Featured Image Credit: Disney
Topics: Film and TV, The Simpsons, Social Media, Twitter
Dylan Murray
Honestly, who doesn’t love The Simpsons?
Today, well over 30 years into its run, The Simpsons is a show that has lived so much life it’s hard to even call it the same show today that it was in its earlier seasons.
However, beyond the beloved characters and setting, there is one thing that has stood the test of time more than perhaps anything else within the show – its opening credits.
From Bart drawing on the blackboard all the way up to the beloved couch gags, many Simpsons fans know those scenes by heart.
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Which actually is why it’s honestly quite surprising that so few have noticed one Easter Egg about halfway through the montage when Marge leaves her beloved daughter Maggie to be scanned at a grocery store checkout.
This Easter Egg isn’t quite as lore-dependent or revelatory as some might’ve hoped –no, Maggie is not actually a robot with a barcode on her – it is instead a small instance of a real-world metric being used to tell a joke within the animated TV show.
In early episodes of The Simpsons, the cash register charges Marge $847.63 (£683) when Maggie is scanned at the checkout, and according to show creator Matt Groening, there’s a key reason why this is the case.
$847.63 was actually the estimated monthly cost of raising a child in the United States back in 1989, the year The Simpsons first aired.
This inside joke eventually evolved throughout the years, as that 1989 figure became less and less relevant as time went on. More recently, Maggie merely doubles Marge's total shopping bill, changing the $243.26 (£196) price total to $486.52 (£392) as she gets scanned. This was likely done to emphasize the high expense of having a young child without typing the show to any given metric that can very easily become outdated.
Learning the reason why Maggie 'costs' the amount that she does has amazed X (formerly Twitter) users over the years, with popular account Uber Facts routinely sharing the Easter Egg on the website.
One person responded to Uber Facts, saying: "I’ve always wondered about that. Not kidding."
Otherwise, some people simply couldn't ignore just how much more expensive it is to raise a child now than it was when the show first aired.
"That’s one month of daycare for an infant (if you’re lucky)," one fan wrote.
As of 2023, the average monthly cost of raising a child hit $1,334 (£1,046) per month to raise a child, and it seems as though that number will continue to go up as time goes on.