Since its first full season in 1989, The Simpsons’ opening sequence is one of the show’s most memorable hallmarks. Most episodes open with the camera zooming through the show’s title towards the town of Springfield. The camera then follows the members of the family on their way home. Continue reading to see a few memorable signs found throughout the years.
The Simpsons was the first successful animated program in American prime time since Wait Till Your Father Gets Home in the 1970s. During most of the 1980s, US pundits considered animated shows as appropriate only for children, and animating a show was too expensive to achieve a quality suitable for prime-time television. The Simpsons changed this perception.
The use of Korean animation studios for tweening, coloring, and filming made the episodes cheaper. The success of The Simpsons and the lower production cost prompted US television networks to take chances on other animated series.[4] This development led US producers to a 1990s boom in new, animated prime-time shows, such as South Park, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Futurama, and The Critic.
“The Simpsons created an audience for prime-time animation that had not been there for many, many years”, said Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. “As far as I’m concerned, they basically re-invented the wheel. They created what is in many ways – you could classify it as – a wholly new medium.” South Park later paid homage to The Simpsons with the episode “Simpsons Already Did It”. In Georgia, the animated television sitcom The Samsonadzes, launched in November 2009, has been noted for its very strong resemblance with The Simpsons, which its creator Shalva Ramishvili has acknowledged.
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