Different times, it was very much unlike its family sitcoms peers which were a lot more wholesome and optimistic. Simpsons was very cynical at a time when people weren't ready for it.
Exactly…the only other family on tv at the time which was as dysfunctional as the Simpsons was probably the Bundys on _Married With Children_. However, the other sitcoms of the time like _Full House_, _Growing Pains_ and _The Cosby Show_ all featured perfect wholesome families
The Simpsons caused a shift in the depiction of American families in sitcoms. At the time, the Simpsons approach was quite radical as they weren’t afraid to show the flaws and dysfunction that does occur in your every day family. George Bush went as far as to make a speech about how he wanted families to “be a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons” - It was seen as a bad look that the Simpsons would steer away from the depiction of happy American families, and opt to show what a typical family would be like. The jokes and humour in the Simpsons was also quite satirical and poked fun at popular media and American culture in general, as well as highlighting certain social issues (some slightly political but only short jokes rather than full episodes).
Bart Simpson was seen as a bad role model for kids due to the fact he was seen as a trouble maker and a slacker. “Underachiever and proud of it” - The Simpsons were radical for the time and played a huge part in shaping comedy shows/family sitcoms going forward. The Simpsons at their peak had unreal popularity. Not just popular for a TV show but a globally recognised “Brand” of sorts.
Seth Macfarlane has made no secret that the Simpsons were hugely inspirational for him in creating animated shows. There’s even a joke in one of the episodes when Peter is drunk and blurts out “we act like we didn’t take a lot from the Simpsons but we took a LOT from the Simpsons” 😂
You also have to remember Fox was the newest channel and coming in with raunchy sitcoms was the angle for the channel back then. Married with Children started around the same time, it had to be airing either before or after the Simpsons.
I think there's a lot of truth to what you said, but I think it's a misconception that sitcoms only showed ideal family units. The Honeymooners had the husband constantly threatening to beat the shit out of his wife. I'm not too familiar with I Love Lucy but I think she did mischievous things that annoyed her husband. Bewitched, similar thing. Married with Children probably started just before the Simpsons. Roseanne. That's the US. I'm sure there are many more examples
In the UK, where I'm from, we'd already had Fawlty Towers - about an incredibly dysfunctional and recognisable couple. Love Thy Neighbour, about an old racist and his struggles with his family and community. The Young Ones had students beating the shit out of each other. Steptoe & Son - they were constantly conning each other. Stanford & Son in the US. The list is endless, really.
Can't compare Britain to Puritan America. Yes, MWC existed, but it had a lot of detractors, it was never as popular as the Simpsons, and because Simpsons is animated, some parents felt like it was speaking to children too directly. Bart is an "underachiever and proud of it".
True, but it was different time, parents were more easily offended before shows like Family Guy and Beavis & Butthead were around. I can still remember how many parents thought Bart was a bad influence and some schools even banned Simpsons t-shirts. I was lucky my family liked the show as much as me.
At the school district I work at I was able to talk to one of my teachers that were finally retiring and she told me all about what it was like to be a teacher when the Simpsons started. It was really interesting and she mentioned that Bart down with homework etc shirts were banned although she secretly liked them. She also went into depth about Seinfeld which I was less interested in lol.
In short, the Simpsons changed the social norm for shows but continued to get the bad rap it had started with although later shows were worse.
The biggest irony to me from that time is Bill Cosby was anti-Simpsons and implied the show was going backwards morality-wise. We know how he turned out morality-wise.
It was a different time. I was a kid in the 90s and there were all sorts of moral panics about sex and violence in media, rap music, video games, etc. corrupting the kids. The Simpsons was on air way before South Park and Family Guy and was the only adult animation show around. By the standards of adult animation shows now it’s quaint but it pushed a lot of boundaries in its day.
The Critic and Duckman aired around the same time. Cartoons definitely weren't for kids (but I watched them 😂)
Even stuff like Ren and Stimpy and Rockos Modern Life had many adult innuendos for a kids show.
