Nelson Muntz’s Creepy Poster Was Totally Real, According to ‘Simpsons’ Writer
The world of The Simpsons is obviously packed with fictional pop-culture products, from Krusty Burger, to Malibu Stacy, to the McBain movie that works surprisingly well when edited together. And as far as we know, Nuts and Gum isn’t available in stores.One thing that many fans likely assumed was just another invention of the show was Nelson Muntz’s disturbing wall poster. In Season Eight’s “Lisa’s Date with Density,” Lisa develops a crush on Nelson and ends up visiting his house after school. Along with two racist bumper stickers, his room is decorated with a poster depicting a mushroom cloud in the ocean, accompanied by the slogan “Nuke the Whales.” Don't Miss When Lisa asks if Nelson actually believes in this grotesque statement, he simply shrugs his shoulders and says, “I don’t know, gotta nuke something.” Well, it turns out that this terrible poster was, in fact, based on an actual product. As Simpsons writer Bill Oakley recently shared on social media, the “Nuke the Whales” artwork was “a real thing in the 1970s.” In a previous post Oakley went into more detail, noting that the same slogan and a similar design were part of a mail order T-shirt line that parodied the decade’s popular “Save the Whales” shirts. The “Nuke the Whales” tees were marketed in the back pages of counterculture magazines like National Lampoon and Creem. “Keep ‘em guessin’ with your Nuke the Whales T-shirt” the ad proclaimed. While a lot of the shirts probably ended up in dumpsters, at least one has miraculously survived to this day. It wasn’t just “Nuke the Whales,” wearing T-shirts with “edgy” slogans was part of a larger trend in the ‘70s. Some other examples include “Cox Suckers,” “Put Some Fun Between Your Legs” and “If it Looks Good… Snort It!” Also, around the same time, San Francisco punk band Fleshapoids released a song called “Nuke the Whales,” which contained lyrics such as “watch the blubber hit the fan when whale encounters modern man.”But while that song and all those crappy novelty shirts have been largely forgotten today, “Nuke the Whales” has had a second life thanks to The Simpsons. You can now buy replicas of Nelson’s poster, not to mention T-shirts, pins and socks. The joke also inspired a controversial Roblox game in which players murder whales with explosives, as per Nelson’s wishes. One dedicated fan even got a “Nuke the Whales” tattoo. Hopefully it will prove to be less regrettable than Homer’s Starland Vocal Band ink.
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