Entertainment
The Real Reason The Simpsons Are Yellow Will Blow Your Mind
By Robert Scucci
| Published
Have you ever wondered why everybody in The Simpsons is yellow? There are some fun theories out there, like the entire town of Springfield suffers from radiation poisoning, or that Homer is yellow because of cirrhosis due to drinking heavily. But in order for those theories to work, we need to ask ourselves why all the cousin-marrying residents of Shelbyville are also yellow, and why Homer’s alcoholism would make the rest of his family yellow. The real reason The Simpsons are yellow is actually the result of a brilliant hunch from Georgie Kovacs Peluce, one of the colorists over at Klasky Csupo.
Originally, The Simpsons shorts were going to be black and white, until the fledgling animation studio told Simpsons producer James L. Brooks they would mock up some colored character designs free of charge. There were several iterations and permutations of the characters before they were ever seen on screen, some of which used the traditional peach and tan tones that other animated series use. Peluce had something else in mind, and took it upon herself to design the characters with yellow skin, and, in Marge’s case, blue hair. This initial concept was met with pushback for looking “freakish” by some reps at Gracie Films, Brooks’ production company, but Brooks, Groening, and some of their associates fell in love with it because they knew it would pique viewer curiosity.
From Throwaway Idea To Final Design
It’s hard to imagine a world in which The Simpsons didn’t exist, but the world wasn’t always like that. Back in 1987, a few short years before Simpsons mania conquered the world, the “nuclear” family was nothing more than a rush job by creator Matt Groening, who was approached by James L. Brooks to produce a show based on his Life in Hell comics, an intellectual property that the cartoonist didn’t feel comfortable selling the rights to. Instead, he quickly whipped up a cartoon family based on his own, pitched The Simpsons to Brooks, and we’d first meet Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie through short-form animated skits on The Tracey Ullman Show.
Groening, being totally inexperienced in television at this point in his career, figured that his drawings would be animated in black and white, but the animation studio behind the shorts, Klasky Csupo, had something else in mind. According to Stupid TV, Be More Funny: How the Golden Era of the Simpsons Changed Television – and America – Forever, it was the animation studio that encouraged The Simpsons shorts to be colored in the first place. They were asked to animate everything in black and white as a cost-cutting measure, until Gabor Csupo insisted on trying colored versions as well, offering to do the extra work for free.
Several iterations of the Simpson family were mocked up, but one version from Georgie Kovacs Peluce stuck out more than the rest. Georgie’s design involved yellow skin and blue hair, something that “didn’t look like anything that had come before,” and the design won over Brooks and Groening. The logic was simple: while people were channel surfing, they’d feel more inclined to stop dead in their tracks if they saw a cartoon family that looked so unique.
Back in those days, home viewers didn’t have a lot of options, often switching back and forth between ABC, NBC, CBS, and the new and struggling Fox network. In essence, the desired reaction would involve somebody watching one of the other networks flipping through the channels during a commercial break, catching a glimpse of the Simpson family, saying “what the hell is this?” and ending up watching the whole short.
Peluce’s instinct paid off because that’s exactly what happened, and it was only a matter of time before The Simpsons took the nation by storm, eventually becoming the longest-running animated show in television history. And to think, we almost got a black-and-white version that probably would have been squashed before anybody even knew who they were.
The Simpsons can be streamed on Disney+.