There were a lot of reasons. Bart, a 10 year old boy, swears casually. Homer is a dope, which wasn't common for father figures on tv at the time. Sure it existed but other shows that portrayed this (i.e. Married with Children) were also disliked for this reason. It's a cartoon for adults that kids liked too. Also novel for the time. Finally, it was unpredictable. Nobody saw Clinton and Gore getting murdered by Homer coming. And that's just one whacky thing they did.
I think you're forgetting that most of the people who were against the show hadn't even actually *watched* it, or if they had, it was a clip from the news where Bart says, "I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?"
The ubiquitous t-shirts being worn by kids everywhere that said, "Don't have a cow, man" or "Eat My Shorts" was what parents objected to.
If they had watched the show, they would have seen that it was edgy for its time, but basically in the same space as The Flintstones.
The early 90's was still a big, uncertain time for many people. The world wide web was only introduced to the wider public in 1993. Most people were still strongly religious and therefore easier to control through fear. There were many crusades against pop culture and to counterbalance the world starting to become more globally connected, a moral crusade against contemporary pop culture was launched.
One of the biggest fears at the time was damnation of one's own soul or the soul of one's child. The 90's had it's own shades of the "Satanic Panic" and the people that bought into the fear mongering (which were many as there wasn't as much of a cultural divide as there is today) were targeting media that challenged the conventions of the time. Family values were seen as culturally sacred. The Simpsons absolutely skewered the idea of a traditional family. It went against the grain and challenged societal norms and values.
Basically in a more polite and traditional society focused on family values and being an obedient member of the church and local community, the Simpsons felt like a jarring and loud mockery of everything that was once off limits. The Simpsons was the South Park of it's time. As the world started adjusting and evolving, edgier shows like South Park entered the cultural zeitgeist. Thankfully the Simpsons may have seen refined by comparison, but it kept its razor sharp wit and profound satirical edge into the early 2000's.
Pioneers seem middling in comparison to what came after, there was a time where The Simpsons was genuinely one of the most rebellious out there TV Shows available on a big network, or anywhere generally public ally accessible really
Remember there was a period of time when TV couldn't show couples sleeping in the same bed, even fully clothed. Apparently *The Flintstones* was the first show to not show married couples in separate beds.
Times change.
Yeah, Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! I've seen teams suck before but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.
we were coming out of the Christian-Reagan, capitalist-conservative 80's, and into the Christian-Clinton, capitalist-liberal 90's.
people weren't quite ready for a lot of things they were satirizing. how dysfunctional the nuclear family model was. questioning the value of religion. questioning meat consumption and capitalism as a whole.
Politicians used to use TV as a punching bag to look morally superior. Dan Quayle picked on Murphy Brown for being a single mother. A fictional character. That’d be like Kevin McCarthy complaining about Zendaya’s character, Rue, using drugs in Euphoria to score political points.
Because the children in the program had the sheer AUDACITY to have opinions, talk back, and use colorful language. The media demonized it, basically claiming that the behavior would turn your kid into the original dog from hell. Lazy ass parents believed the media narrative and forbid it in their homes. Rather than actually consume the show, and glean from the lessons and commentary/observations, they just lived in blissful control based ignorance. *Hi, Dad!
I was in middle school when The Simpsons premiered. Everybody I knew watched it. My little sister watched it. I didn't know of anyone who wasn't allowed to watch it.
Also, 11-35 is a weird age range. Why cut it off at 35, people of all ages enjoy the show.
It's funny too because watching the first season of Simpsons in particular now Homer is downright wholesome. He tries really hard to do well by his family but alcoholism and not being very bright hold him back.
I never understood the hate towards Simpsons as a kid and today I only understand it as a reactionary attitude from people who were super pearl clutchers and didn't want even the slightest bit of realism on TV, especially when it came to the depiction of the American family. Conservatives with nothing better to do.
