This is the second episode—after season seven's "Radioactive Man" (1995)—to be animated with digital ink and paint. This kind of digital coloring would not be used permanently on the show until the season fourteen episodes "Treehouse of Horror XIII" and "The Great Louse Detective" (2002). It was used on "Tennis the Menace" primarily to test the technique. The reason for the long gap between this episode and "The Great Louse Detective" was that the staff of "The Simpsons" wanted to refine the look some more before doing it full-time.