0069 - Smilin’ Joe Fission (Patreon)

Here's a weird little fella!

Smilin' Joe is the mascot of the Nuclear Power Plant, and appears here in an educational video as the kids take a school trip to the plant. He seemed more familiar to me as an icon though, he appears often as a promotional tool for the Plant. Here's an example of a undeniably classic Smilin' Joe Fission appearance from the season 5 episode "The Last Temptation of Homer":

How could we ever forget?

Joe was used in some early merchandise, books and the like. When there's this little of the show to pull from, I can see how Smilin' Joe would be an appealing design to use when fleshing out the world, including a brief cameo in the 1992 video game "Bart's Nightmare":

I took this from a YouTube playthrough, please don't make me play Bart's Nightmare.

Like many things from this era, he is seldom used later, until Smither's is seen dumping his corpse in the season 28 episode "Fatzcarraldo":

Was he real the whole time? What is reality? Which of these characters are a cartoon and which are a cartoon within a cartoon? Are we all in fact a cartoon, and The Simpsons is just a cartoon within that? No, that's absurd. Is it?

Programming note: three updates this week! We have a lot of ground to cover with this short educational film. Look forward to updates Wednesday and Friday!

This post is part of my "Every Simpsons Character Ever" series. For a list of my rules in this project, click here.