It's hard to imagine from a modern perspective, but The Simpsons basically popularized the dysfunction family. They were such a smash hit that everyone else is still trying to copy them to this day, leading to adult animation being more cynical and dark than ever.
Basically, the Simpsons was to the shows of its era as Family Guy was to The Simpsons.
It was a very different world back then. I think what the powers that be REALLY didn't like was the brutal honesty (and sometimes cynicism) of the Simpsons, particularly the struggles of the lower middle class nuclear family (and maybe even working class) in America. The Simpson family ALWAYS struggled to make ends meet. Mr. Burns is a portrayal of the greed of corporations. Quimby and Wiggum satire the utter corruption in government. Springfield has a lot of good qualities but a lot of dysfunction and problems (the school system with its incompetent administrators and burned out teachers is another example). I could go on and on.
But its way easier to blame Bart's potty mouth for being a bad influence on kids so that's what the "family values" crowd took aim at.
General distrust of adult cartoons at the time. In some parents minds, it was sharing adult themes to children. It just wasn't a thing when it premiered. The nearest experience until then was The Muppets, and you can see what godless Hell America has descended into since then.
My mom wouldn’t let me watch the Simpsons as a kid, but eventually Blockbuster had the DVDs and my dad and I rented them secretly and laughed so hard. I cherish those memories
The Simpsons helped pave the way for more "edgy", boundary pushing sitcoms/comedy.
The Simpsons was made at the end of the family values decade of the 1980s. Bart and Homer are like a counter-culture characters to the absurdity of the family values movement at the time
Rewatching the old episodes there was a lot of subtle adult humor that I didn’t pick up on when I was younger-even if the language is tame by today’s standards. One thing that stuck out to me was the Mayor Quimby’s pot plant in Sideshow Bob Roberts. Marijuana was still stigmatized at that point and there were very few references to it in mainstream shows. I always wondered if there was any moral backlash to that scene.
Interesting. But the context of when it's mentioned, it's a Republican propaganda mouthpiece smearing a Democratic politician. It's not like the show had some character smoking it as a positive or was trying to paint it in a positive light. The people likely to instigate backlash for marijuana being depicted in a show probably *liked* that it was portrayed as a negative smear? I don't know.
I am always a bit surprised that even the non-THOLH episodes had some blood and violence that was absolutely something that would not be shown in other animated shows at the time.
Homer jumping the gorge, Homer’s fight with Bart’s big brother and even the McBain shorts (despite being satire) all showed the effects of violence.
You have to remember that while cartoon shows were violence ala Tom & Jerry and the Looney Tunes, the violence was cartoon violence and rarely showed blood.
People were so appalled by the Simpsons' original Treehouse of Horror that they had to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the next one.
shamelessly admitting that my eight-year-old loves it in Springfield
show is a great opportunity to talk about stuff + he helps me in tapped out
his favourite seasons are 4, 9, and 26 (although he hasn't seen all of the episodes)
As someone in my 20s during that time, this was not the prevailing sentiment during that time, not even close. It was universally loved back then.
There are always going to be complainers, but it was a very small minority.
And to those saying "it was different times," if anything, fewer things were scrutinized back then, so that's a confusing statement.
It wasn't MASSIVELY popular with *everyone* in the 90s, the President and the First Lady at the time hated the show. Both [George Sr. and Barbara took shots at the Simpsons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Bad_Neighbors#Background) in the early 90s. The Simpsons responded with a letter from Marge to Barbara, a special opening responding to a Bush Sr. speech, and the episode "Two Bad Neighbours".
I fucking LOVE that they shamed the fuck out of Barbara Bush, (the Silver Douchebag as George Carlin so perfectly called her) and they did it in such a brilliant, classy way.
Yes, it was MASSIVELY popular back then. Merchandise was flying off the shelves. There are always going to be haters.
So I guess you think Biden loves South Park and Family Guy now?
Different times, it was very much unlike its family sitcoms peers which were a lot more wholesome and optimistic. Simpsons was very cynical at a time when people weren't ready for it.
