WABAC Where Did THAT Come From – 2015 Halloween Items

Hey howdy hey Addicts! In the steady grind of tapping in the free world, we sometimes see decorations and buildings and take them for granted. While this is understandable, we may not realize that a great majority of items in TSTO actually come from the amazing show the game is based on. With that in mind, Bunny and I aim to periodically provide you the origin info for decorations and buildings we missed, ignored or haven’t covered yet. Time is a fickle thing (timey wimey even) and as Einstein said, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” There’s often not enough time in the TSTO continuum to do origins for everything, but while we have some, we’ve called on Mr. Peabody to help us along. We’re using his WABAC (pronounced way back) Machine to go back in TSTO time. With that premise, we bring you WABAC WDTCF (Where Did THAT Come From). This particular journey is for the Spooky Tent, Re-Neducation Center, and Apu’s Apocalypse Jeep.

“Ah Halloween. The one time of year when the squalor of our home works to our advantage.”

The 2015 Halloween Event has come and gone but even though we got the chance to give you origins for a lot of stuff, when it was all over, there were still three items I never got the chance to cover. They sat in the word doc I use to type most of my posts just taunting me with their incompleteness. Well, I’m not the one to let TSTO items go uncovered if I can help it and figured it was high time to wrap up some loose ends while I have the time to do it. Let’s kick off this WABAC with the Spooky Tent.

I liked this green tent when I first started earning them at the spooky campfire but instantly wondered why they looked so familiar. Well, a quick watch of “Bart of Darkness” (S6:E1) reminded me why this was. When Springfield is in the grip of a heat wave, Homer’s solution is to connect a camping tent to the refrigerator. Seems like a good idea until the fridge motor overloads. “Marge, can you set the oven to cold?”

The green tent pops up again in “Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy” (S6:E10). This time it’s Milhouse’s refuge when his parents use Grampa’s special “energizing, moisturizing, tantalizing, romanticizing, surprising, her-prizing, revitalizing tonic.”

But wait… is the fuzzball really gonna talk about Halloween items and not mention a THOH episode or two? Have no fear, next up is the Re-Neducation Center. This Halloween Prize was one of the items that I sort of wished I hadn’t gotten once I did. I mean… jeesh… this thing is humungous. This monstrosity of a building hails from the “Time and Punishment” segment of “Treehouse of Horror V” (S6:E6). Homer goes back in time after getting his hand jammed in the toaster and trying to fix it. Anyone familiar with the butterfly theory (not the Ashton Kutcher movie but the actual scientific theory as proposed by Edward Lorenz or at least the movie based on the short story by Isaac Asimov) should not be surprised by Homer going back in time and drastically changing the future. By squishing a mosquito… Homer returns to a future where “Flanders is the unquestioned lord and master of the world.” All non-Flanders-esque behavior is cured through Re-Neducation aka wardrobe and smiling and if that fails… a “nice glass of warm milk, a little nap, and a total frontal lobotomy.”

The horror… the horror. Don’t get me wrong… I like the pull the TSTO designers made but I didn’t imagine this building was so enormous when I first saw it in the episode. I guess the design needed to be huge to fit a whole house.  It’s just a hard item to find a home for in my town. What’d you do with it?

Anyhoo… The last item to cover is Apu’s Apocalypse Jeep. This prize comes from the “Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind” segment of “Treehouse of Horror XX” (S21:E4). Krusty uses tainted meat from cows eating cows in his new burgers and the result is the muncher apocalypse.

The Simpsons end up as one of the only families left and after Bart eats a burger but is unaffected, they head to the safe zone outside of town to use him for the cure. Apu helps them escape their house and the munchers with his Apocalypse Jeep. He survived as a vegetarian and also because convenience store owners are armed to the teeth. Recognize the biohazard wall he crashes through?

So there you go friends… some origins for items we saw a while ago. Mr. Peabody and Sherman were a great help letting me borrow the WABAC. They also appeared in “Time and Punishment”.

Did you know these origins? Are there any origins you’d like us to go back and cover? Sound off with your thoughts/ideas in the comments. I’m off to journey for more stuff to write about. Don’t worry though, unlike Gerald, I love butterflies. The future is safe… for now.

TTFN… Wookiee out!