RM1,000 reward for stolen Homer's returnBy Lee Shi-Ian
21 June, 2007
PETALING JAYA: A reward of RM1,000 has been offered for the "safe" return of the life-sized statue of Homer Simpson, which was stolen on Monday. The reward is offered by movie studio Twentieth Century Fox, which is scheduled to release The Simpsons movie in Malaysia next month.
The statue was stolen from the Golden Screen Cinemas at the 1 Utama Shopping Complex here at 3am.
The theft was recorded on closed-circuit television cameras.
Motion Picture Association country manager Nor Hayati Yahaya appealed for the return of Homer, saying that the Simpsons family was due to be displayed at Malaysia Consumers Day 2007 next month.
"There is an estimated five million Simpsons fans in Malaysia," she said.
The statue was stolen after the late night movie screening ended about 3am.
The 1.2-metre tall Homer statue was placed alongside other Simpsons statues at a display couch.
CCTV images provided by the shopping complex show two men carrying Homer out of the building. Another TV grab shows the statue in the boot of a Proton Waja.
Two police reports were lodged over the incident.
District police chief ACP Mazlan Mansor confirmed the reports. He said investigations were under way to track down the culprits.
The Simpsons is an animated American sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company.
It is a satirical parody of the "Middle American" lifestyle epitomised by its title family, which consists of Homer, wife Marge, son Bart, daughter Lisa and baby daughter Maggie.
The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and lampoons many aspects of the human condition, as well as American culture, society as a whole and television itself.
The Simpsons is currently the longest-running American sitcom and the longest-running American animated programme.
Since its debut on Dec 17, 1989, the show has aired 400 episodes over 18 seasons. The 19th season is due to be aired in 2007/2008.
D'oh! Cops Find Homer Simpson Statue Thieves(AP) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Two college students believed to be over-exuberant fans of "The Simpsons" stole a life-sized figurine of Homer Simpson from a cinema, but police tracked them down and forced them to return it Thursday.
"This case has been solved," Mazlan Mansor, police chief of Malaysia's central Petaling Jaya district, told The Associated Press.
The fiberglass replica of Homer holding a TV remote control was part of a promotional display at a local cinema for the upcoming big-screen version of the U.S. TV cartoon series.
The exhibit included the rest of the Simpson family - Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie - sitting on a couch at a multiplex lobby in a popular suburban shopping mall near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city.
"Homer will be reunited with his family soon," Moo Hon Mei, 20th Century Fox's senior marketing director in Malaysia, told the AP.
She said the studio suspected the thieves were "passionate fans who want to own a piece of 'The Simpsons' before the movie opens."
Cinema employees discovered the 4-foot-tall statue had vanished Monday morning.
Closed-circuit security cameras showed that two men carried the statue out at about 3 a.m. and took it to the mall's parking lot, where they put Homer in the trunk of their car and sped away.
Police tracked down the students through their car license plate and summoned them to the police station, where they returned the figurine unscathed Thursday, Mazlan said.
"They were students, only 21 or 22 years old," Mazlan said. "We've released them for now, and a decision will be made later on whether to charge them for theft."
"The Simpsons Movie" opens in Malaysia on July 26, one day before its U.S. launch.