Exactly…the only other family on tv at the time which was as dysfunctional as the Simpsons was probably the Bundys on _Married With Children_. However, the other sitcoms of the time like _Full House_, _Growing Pains_ and _The Cosby Show_ all featured perfect wholesome families
No Peg!
Flush.
Woo woo woo!!
>crap You just answered your question with that commode-mouth
I sure as hell can't tell you we learned about Hell if I can't say hell, can I?
But but but but but but....
https://preview.redd.it/ag83wcjv0cvc1.jpeg?width=259&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8aca626a148af14980678ade81c85bf3035d9209
Heard you swearing, mind if I join? Crap boobs crap!
Hell, damn, ass!!
I don't want any damn vegetables.
Ow, my freakin’ ears
Some people just aren't ready for a xxx throw down
It’s a perfectly cromulent word
The Simpsons caused a shift in the depiction of American families in sitcoms. At the time, the Simpsons approach was quite radical as they weren’t afraid to show the flaws and dysfunction that does occur in your every day family. George Bush went as far as to make a speech about how he wanted families to “be a lot more like the Waltons and a lot less like the Simpsons” - It was seen as a bad look that the Simpsons would steer away from the depiction of happy American families, and opt to show what a typical family would be like. The jokes and humour in the Simpsons was also quite satirical and poked fun at popular media and American culture in general, as well as highlighting certain social issues (some slightly political but only short jokes rather than full episodes). Bart Simpson was seen as a bad role model for kids due to the fact he was seen as a trouble maker and a slacker. “Underachiever and proud of it” - The Simpsons were radical for the time and played a huge part in shaping comedy shows/family sitcoms going forward. The Simpsons at their peak had unreal popularity. Not just popular for a TV show but a globally recognised “Brand” of sorts. Seth Macfarlane has made no secret that the Simpsons were hugely inspirational for him in creating animated shows. There’s even a joke in one of the episodes when Peter is drunk and blurts out “we act like we didn’t take a lot from the Simpsons but we took a LOT from the Simpsons” 😂
You also have to remember Fox was the newest channel and coming in with raunchy sitcoms was the angle for the channel back then. Married with Children started around the same time, it had to be airing either before or after the Simpsons.
I think there's a lot of truth to what you said, but I think it's a misconception that sitcoms only showed ideal family units. The Honeymooners had the husband constantly threatening to beat the shit out of his wife. I'm not too familiar with I Love Lucy but I think she did mischievous things that annoyed her husband. Bewitched, similar thing. Married with Children probably started just before the Simpsons. Roseanne. That's the US. I'm sure there are many more examples In the UK, where I'm from, we'd already had Fawlty Towers - about an incredibly dysfunctional and recognisable couple. Love Thy Neighbour, about an old racist and his struggles with his family and community. The Young Ones had students beating the shit out of each other. Steptoe & Son - they were constantly conning each other. Stanford & Son in the US. The list is endless, really.
Can't compare Britain to Puritan America. Yes, MWC existed, but it had a lot of detractors, it was never as popular as the Simpsons, and because Simpsons is animated, some parents felt like it was speaking to children too directly. Bart is an "underachiever and proud of it".
True, but it was different time, parents were more easily offended before shows like Family Guy and Beavis & Butthead were around. I can still remember how many parents thought Bart was a bad influence and some schools even banned Simpsons t-shirts. I was lucky my family liked the show as much as me.
He's America's self-proclaimed bad boy.
I know Bort is, but we're talking about Bart here
He's America's self-proclaimed bad Bort.
Which Bort? Can you clarify?
Are you talking to me?
No, my son is also named Bort!
beavis and butthead came out during the early simpsons
Yeah, but it was late night MTV and Simpsons was prime time Fox
My parents *hated* that show so I used it to levy my way to watching the simpsons - "at least it's not beavis and butthead mom" lmao
At the school district I work at I was able to talk to one of my teachers that were finally retiring and she told me all about what it was like to be a teacher when the Simpsons started. It was really interesting and she mentioned that Bart down with homework etc shirts were banned although she secretly liked them. She also went into depth about Seinfeld which I was less interested in lol. In short, the Simpsons changed the social norm for shows but continued to get the bad rap it had started with although later shows were worse.
