A Classic ‘Simpsons’ Episode Was Nearly a Glorified Commercial for a Celebrity Vanity Project

The Simpsons isn’t a show that’s typically associated with gratuitous product placement, considering that Mr. Sparkle, Crab Juice and Krusty Brand Home Pregnancy Tests aren’t even real products. That being said, the show very nearly bent over backwards in order to shill for a superstar trio’s vanity restaurant chain.

Season Five’s “$pringfield (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)” found Homer getting a job at the town’s new casino, owned by an increasingly Howard Hughes-like Mr. Burns.

While most of the episode was dedicated to Burns’ mental breakdown and Marge’s gambling addiction, the original plan was to devote a significant chunk of the story to Planet Hollywood. 

For those who weren’t alive back when Earth was overrun by fax machines and parachute pants, Planet Hollywood was a novelty movie-themed restaurant chain for those diners who somehow still had an appetite even while seated below a nightmare-inducing rubber replica of Sylvester Stallone’s nude body.

Planet Hollywood still technically exists, but not like it did back in the ‘90s when the celebrity-backed business was seemingly everywhere. 

In the Simpsons episode’s DVD commentary, producer David Mirkin revealed that there was originally a “whole different subplot” that “never came to ” concerning the restaurant. “We were called and (told), ‘If you put Planet Hollywood in The Simpsons, we’ll get you Arnold (Schwarzenegger) and Bruce Willis and (Sylvester) Stallone. They want to do the show,’” creator Matt Groening recalled. 

Taking the word of the publicist that ed them, Simpsons writers began work on a Planet Hollywood-centric plotline, including Conan O’Brien, who apparently contributed some great Schwarzenegger material owing to the fact that he’d just worked on the script for the Hans and Franz movie, which also never saw the light of day. 

Despite the writers’ efforts, the guest stars fell through, and the pointless promotional storyline was scrapped. But that didn’t stop The Simpsons from poking fun at Planet Hollywood three years later. In Season Eight’s “My Sister, My Sitter,” Homer and Marge’s boardwalk date includes a stop at Planet Hype, a restaurant “owned by celebrities” where the entire menu has been “personally approved” by Rainier Wolfcastle’s secretary.

Planet Hype eventually became Planet Springfield, and housed posters for movies such as Ernest Goes Straight to Video, and props such as the mug from Heartbeeps and the cane from Citizen Kane, which Lisa famously took issue with (even though there really was a cane in Citizen Kane).

And the cane is still more impressive than that haunted Stallone blow-up doll, to be honest.