Eat My Shorts!

"Eat My Shorts!" is Bart Simpson's trademark catchphrase.

Bart first said it when he was in kindergarten, to Principal Skinner when he was misbehaving.

On some occasions, the phrase was taken literally, such as when a donkey Bart was teasing really does eat his shorts.

When Bart developed his own line of novelty T-shirts, he used the phrase on one of his shirts: "Stop World Hunger, Eat My Shorts!"

Variations / Use by Other Characters

 * When the teachers and staff at Springfield Elementary School are eating students, Principal Skinner said he was going to eat Bart, and added, "I believe I'll start as you've so often suggested, by eating your shorts."
 * When Bart is cast as a young Mozart, he says "Eat my pantloons!" just before he dies.

Behind the Laughter
The real history behind the phrase is that Nancy Cartwright, Bart's voice actor, improvised the line during a table read. She first said it as a prank when she was in her high school marching band at Fairmont High School. The band was supposed to chant, "Fairmont West! Fairmont West!" but instead she and the entire band chanted "Eat my shorts! Eat my shorts!" And thus, an icon in popular culture was born.

The phrase also been used outside of The Simpsons, for example, in the Futurama episode, "A Big Piece of Garbage," when Fry sees a pile of talking Bart Simpson dolls, and Bender pulls the string on one that says, "Eat my shorts." Bender obliges, and then says, "Mmm... shorts."

More recently on the show, the phrase has been seldom used as many of the crew feel as if the many catchphrases have worn out. (This fact was parodied in the episode "Bart Gets Famous".)

There has been speculation that Matt Groening got this phrase from the stoner rebel John Bender in The Breakfast Club. The phrase "Don't have a cow" appears in another John Hughes film, Sixteen Candles.

Appearances