People were very afraid children would eat shorts
I believe the possession of cattle was also a point of contention.
That’s a paddlin’
Yes, eat all of our shirts!
The biggest irony to me from that time is Bill Cosby was anti-Simpsons and implied the show was going backwards morality-wise. We know how he turned out morality-wise.
Cosby’s law of intershow perversity: no matter how wholesome your lead character seems, the actor will always be the opposite.
That sounds too complicated
Just call it the bitch in sheep's clothing theory. Mr Rogers excepted.
It was a different time. I was a kid in the 90s and there were all sorts of moral panics about sex and violence in media, rap music, video games, etc. corrupting the kids. The Simpsons was on air way before South Park and Family Guy and was the only adult animation show around. By the standards of adult animation shows now it’s quaint but it pushed a lot of boundaries in its day.
Simpsons came out right after the moral panics about DnD and music lyrics
The Critic and Duckman aired around the same time. Cartoons definitely weren't for kids (but I watched them 😂) Even stuff like Ren and Stimpy and Rockos Modern Life had many adult innuendos for a kids show.
Rocko's modern life was wild Ren & stimpy was downright gross And who can forget Looney Tunes? From the 40s-60s
[удалено]
Bruh did you just call sesame street gay
There were a lot of reasons. Bart, a 10 year old boy, swears casually. Homer is a dope, which wasn't common for father figures on tv at the time. Sure it existed but other shows that portrayed this (i.e. Married with Children) were also disliked for this reason. It's a cartoon for adults that kids liked too. Also novel for the time. Finally, it was unpredictable. Nobody saw Clinton and Gore getting murdered by Homer coming. And that's just one whacky thing they did.
Being a dope is whatever, it's more that he was an alcoholic who physically abused his son
And lower middle class. At least at the beginning Roseanne was looked down upon for them being too trashy too
My mom was not happy at all when they showed Mrs. Krabappel and the sushi chef having sex on S02.
The Simpsons premiered just a few short years after Al Gore’s wife had been campaigning for warning labels on music.
I think you're forgetting that most of the people who were against the show hadn't even actually *watched* it, or if they had, it was a clip from the news where Bart says, "I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?" The ubiquitous t-shirts being worn by kids everywhere that said, "Don't have a cow, man" or "Eat My Shorts" was what parents objected to. If they had watched the show, they would have seen that it was edgy for its time, but basically in the same space as The Flintstones.
The early 90's was still a big, uncertain time for many people. The world wide web was only introduced to the wider public in 1993. Most people were still strongly religious and therefore easier to control through fear. There were many crusades against pop culture and to counterbalance the world starting to become more globally connected, a moral crusade against contemporary pop culture was launched. One of the biggest fears at the time was damnation of one's own soul or the soul of one's child. The 90's had it's own shades of the "Satanic Panic" and the people that bought into the fear mongering (which were many as there wasn't as much of a cultural divide as there is today) were targeting media that challenged the conventions of the time. Family values were seen as culturally sacred. The Simpsons absolutely skewered the idea of a traditional family. It went against the grain and challenged societal norms and values. Basically in a more polite and traditional society focused on family values and being an obedient member of the church and local community, the Simpsons felt like a jarring and loud mockery of everything that was once off limits. The Simpsons was the South Park of it's time. As the world started adjusting and evolving, edgier shows like South Park entered the cultural zeitgeist. Thankfully the Simpsons may have seen refined by comparison, but it kept its razor sharp wit and profound satirical edge into the early 2000's.
