Kwik-E-Mart IRL

2007

I was driving to work one morning in the summer of 2007 (blue sky, puffy white clouds moving in opposite directions) when I saw something bizarre. The recently opened 7-Eleven in Mountain View was gone; somehow it was now a Kwik-E-Mart! The fictional convenience store from The Simpsons had come to life down the block from Google. Of course, I had to stop and see what was going on.

What the heck was this?

The store was a Kwik-E-Mart inside and out. This Kwik-E-Mart situation was high-quality and showed a deep level of commitment. Some talented folks with a robust budget clearly had a lot of fun making this happen. There were in-Simpsons-universe signs everywhere, taped up with Kwik-E-Mart style sloppiness. The store had life-size plastic versions of Simpsons characters—there was Marge, and Ralph, and Comic Book Guy, et al.— and actual stock of familiar products, such as Buzz Cola, Krusty-O’s, and donuts with pink icing.

These were the real products you could buy.

Plenty of possibly delicious Krusty-O’s were available.

Buzz Cola for actual sale. Such a deal! I don’t know if the coolers on top were real products you could buy or not.

Delicious-looking donuts. I didn’t try one.

I spent a good 20 minutes or so just walking around and marveling at what they had done to the place. The work was so thorough that I assumed we now had a permanent Kwik-E-Mart in the neighborhood, although it was kind of weird that the store had just opened as a 7-Eleven a few weeks earlier. I decided not to buy any of the actual products, which might have been a missed investment opportunity. Also I really didn’t want boxes of old cereal sitting around our already lovingly cluttered house for years.

There’s Jasper, reprising his “Frostillicus” role from the show.

That’s Ralph Wiggum atop the ice cream freezer, miraculously eating actual food instead of some random substance, in this case a grape popsicle.

Comic Book Guy was there by the magazines, but I didn’t see any actual comic books.

After being late to work because I goofed around at the store too long, I did some Googling, I mean research, to find out what was going on. I found out that it was a promotion for The Simpsons movie that was opening later that month. The Krusty-O’s and other products were available at normal 7-Eleven stores too, but our Kwik-E-Mart was one of only eleven (get it?) in the country to receive the full treatment. 7-Eleven paid for the stunt to the tune of $10 million. Couldn’t they make it 11?

“The transformed stores have no vestige of the 7-Eleven brand with the exterior walls, roof, signage, uniforms and name tags, products and packaging, bakery cases and grills, in-store signage, cash registers and ATMs and even the donation canisters on the counter undergoing a Simpson-esque makeover.”

Looks like I missed a few of the transformation details—there were so many! And I also missed the fact that they had completely erased the 7-Eleven brand from the store. Very cool. Strong effort.

My man Raju, the cashier. He seemed fine with the whole deal, although not overly enthusiastic.

I went back later with Barbara so she could also experience the place. I made sure to see the things I hadn’t seen the first time. I’m not sure how successful the Kwik-E-Mart-ization was for the movie or for 7-Eleven, but it was fun to have it there for just a little while. The store changed back to 7-Eleven after a month or so. As Palo Alto Online said, Mountain View was briefly more than just the home of the Googleplex and Shoreline Amphitheater.