and still going strong:
The fun facts behind The Simpsons success story.
1. The Simpsons first appeared as a short item on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987.
2. It debuted as a stand-alone sitcom on December 17, 1989. It is now licensed to more than 180 countries.
3. Fox has secured the rights to the show until 2082.
4. The main voice actors reputedly earn around US$300,000 per episode. They were said to earn US$400,000 per episode between 2008 and 2011, until Fox cut their pay.
5. Fox gets its pound of flesh, though. Most actors voice more than one regular character, with the exception of Yeardley Smith, who voices Lisa.
6. Dan Castellaneta is perhaps the busiest, voicing Homer, Barney Grumble, Grampa Simpson and Krusty The Clown.
7. An Arabic version dubbed Al10 TV GUIDE Shamshoon first aired in 2005. In it, Homer drinks soda rather than beer, and eats beef sausages. Homer was Omar, Marge was Mona, and Bart was Badr. It bombed.
8. Creator Matt Groening’s parents are called Homer and Marge, and he has sisters named Maggie and Lisa. But he balked at calling Bart Matt, and chose to use an anagram of Brat instead.
9. Mr Burns’ grovelling assistant Smithers was originally cast as black, but producers were wary of having a subservient, gay, black character so he became white.
10. The show was condemned by Australian politicians in 1995 for depicting the country as a backward nation ruled by the descendants of convicts.
11. Bart’s middle name is JoJo. His friend Milhouse’s middle name is Mussolini.
12. US President George Bush said he wanted American families to be more like The Waltons than The Simpsons.
13. First Lady Barbara Bush was no fan, either. She said the show was the “dumbest thing” she’d ever seen.
14. Creator Matt Groening made the characters yellow to give the show a distinctive visual identity.
15. An episode where Bart wins an elephant is based on actual quiz show back in 1956 when a winner was offered $4000 or an elephant, and chose the latter.
16. All characters bar one have only four digits on their hands. The exception is God, who has five. 17. Everyone says ‘Meh’ today, but the term was first popularised by The Simpsons.
18. Homer’s trademark ‘D’oh!’ was inspired by a character in the Laurel and Hardy films, who said ‘Dooooh!’
19. Sideshow Bob is voiced by TV’s Frasier – Kelsey Grammer. And Sideshow Bob’s brother is voiced by David Hyde Pierce, who plays Frasier’s brother in that show.
20. Physicist Stephen Hawking has appeared in six episodes, playing himself.
21. Many parents were irate when Bart skateboarded nude in the 2007 The Simpsons Movie, and briefly flashed you know what.
22. And many Christian Conservative groups were upset in 2005 when Springfield legalised same-sex marriage, and Marge’s sister, Patty, announces that she’s going to marry a woman called Veronica.
23. A clause in the creators’ contracts states that Fox cannot cut or exert control over content.
24. The show ran foul of Chinese authorities in 2006, reportedly for its coverage of controversial topics. However, it is now streamed online in that country and Fox has opened merchandise stores there.
25. Up until 2009, Maggie used to ring up $847.63 on her toy cash register. That was the estimated monthly cost of raising a baby in 1989, when the show first aired.
26. Nancy Cartwright voices Bart. But she first tried out for Lisa. 27. Michael Jackson helped write and produce Bart Simpson’s pop-rap single Do The Bartman which topped UK charts in 1991. 28. Springfield was chosen as the name for The Simpsons’ home town because it was so ordinary — 30 US states have Springfields. 29. Al Jean, longtime Simpsons writer and producer, wants the show to end, if it ever does, at a Christmas pageant which was how the first episode began.