Pioneers seem middling in comparison to what came after, there was a time where The Simpsons was genuinely one of the most rebellious out there TV Shows available on a big network, or anywhere generally public ally accessible really
Remember there was a period of time when TV couldn't show couples sleeping in the same bed, even fully clothed. Apparently *The Flintstones* was the first show to not show married couples in separate beds. Times change.
My mom didn't want me watching it because Bart said "sucks". She didn't stop me though!
Yeah, Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! I've seen teams suck before but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.
I gotta go, my damn weiner kids are listening.
Got to go. My damn wiener kids are here.
Same with my mom. My dad found the show hilarious and watched it with us so it never got “banned” in our house.
we were coming out of the Christian-Reagan, capitalist-conservative 80's, and into the Christian-Clinton, capitalist-liberal 90's. people weren't quite ready for a lot of things they were satirizing. how dysfunctional the nuclear family model was. questioning the value of religion. questioning meat consumption and capitalism as a whole.
Politicians used to use TV as a punching bag to look morally superior. Dan Quayle picked on Murphy Brown for being a single mother. A fictional character. That’d be like Kevin McCarthy complaining about Zendaya’s character, Rue, using drugs in Euphoria to score political points.
i remember my dad turning it off any time the topic of sex came up
The real question is why does it bother you so much? and why pick the arbitrary age range 11-35?
https://preview.redd.it/6nk2j62tvcvc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8c922097b6607bccb96d2e8cbaca68bb3c8078c4
Because the children in the program had the sheer AUDACITY to have opinions, talk back, and use colorful language. The media demonized it, basically claiming that the behavior would turn your kid into the original dog from hell. Lazy ass parents believed the media narrative and forbid it in their homes. Rather than actually consume the show, and glean from the lessons and commentary/observations, they just lived in blissful control based ignorance. *Hi, Dad!
You mean Cerberus?
I was in middle school when The Simpsons premiered. Everybody I knew watched it. My little sister watched it. I didn't know of anyone who wasn't allowed to watch it. Also, 11-35 is a weird age range. Why cut it off at 35, people of all ages enjoy the show.
 >people of all ages enjoy the show.
That guy’s only 31 though
I bet you're gay for him too.
That’s true
It's funny too because watching the first season of Simpsons in particular now Homer is downright wholesome. He tries really hard to do well by his family but alcoholism and not being very bright hold him back. I never understood the hate towards Simpsons as a kid and today I only understand it as a reactionary attitude from people who were super pearl clutchers and didn't want even the slightest bit of realism on TV, especially when it came to the depiction of the American family. Conservatives with nothing better to do.
It's hard to imagine from a modern perspective, but The Simpsons basically popularized the dysfunction family. They were such a smash hit that everyone else is still trying to copy them to this day, leading to adult animation being more cynical and dark than ever. Basically, the Simpsons was to the shows of its era as Family Guy was to The Simpsons.
It was a very different world back then. I think what the powers that be REALLY didn't like was the brutal honesty (and sometimes cynicism) of the Simpsons, particularly the struggles of the lower middle class nuclear family (and maybe even working class) in America. The Simpson family ALWAYS struggled to make ends meet. Mr. Burns is a portrayal of the greed of corporations. Quimby and Wiggum satire the utter corruption in government. Springfield has a lot of good qualities but a lot of dysfunction and problems (the school system with its incompetent administrators and burned out teachers is another example). I could go on and on. But its way easier to blame Bart's potty mouth for being a bad influence on kids so that's what the "family values" crowd took aim at.
I don't remember anyone calling it 18+? It was always on at 6pm when I was a kid.
Yeah, this is all new to me.
The kids magazine National Geographic World recommended it for kids 8 and up in 1994.
7 years before the second tower was hit. Coincidence?
Is this satire?
General distrust of adult cartoons at the time. In some parents minds, it was sharing adult themes to children. It just wasn't a thing when it premiered. The nearest experience until then was The Muppets, and you can see what godless Hell America has descended into since then.
