a dozen of its stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame - including one at the intersection of Sepulveda and Venice Boulevards and in Burbank.
For a month, those stores and most other 7-Elevens in North America will sell items that previously existed only in the cartoon.
It's part of a campaign to hype next month's opening of "The Simpsons Movie."
... Even though 7-Eleven is the butt of jokes on the Simpsons, the chain is footing the bill for the promotion. The idea is to show the company has an ability to laugh at itself.
The Kwik-E-Marts were unveiled today in 11 U.S. cities and one in Canada.
Store employees shed their usual red company uniforms for green ones, with "Kwik-E-Mart" logos and the name "Apu Wannabe" on their lapels, in reference to the cartoon's Kwik-E-Mart proprietor, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon Jr.
This of course is quite surreal. The official Simpsons web site is here and what you might want to know about the movie here. The animated sitcom was created by Matt Groening for Fox Broadcasting – a satirical parody of the "Middle American" lifestyle as shown with its title family – Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, in the fictional town of Springfield, in no particular state. It started out as a series of animated shorts that were part of The Tracey Ullman Show back in 1987, and became the half-hour show in December 1989 – and it's been running since. Time magazine's December 31, 1999 issue named it the 20th century's best television series, and on January 14, 2000 the show got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and there are the records – the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated program, and Homer's "D'oh!" has become universal. And now this.
When I first moved to California in the early eighties and was living in Manhattan Beach, Groening had the cartoon "Life in Hell" on the local alternative free paper, the Beach Reporter. You could see this coming. In December 1999 I found myself in Paris, checking out was available on the small television in my hotel room, and found myself watching a Simpsons episode dubbed in German (Canal+ carries it in French). There's no escaping this. We all live in the cartoon.
The intersection of Sepulveda and Venice Boulevards –
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