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A nearly identical replica of the Simpsons’ family home was built for a giveaway but when the winner refused it, the developers had to find a buyer.

Fox kept the home open for tours that fall, all for the purpose of promoting the sweepstakes being advertised via Pepsi products. Buying Mug Root Beer, Brisk Iced Tea, or Slice would net consumers a numbered game piece. If it matched the one broadcast during the fall premiere of the show, they’d be the winner of the replica home, which Kaufman and Broad valued at $150,000. (First-place prize: a one-year supply of Mandarin Orange Slice.)

On September 21, 1997, those in possession of the game piece watched “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” an episode that was later pulled from syndication for a brief period after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks due to images and references to the World Trade Center. During the broadcast, the winning number was flashed onscreen.

Nothing happened.

Whoever held the winning game piece (number 9786065) never stepped forward to claim their prize. The back-up plan was to choose at random one of the raffle forms that consumers could also submit via mail. In December 1997, it was announced the form chosen belonged to Barbara Howard, a 63-year-old retired factory worker from Richmond, Kentucky. She lived in an area so rural that Fox’s dispatched limo couldn’t get down the dirt road to her home. The network flew her in—her first time on a plane—with her two daughters and grandson. She gambled a little at the casinos and posed for photos with a ceremonial giant key to her new home. She told the press she was still trying to process her good fortune.

That December, with the adrenaline of defying the odds having worn off, Howard came to a decision. She didn’t want the house after all.

“She took the cash,” Gonzalez recalls of the sweepstakes outcome. “You had the choice of either the house or a cash prize, but the cash was substantially less than the value of the house.”

Howard accepted $75,000, which some observers found curious. Why ignore the property value? Why not keep it open for tours? The reasons were simple. Howard lived on an ostrich and tobacco (not tomacco) farm in Kentucky with her husband, was perfectly comfortable there, and had no motivation to relocate. Opening it for tourism was more or less prohibited; the homeowner’s association wanted the orange and yellow exterior repainted as soon as possible. She did briefly broach the possibility of having Kaufman and Broad move the house to her property, but the logistics of that made it implausible.

“I don’t think she was as blown away by it as her daughters were,” Gonzalez says. “I think she felt a little overwhelmed. There were all these photographers and writers. She was just a simple country homemaker.”

Mario500 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2024 12:04 pm

(note: partial quotation of article mentioned here)

CaptHayfever wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2024 2:56 pm

Sounds like they shouldn't have built it in a place with an HOA.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

Mario500 wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 15, 2024 6:37 pm

(idea for future giveaway similar to the one mentioned here: top winner gets free house built in his or her available location of choice)

Booyakasha wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 16, 2024 12:33 pm

...I mean, i can see turning down the house for a smaller cash payout. How much is the house worth? I certainly wouldn't want to live there (it's in Nevada. I want to live in Wisconsin, or at least the Upper Midwest. No place more than seventeen hours away from my family and friends by train). I wouldn't uproot my life to go live in a horrible desert, especially not in a house that would probably attract occasional Simpsons nerds. (Ugh. That'd be the worst. Getting woken up at 1 PM by some asshat in a Bartman shirt. I'd start paint-canning everyone who came to the front door out of principle.)