Numerous ‘Simpsons’ Fans Have Tested Out Bart’s Explosive April Fools’ Day Prank

Back in 1993, The Simpsons begrudgingly produced their first ever clip show, a cost-saving measure that mixed pre-existing footage with a new, admittedly threadbare story that required the bare minimum of additional animation. “So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show” found Homer landing in a coma, which, as any doctor will tell you, causes patients to cycle through various hilarious scenes from the preceding four years of your life. 

According to showrunner Al Jean, the premise was loosely inspired by an episode of Happy Days in which Ron Howard’s character Richie Cunningham similarly ends up in a coma following a motorcycle accident, prompting Fonzie to pray to God that he recovers (although, in retrospect, perhaps he should have tried punching Richie’s skull to see if it started working again like that one jukebox). 

As for how Homer would end up in said coma, as luck would have it, the show was scheduled to air on April 1st. So the writers concocted a storyline in which Bart severely injures Homer with an April Fool’s Day prank involving a can of Duff beer that’s been violently shaken up by a local hardware store’s paint shaker.

Even though the prank literally blows the roof off of the Simpson house, and sends Homer to the hospital, multiple brave fans have subsequently endeavored to recreate Bart’s foolish actions (minus the part where they trick a teenaged hardware store employee) and documented the results. 

The “Action Lab” YouTube channel didn’t just do this as a prank, they did it as a vaguely scientific experiment. They shook a can of soda by hand, sprayed it in a driveway, then compared the distance of the spray to that created by a can that had been given Bart’s paint-shaker treatment. And, like most things in life, the results were pretty disappointing. Not only did the can that had been shaken by a paint shaker not yield the A-bomb-tier blast that The Simpsons led us to believe would undoubtedly ensue, but the can that had been shaken up by some dude’s regular, non-mechanized hand actually sprayed further. 

Okay, but that was just soda, beer is probably different, right? Well, YouTubers “Mark and Randy” put a can of lager (although sadly not the Duff brand that actually exists) inside of a paint shaker they bought at a yard sale for $10 and, well, it was still extremely disappointing. The can’s spray was less like a massive explosion and more like a toddler spitting up a few bubbles after a bottle. 

Perhaps this is why, when MythBusters did a Simpsons episode they ignored requests to recreate the shaken-beer experiment and instead opted to tackle exploding toilets and wrecking balls. 

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