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Celebrates 20th Anniversary with Social Media Tie-Ins

Fox celebrated the 20th anniversary of The Simpsons last night, capping off its year-long “Best. 20 Years. Ever.” campaign, which has included a slew of social media tie-ins and special events.

Last night, in addition to showing the newest episode of the longest-running primetime television series of all time, Fox aired a documentary by Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me), which took a look at Simpsons fans from all over the world and featured interviews with creator Matt Groening, a slew of writers and the voices behind America’s favorite family.

U.S. users can watch it here, courtesy of Hulu.

Fox has been running an elongated campaign to celebrate the series milestone, both online and off. For example, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the very first half-hour Simpsons episode, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire” (titled “The Simpsons Christmas Special” in its original airing), Fox released a 20th Anniversary Collection on iTunes back in December.

Yesterday, a few hours before the 20th Anniversary special, Fox took to the social media realm by releasing an Adobe Air () app called The Simpsons Unleashed, which you can get from Facebook (). The app, which utilizes Facebook Connect, includes the option of letting Homer sit on your desktop and features episode news and previews. The app also lets you play pranks on your Facebook friends. It’s the sort of novelty tool that is kind of fun to play around with once or twice, but doesn’t really offer much aside from that.

Still, long-time Simpsons fanatics won’t be disappointed by the kitschy quality of the app (am I right NHC gang?); it’s just part of the Simpsonian experience.

And speaking of Simpsonian experience, the staff at Hulu () selected 20 of their favorite Simpsons clips of all time and put them together in this collection. It’s a pretty great trip down memory lane, especially if you’ve been watching these yellow-skinned bug-eyed characters since you were pupil in Miss Dickinson’s first grade class.