DALLAS – Yesterday, life imitated art when 7-Eleven transformed a dozen of its stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores depicted in the “The Simpsons,” the Associated Press reports.

These stores and nearly all of the more than 6,000 other 7-Eleven locations in North America will be offering items from that show: Buzz Cola, Krusty O’s cereal and Squishees, similar to Slurpees.

The store transformations and Simpson food items are part of a month-long campaign to create buzz around the July 27 opening of “The Simpsons Movie.” In the television show and on the big screen, the animated characters often “lampoon 7-Eleven as a store that sells all kinds of unhealthy snacks and is run by a man with a thick Indian accent,” the news service writes.

7-Eleven is assuming all the costs for the stunt, which chain executives say will run in the single millions. “We thought if you really want to do something different, the idea of actually changing stores into Kwik-E-Marts was over the top but a natural,” Bobbi Merkel, an executive for of 7-Eleven's advertising agency, FreshWorks, a unit of Omnicom Group Inc., told the news service. “It shows they get the joke.”

The retailer managed to keep which stores would become Kwik-E-Marts a secret until early yesterday morning, when the Kwik-E-Marts signs went up on one Canadian location and 11 U.S. stores in New York City; Chicago; Dallas; Denver; Burbank, Calif.; Los Angeles; Henderson, Nev.; Orlando, Fla.; Mountain View, Calif.; Seattle; and Bladensburg, Md.