Once upon a time, it was as consistent a member of the Lycos 50 as Britney Spears and Las Vegas. One of the least talked about pop culture stories of the year has been the hefty drop in popularity for The Simpsons.

From September 1999 through September 2001, The Simpsons spent only one week off the Lycos 50. It was one of the members of our Lycos 50 Elite, the most consistently popular topics in Internet history.

But The Simpsons hasn't appeared on the Lycos 50 since the end of last year. Last week the show got about half as many searches as it did a year ago. A year ago it was #31. Now it is #75, and dropping each week.

Has the show finally run out of steam? Fans have been complaining for a few years that quality is down. Last year, an episode sending the Simpsons to Africa had literally no funny jokes, despite the fact that the episode involved monkeys. How you can produce a cartoon about monkeys without humor is beyond me.

Another problem could be the over-licensing of Simpsons products, many of which are available through Lycos Shop. You can now buy a special Simpsons barbeque grill, or Simpsons versions of every board game ever made, or an action figure for almost every character who ever appeared in a Simpsons episode (though I'm still waiting for a figure based on the Season One "African-American" Smithers.

The Simpsons is not the only prime-time cartoon seeing queries disappear. Searches for Futurama, the other FOX show created by Simpsons mastermind Matt Groening, are way down from last year. Searches for FOX's Family Guy are also down, though they spiked a bit recently when fans started an online letter-writing campaign to keep the show from cancellation. South Park, of course, saw its moment in the pop culture sun fade a while ago.

There is one surprise, however. The one animated show with more searches lately is King of the Hill. Guess Mike Judge has a lot more staying power than anyone ever expected back in the Butt-head days.