When it comes to fictional products that pop culture hounds would love to own in the real world, The Simpsons could have its own department store. From pink sprinkled donuts to Canyoneros to Champagne Squishees, there's no lack of faux goods that delight Simpsons fans anytime they pop up in episodes. (At least the band Okilly Dokilly is real.) Now, the world can rejoice in the newfound existence of the show's memorable video game disaster, Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge, featuring the one and only CarVALlo.
Introduced in The Simpsons' Season 7 installment "Marge Be Not Proud," Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge wasn't exactly the game that "every boy wants" the way that Marge thought it was. But that doesn't take away from the awesomeness that it's now a playable game in real life, thanks to programmer Aaron Demeter. Is it destined to become the next Golden Tee at bars across the U.S.? Ummm, I mean, you'll just have to play it yourself to find out, I guess.
Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge got a boost in popularity when Bill Oakley, former Simpsons writer and co-showrunner (with Josh Weinstein), shared a kind shout-out on Twitter, as seen below.
In the same month when Sony finally went public with tons of Playstation 5 reveals, the existence of Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge is a breath of gloriously stale air. The playable version of the game is just as terrible as it looks in the episode, if not more so because it allows for only the slightest bit of variation that only makes it that much more boring. I say that with all due respect, of course, because it captures what the game is supposed to be, a fleeting example of uninspired consumerism, and it doesn't cost a dime to experience it.
In the episode "Marge Be Not Proud," Bart gets busted for shoplifting when trying to snag a hard-sought copy of the hyper-violent video game Bonestorm at the Try-N-Save. (And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for that meddling store detective Don Brodka.) Before that, though, he attempted to rent the game from Android's Dungeon, only for Comic Book Guy to reveal that Bonestorm was all rented out, leaving multiple copies of the dreadful-looking Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. In the end, after lessons are seemingly learned, Marge good-naturedly buys Bart the golf game for Christmas, believing it to be what he'd wanted. He was bummed, but he sucked it up and smiled through the pain.
During the credits for the episode is when viewers got to see the severely limited gameplay of Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge, which allowed for two different kinds of clubs, and two different kinds of hitting strengths. Here's hoping we'll soon get a crossover version, where the characters from Bonestorm take over the golf course and one of them rips off Lee Carvallo's leg and his head and then uses the leg to putt the head into one of the holes! [chugs another 44 oz. of Champagne Squishee] Yeah, bring it!
The Simpsons ended Season 31 in May, with Season 32 set to debut on Fox at some point in the future, though only time will tell how soon that future will get here, considering the pandemic that the show may or may not have predicted. Fans can catch every episode available to stream on Disney+ though, now with episodes restored to their original framing. For now, our Summer 2020 TV premiere schedule is here with all the show dates that have been confirmed for the coming months.
