Nancy Cartwright is well-known as the voice behind Bart Simpson on The Simpsons, but I had no idea she was also responsible for one of his biggest catchphrases. While the eldest Simpson child doesn't say "Eat my shorts" quite so often these days, it got a ton of use back in the day and was all over merchandise thanks to a completely improvised line.
As we wait for The Simpsons to return to the 2026 TV schedule and for more updates on the next movie, Cartwright was a guest on Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum and shared that she was partly responsible for "Eat my shorts" becoming part of Bart's vocabulary. The story behind it dates back to her high school days when she was in marching band. She said:
[I] kind of [came up with it] but not really. It was definitely an ad lib. But when I was in high school, I was in the marching band and I was a senior at this time and the drummer would play a drum. I played the trumpet, but they were playing the drums. They play the cadence for the high school, ‘Dun dun dun dun dun, Fairmont West! Dun dun dun, dun dun, Fairmont West!’ I’m bragging now, but we were 200 members in that marching band. That's a big band. 200, all brass.
I do find it somewhat ironic that this story starts with a high school marching band, something I would imagine Bart would never be a part of. I can imagine Lisa would be hyped about the idea of a big brass marching band of two hundred people, however, given that one of her best episodes centered around the saxophone.
Nancy Cartwright continued the story after a brief rant about how wild it was to have that many people playing brass. It was here we learned how "Eat my shorts" was involved, and started down a path to being an iconic phrase:
Well, [in the] middle of our senior year, they changed the [tune]. We would march from the high school to the football stadium doing that drum cadence. And, at one time, the drummers changed it. ‘Dun dun dun dun dun, eat my shorts! Dun dun dun dun dun, eat my shorts! And there were people sitting all along the way listening, and they were excited, but they never understood what we were saying. So it was kind of like an inside joke.
The rest of the world was oblivious to it, but magic was created that day. It seems like Nancy Cartwright didn't come up with the phrase entirely on her own, but there's no denying she made it iconic.
Long before teenage boys would freak out upon meeting her, Cartwright was doing a table read for Bart. She decided to take a chance, and it turned into one of the most iconic phrases in the genre of animated series:
So, 13 years later, here I am at a table read for The Simpsons and Bart — there's something happened. I went, ‘Eat my shorts,’ and it got such a laugh. It was just an ad lib.
"Eat my shorts" became a huge merchandising gimmick in the early days of The Simpsons, and a common phrase associated with the show. It became such a hit that the show had to move away from it, with it only being used in a more ironic or referential way in later seasons. Still, I would wager if anyone said that catchphrase, most would attribute it to Bart Simpson.
Who knows, maybe enough change will happen with The Simpsons that the catchphrases will make a comeback. Hell, the show itself has outlasted a lot of other trends and fads that I fully expect it'll experience another peak during its run, however long that may be.
The Simpsons premieres its new season on Fox on September 27th. Tune in to see one of America's favorite families get into more hijinks, and maybe laugh a little as well.
