On September 25 Fox Video will release an elaborate box set of DVDs containing the first season of The Simpsons animated TV series.  The Simpsons Second Season DVD box will be released before the holidays, and Fox will do two box sets a year until the series is complete.  In just five years, Simpons fanatics will be able to deposit large boxes of home-recorded VHS tapes on the curbside and return to their dens to contemplate their sleek boxed sets of Simpsons DVDs, exercising their 'pause' fingers to search for hidden jokes and read the barely perceptible road signs, store names, and dictionary entries that are often the funniest things in each episode.

 

Since there were only thirteen episodes in The Simpsons first season, the three-disc boxed set will have a suggested retail of only $39.95.  In addition to the original episodes, the set will include the Simpsons interludes from the Tracey Ullman Show, a never-before-seen lost episode, a BBC special called America's First Family, clips showing Homer and Bart talking in seven different languages, and an ABC TV report on a Simpsons T-shirt controversy.

 

While The Simpsons has been on television for ten years now, the property still shows a surprising amount of life.  The latest series of Simpsons toys from Playmates dominated toy sales in our most recent survey of specialty market sell-through.  Bongo Comics has done an excellent job of translating The Simpsons into comics that are both original and very funny, and Inkworks has revived the trading card franchise. The Simpsons Season 1 DVD boxed set will have enormous appeal to the clientele of specialty stores.  Of course it will certainly be omnipresent and heavily discounted in the mass market, but then the same thing could be said of the Playmates Simpsons toys, which are selling well in many pop culture stores.