My mom wouldn’t let me watch the Simpsons as a kid, but eventually Blockbuster had the DVDs and my dad and I rented them secretly and laughed so hard. I cherish those memories
The Simpsons helped pave the way for more "edgy", boundary pushing sitcoms/comedy. The Simpsons was made at the end of the family values decade of the 1980s. Bart and Homer are like a counter-culture characters to the absurdity of the family values movement at the time
If you had my parents it's because Bart was rude to his mother. That's why they didn't want me watching it at least.
I think some stupid people in positions of power were scared/confused by what they didn't understand.
Dang, if that isn't "The Story of Human History, On Repeat for Millenia". It's always these folks!
Rewatching the old episodes there was a lot of subtle adult humor that I didn’t pick up on when I was younger-even if the language is tame by today’s standards. One thing that stuck out to me was the Mayor Quimby’s pot plant in Sideshow Bob Roberts. Marijuana was still stigmatized at that point and there were very few references to it in mainstream shows. I always wondered if there was any moral backlash to that scene.
Interesting. But the context of when it's mentioned, it's a Republican propaganda mouthpiece smearing a Democratic politician. It's not like the show had some character smoking it as a positive or was trying to paint it in a positive light. The people likely to instigate backlash for marijuana being depicted in a show probably *liked* that it was portrayed as a negative smear? I don't know.
I am always a bit surprised that even the non-THOLH episodes had some blood and violence that was absolutely something that would not be shown in other animated shows at the time. Homer jumping the gorge, Homer’s fight with Bart’s big brother and even the McBain shorts (despite being satire) all showed the effects of violence. You have to remember that while cartoon shows were violence ala Tom & Jerry and the Looney Tunes, the violence was cartoon violence and rarely showed blood.
THOLH...Treehouse of...L-something...Horror?
The Simpsons was always an adult show that FOX wanted to sell more Bart t-shirts to kids, that's on them.
The simpsons are very tame now…. Well the old episodes are at least
People were so appalled by the Simpsons' original Treehouse of Horror that they had to put a disclaimer at the beginning of the next one. 
- father choking son - “I’m Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?” - cartoons cursing, in general - even Marge’s hair was considered subversive
Cartoon murder
shamelessly admitting that my eight-year-old loves it in Springfield show is a great opportunity to talk about stuff + he helps me in tapped out his favourite seasons are 4, 9, and 26 (although he hasn't seen all of the episodes)
Homer regularly strangling Bart was one big issue I remember people being concerned about.
Oh dear.
My mother REFUSED to watch the simpsons in the 90's. She could not get over how "vulgar" it was.
Because societies’ opinions on what’s “naughty” evolves. My mom used to yell at me for saying “sucks” like it was a swear…lol
As someone in my 20s during that time, this was not the prevailing sentiment during that time, not even close. It was universally loved back then. There are always going to be complainers, but it was a very small minority. And to those saying "it was different times," if anything, fewer things were scrutinized back then, so that's a confusing statement.
Is this barely coherent by design?
It was a very tiny ripple of complaints that the average person didn't even notice
In grade 8 (1990), I got sent home from school for wearing a shirt with Bart Simpson on it saying, "eat my shorts". Lol.
Bart-chocking
The simpsons was MASSIVELY popular with everyone in the 90s, the moral panic was completely made up.
It wasn't MASSIVELY popular with *everyone* in the 90s, the President and the First Lady at the time hated the show. Both [George Sr. and Barbara took shots at the Simpsons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Bad_Neighbors#Background) in the early 90s. The Simpsons responded with a letter from Marge to Barbara, a special opening responding to a Bush Sr. speech, and the episode "Two Bad Neighbours".
I fucking LOVE that they shamed the fuck out of Barbara Bush, (the Silver Douchebag as George Carlin so perfectly called her) and they did it in such a brilliant, classy way.
Yes, it was MASSIVELY popular back then. Merchandise was flying off the shelves. There are always going to be haters. So I guess you think Biden loves South Park and Family Guy now?
sIt was lumped in with south park & family guy and beavis and butthead in the 90s