Garfield: The Movie opened on this day 20 years ago. It’s significant for being the first film ever to win in every single category at the Oscars (Including Best Documentary, because it was based on a true story), and successfully set into motion the Garfield Cinematic Universe, which many say ended with the release of Garfield’s Judgment Day years later (the franchise became more divisive following the release of the initially well-received OdieVision) . It also smashed virtually every box office record, earning $1 Garfbillion in the states alone. Put simply, everyone had “GarFever” when this movie hit theaters, and to this day poor Bill Murray can’t so much as have a drink at a bar without a fan walking up to him, burping in his face, and exclaiming “GOT MILK?!” (something Murray’s Garfield, of course, made iconic in Garfield: The Movie).

The movie tells the seemingly simple story of Garfield having to rescue Odie from a greedy TV producer. Said greedy TV producer actually says the line “I hate lasagna,” so you know he’s pure evil. That being said–SPOILER ALERT–I’m still shocked the MPAA gave the film a PG rating considering the needlessly gruesome way it dispatches of its villain, with Garfield triumphantly shoving him into an oven and proclaiming “time for you to become the very thing you hate most–lasagna!” before cooking him alive. Also, I wanna say Jennifer Love Hewitt was in this? Was she Garfield’s vet? Yeah, I think she was. And I think she tricked Jon into drinking a cup of…well, you know what I’m talking about if you’ve read that one Garfield strip.

Okay, okay, I’ve had my fun, if any of you are even still reading this. In reality, Garfield: The Movie is…fine. It’s harmless. I don’t really have any strong opinions on it, but I did enjoy it in theaters. Murray has some funny lines (“Odie is on TV, and he’s wearing lederhosen!”). It’s an average film. Some people really seem to hate it, but I dunno. It’s Garfield, guys. It feels like kind of a weird thing to get heated up about. Still, the world was robbed when Will Ferrell wasn’t cast as Jon Arbuckle. If that’s not dream casting, I don’t know what is.

Naturally, a Garfield movie is going to have a lot of promotional partners, and in this case they partnered with…Ashely Furniture Stores. I don’t think anything like this has happened before or since (although Garfield is shilling out for La-Z Boys as we speak to market his current feature film). Basically, I recalled finding an ad for this in my newspaper comics one Sunday morning, fittingly enough, where they had a custom-made cartoon for it and everything. For years I’ve tried to find this online with no luck, until I found out that the official website for the campaign is still live. Yes, really. Unfortunately, since we are talking about a website from 2004, the resolution on several of the images is kind of…crap.

Now, if you skim around the website (which proclaims the campaign “an award-winner,” whatever that means), you can find advertisements that were intended for store displays and windows, including a sweepstakes. Also, since dads love armchairs, I guess, there was a Father’s Day promotion to coincide with it, even though it would take twenty years for Garfield to actually meet his real dad in a movie. There’s even a commercial (it’s not on YouTube, and I’ve looked, so you’ll have to watch it there if you’re curious) which gives you the weirdest slogan in the history of marketing: “But one, get one for Odie!”

Have a great day, y’all! Also, tonight you are probably getting more Garfield. Sorry not sorry.