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Hey, great, mail it to last week—when I might've cared. I've got cartoons to make.
―Roger Meyers[src]
Comic Roger Meyers Jr.

Roger in the comics

Roger Meyers, Jr. is the son of Roger Meyers, Sr. and the current Chairman of Itchy & Scratchy Studios, which produces The Itchy & Scratchy Show. He distributes the cartoon, which is frequently criticized by parents because of its indulgently violent and lurid nature. His family name has been spelled as both "Meyers" and "Myers" - sometimes in the same episode.[1] In some episodes, Roger Meyers, Jr. speaks with a nasally high-pitched Brooklyn accent.

Biography[]

Meyers is a jaded and selfish businessman who has nothing but contempt for the children who comprise his audience. Owing to his contempt for his audience, he also does not take any scripts written by children seriously regardless of quality, at best only barely making an effort to read the form letters containing the scripts from children before crumpling it up. This was best demonstrated with Bart and Lisa's first attempt at mailing Little Barbershop of Horrors while openly stating they were children, where he barely reads the first paragraph before promptly disposing of it due to who the senders were, forcing them to mail in the script again under a different name. He is short-sighted and short-tempered, caring only about people whose help he needs immediately and acting rude and dismissive toward people who voice opinions with which he disagrees. His antagonistic personality is most clearly seen in the episode "The Day the Violence Died", when I&S Studios is bankrupted following their trial against Chester J. Lampwick. When Bart and Lisa are too late in providing information that could save the company, he condescendingly tells them to "mail it to last week, when [he] might have cared." Another example is seen in "Itchy & Scratchy & Marge", when Marge tries to raise awareness of the violence in Itchy & Scratchy cartoons and Meyers refers to everyone who sends him angry and threatening letters as "screwballs." Similarly, when Marge sends him a letter expressing reasonable concern about the affect the cartoon violence was likely having on her baby, Maggie, Meyers in return sends Marge a response letter filled with explicit and rude language in the process (in particular, his closing remark had him closing with what is implied to be "[censored] you, and the horse you rode in on").[2] One instance also implied that he wasn't above including swear words in rejection letters directed towards children, as Bart claimed "I know what this word means, but what's Shinola?"[3]

Meyers seems to have as much contempt for the writers and voice actors who work for him as he does for the children who watch his cartoons. Just as Bart and Lisa submit their ideas of an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon to Meyers, he verbally and even physically abuses a fired writer (the latter by throwing the crumpled up ideas into said writer's mouth after ordering him to sing the alma mater for Harvard, and then throwing his name plaque at his forehead twice, the first time as a sarcastic "witty rejoiner" in response to the writer berating Meyers as having the uncouth manners of a Yalie, and the second time when demanding he shut up when he protested that he can't clear his office out due to Meyers locking it beforehand). Similarly, when Abe Simpson becomes the flavor of the month, he chews out the various writers besides Abe Simpson.[4] In "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", Meyers creates Poochie to bring up the show's falling ratings and holds auditions for someone to voice the character. He first hires Otto Mann, only to replace him with Troy McClure. He then calls Otto a "bum" and tells him to "take a hike" despite saying that he was "perfect" seconds earlier. Homer is eventually chosen to voice Poochie, but the character is so widely hated that Meyers plans to kill him off in the next episode. Meyers seems moved when Homer shows up to record his lines and pleads the audience to give the character a chance, but Meyers dubs over Homer's voice and says that Poochie returned to his home planet (and died on the way).

Despite his traits, however, he was not entirely bad, as he once willingly provided a tour of the studios to Bart and Lisa, and was also shown to have genuine respect towards Abraham Simpson regarding his writing.

In The Simpsons Arcade mobile game, Meyers appears as a boss in the Springfield Mall and uses an ax, a mallet, and bombs that look like Itchy and Scratchy.

Appearances[]

Joystick Video gameThe Simpsons: Tapped Out

Citations[]

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