Willy Wonka homages from the ’90s

This week marked the 25th anniversary of the 25th anniversary (June 30, 1996) of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Or, as “normal” people framed it, Wednesday marked 50 years of the film.

For ’90s buffs, this multilayered milestone exposes a meta-nostalgic angle. When the silver-screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s story built around golden tickets reached its silver anniversary, it was subject to platters of playful reminiscence around the TV-verse. Many of those responsible for the references were among the first to grow up on and/or derive influence from it.

Closer to the present, younger Gen Xers and millennials see the merit of mixing classic herbs into a current creation. With the benefit of time passage, critics appreciate that pace-changing pinch of their elders’ childhood in their own upbringing.

In a belated review of Futurama’s “Fry and the Slurm Factory” episode, the A.V. Club’s Zack Handlen favorably compared the choice of parody to contemporaneous spoofs of then-contemporaneous blockbusters like Titanic.

“Gene Wilder’s manic chocolatier has been a pop culture staple for so long that riffs on his mysterious proclamations and army of orange slaves feel less like attempts to jump on a trend, and more like commentary on a fact of life,” Handel wrote in his January 2015 piece. “I’m not sure this makes the episode a classic, but it does make for something better than just a lazy nod to the current zeitgeist.”

Despite its way of separating “Fry and the Slurm Factory” from neighboring Futurama episodes, the strategy itself was hardly new. While establishing its identity as a series, the Fox animated sitcom was among the last to chip off some Wonka-esque flavor for itself between the product’s ages of 18-and-a-half and 28-and-a-half.

Such hit primetime shows as The Nanny and 3rd Rock from the Sun made subtle or direct references. But Matt Groening, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and Cartoon Network were the three main ’90s upstarts looking back a generation.

In both its original run on The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central and Sci-Fi, then its reboot on Netflix, MST3K was good for bite-size allusions from its wise-cracking moviegoers. The Internet Movie Database counts 16 Wonka mentions between 1990 and 1999.

Mike Nelson, Crow, and Tom Servo combined for multiple name-drops of the title confectioner, Oompa Loompas, a given tour guest, and everlasting gobstoppers. Other times they directly quoted or parodied a song from the chocolatey picture when the episode’s cheesy presentation called for it.

You could not expect Animaniacs to resist alternate lyrics to “The Candy Man” when its musical, mischievous gang bring their standard zany violence to Flaxseed’s Totality of Candy

The Simpsons, Groening’s first high-end TV enterprise, was another late-’80s establishment that hit its stride early in the next decade. Around that breakthrough, the fourth episode of the show’s third season witnessed its first of three notable nods to Wonka in seven years.

In the tone-setting act of “Bart the Murderer” (debuted October 10, 1991), Springfield Elementary visits the Ah Fudge headquarters. Bart, whose day of brooking Murphy’s Law culminates in a misplaced permission slip, is conspicuously absent, but shenanigans still abound. Nelson Muntz, Milhouse van Houten, and a host of background-character students go all Augustus Gloop on a vat of liquid chocolate. Their antics prompt a passing-by factory worker to plead with them to “play sanitary,” not unlike Wonka’s panic over Augustus “contaminating my entire river.”

At least Ah Fudge does not bear any danger of a tube leading to a fudge room. Conversely, in “The Last Temptation of Homer” (debuted December 9, 1993), IMDB notes the reminder of Gloop’s doom when “The worker gets sucked up inside the transparent pipe.”

To finish The Simpsons’ golden-age hat trick of Wonka nods, its 200th episode turned “The Candy Man” into “The Garbage Man.” Season 9’s “Trash of the Titans” sees Homer assume office as sanitation commissioner and cap his honeymoon phase in song.

In so doing, The Simpsons demonstrated more originality than the Animaniacs’ take on Wonka’s signature tune. But to its credit, you could not expect the WB Kids show to resist alternate lyrics to “The Candy Man” when its musical, mischievous gang bring their standard zany violence to Flaxseed’s Totality of Candy. It all happens in the 1993 “The Big Candy Store” segment.

Other daytime toons swapped out sweets for other objects of interest to fill their own Willy Wonka template. With Dexter’s Laboratory’s “Golden Diskette” (debuted September 3, 1997), the precocious scientist in enthralled by the makings of the mysterious Professor Hawk, who opens his doors to Dexter and a handful of other lucky, like-minded boy geniuses.

Hawk’s contraption resembles the machine a live-action computer scientist uses with intent to locate the golden tickets in the movie. His tall, slim, dark-haired, bespectacled appearance is about as close as Dexter’s Lab animation can get to rendering that of Hawk’s voice artist, a then-rising star named Tom Kenny.

Although it premiered shortly after Y2K, Family Guy’s “Wasted Talent” incorporates two distinct slivers of the ’90s into its cultural-reference salad bowl atop the Wonka base.

Two years and a month after Dexter’s turn, Cartoon Network contemporary Johnny Bravo followed the same basic blueprint. The hapless hunk — voiced by Jeff Bennett, who was previously Mr. Flaxseed on Animaniacs — lives his dream as beef jerky mogul Jerky Jake’s heir apparent, although it is only a matter of time before he bungles his opportunity.

Back in the adult animation corridors, as creators took the bait on the impatient new millennium, Groening went from a troika of fleeting references on The Simpsons to a full-fledged half-hour adaptation — if you can call it that — on Futurama. “Fry and the Slurm Factory” (debuted November 14, 1999) sees Slurms McKenzie and his Grunka Lunkas making a Surge-like (now there’s some unmistakable late-’90s material) beverage whose behind-the-scenes details are as unsettling as a hot dog’s.

Like Ah Fudge’s visitors, Philip Fry pulls an Augustus when his insatiable thirst for Slurm overtakes his common sense, such as that is. But the real trouble begins when Slurms — an obvious Wilder-as-Wonka in slug form voiced by series lead Billy West — notices a few tour takers have broken away.

The habit spread across Fox animation and spilled into the nascent new decade through another upstart program. On July 25, 2000, Family Guy devoted an episode’s early phases to its own silly, overt Wonka parody.

Amidst the sophomoric series’ sophomore season, “Wasted Talent” sees protagonist Peter Griffin swig his way to a coveted ticket to the Pawtucket Pat Brewery. There his and anthropomorphic dog Brian Griffin’s devotion and curiosity cut their visit short.

Unlike in the movie, Pat promptly catches the Griffins pilfering potent fizzy lifting drinks. Peter’s resulting empty-handed expulsion leaves him depressed. But by happenstance, it unveils his ability to master the piano under the influence, much to wife Lois’ excitement.

Although it premiered after Y2K, “Wasted Talent” was presumably conceived and produced, at least in part, in the ’90s. Furthermore, it incorporates two distinct slivers of the show’s birth decade into its cultural-reference salad bowl atop the Wonka base.

Where Slurms had Grunka Lunkas, Pawtucket Pat had Chumbawambas three years after “Tubthumping” produced a one-hit wonder. And after the Wonka-influenced B-plot’s remnants are absorbed by the main plot, “Wasted Talent” nods at a contemporary Fox cohabitant, as an inebriated Peter plays “The X-Files Theme” for an upper-class audience.

How do you like that? A treat from the early ’70s asserted its preservatives while the dying ’90s lingered loudly.