# Is "Peanuts" still popular with kids today? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 21, 2022, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536 "2022-06-21T03:07:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/41 "2022-06-22T00:06:32Z")
Yes, I also mentioned a couple others, not just Peanuts. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/42 "2022-06-22T03:41:23Z")
> [@MrAtoz](#): > > So she knew of Snoopy, but had only a vague knowledge of the Peanuts canon in general. My impression is that this is true of lot of younger people; apart from the occasional holiday special, which may get last among many other holiday specials, Peanuts has kind of fallen off the radar. Yeah, people who know of Peanuts, but weren’t raised on it, tend to think Snoopy must have been the main draw, since so much of the merch features him. He did get a lot of play in the strip, especially in the later years, but there was a lot more to the strip than Joe Cool/the Flying Ace. Like [this Father’s Day strip](https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1964/06/21). And a friend of mine and Mr. Rilch’s is currently in boot camp; in a letter, I sent him [the strips from this sequence.](https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1965/06/07) Charlie Brown at camp is pretty clearly based on Schulz’s Army experiences. There’s a lot of angst in the strip; it’s not just Snoopy’s antics. Bear in mind that [Fantagraphics](https://www.fantagraphics.com/collections/peanuts) has found it profitable to publish the entire run of the strip, in multiple volumes. Could be that Peanuts is finding a new audience who are too “young” to have experienced the original run, but are still adults, not children. Media can feature kids without being aimed at them, like South Park. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/43 "2022-06-22T21:31:29Z")
Huge Peanuts fan since the “Charlie Brown’s Huge Head” comics of the ‘50s. My kids also love Peanuts, and Snoopy. None of us and NO ONE in my comics-lovin’ crowd remembers Snoopy playing a Jaw Harp…or even what it is. “I remember there was something called a _… Jew’s Harp?_, but was that a sort of … harmonica?” ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2022, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/44 "2022-06-22T21:46:01Z")
> [@digs](#): > > “I remember there was something called a _… Jew’s Harp?_, but was that a sort of … harmonica?” There has been quite a bit of discussion in this thread about the names - they are the same thing. Post 28 shows a picture of Snoopy playing the jaw harp (aka Jew’s harp). ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/45 "2022-06-23T00:01:55Z")
The instrument doesn’t really lend itself to the humor of something without a soundtrack like a comic strip. I suspect Snoopy’s harp is the brainchild of animator Bill Melendez rather than Charles Schulz. He voiced Snoopy, so it wouldn’t be surprising if he also performed the Jaw Harp. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/46 "2022-06-23T00:25:53Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > Post 28 shows a picture of Snoopy playing the jaw harp (aka Jew’s harp). _I_ know what it is, but then I’m pushin’ 70. It was my kids and friends… > My kids also love Peanuts, and Snoopy. None of us and NO ONE in my comics-lovin’ crowd remembers Snoopy playing a Jaw Harp…or even what it is. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/47 "2022-06-23T00:57:16Z")
Okay I understand what you were saying now. I will note that the “comics loving crowd” wouldn’t necessarily know of Snoopy’s jaw harp playing — it’s the “Charlie Brown TV special-loving crowd” that would stand a chance of remembering it. I don’t recall ever seeing Snoopy “play” in the comic strip. It was only in the animated stuff. Still, I imagine that the Venn diagram of “Peanuts comic strip readers,” and “Peanuts animated specials watchers” has a really high area of commonality. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/48 "2022-06-23T01:11:16Z")
> [@Rilchiam](#): > > Yeah, people who know of Peanuts, but weren’t raised on it, tend to think Snoopy must have been the main draw, since so much of the merch features him. Heck, when I was a kid, I thought this, too. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/49 "2022-06-23T01:25:32Z")
Yeah, as a little kid, Snoopy was far and away my favorite. I got pretty good at drawing “vulture Snoopy” and it was my favorite go-to for random doodles. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/50 "2022-06-23T01:52:00Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > it’s the “Charlie Brown TV special-loving crowd” that would stand a chance of remembering it. _A Boy Named Charlie Brown_ was a feature-length theatrical release. > **[A Boy Named Charlie Brown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_Named_Charlie_Brown)** > > A Boy Named Charlie Brown is a 1969 American animated musical comedy-drama film, produced by Cinema Center Films, distributed by National General Pictures, and directed by Bill Melendez with a screenplay by Charles M. Schulz. It is the first feature film based on the Peanuts comic strip. Starring Peter Robbins, Pamelyn Ferdin, Glenn Gilger, and Andy Pforsich, the film follows the titular character as he tries to win the National Spelling Bee, with Snoopy and Linus by his side. The film was The... ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/51 "2022-06-23T01:55:02Z")
> [@Bootb](#): > > Did it somehow magically stop being funny just because the author died? No, it stopped being funny about 20 years before he died. Don’t get me wrong. I love Peanuts. I think it’s one of the five best comic strips of all time (namely, Krazy Kat, Pogo, Peanuts, Doonesbury, and the greatest of all time, Calvin & Hobbes). I was a fan of Peanuts from my earliest childhood. I was born five years after the first strip was published in 1950, but my sister and I were reading the collections as soon as we could read. Dad bringing home the latest new Peanuts book was always a day to celebrate. We avidly watched all the 1960s TV specials. Because my father was in the business, we actually got to go to the local CBS affiliate and see one of them before its official air date, one of the great highlights of my childhood. But Shulz ran out of steam and ideas sometime in the 1970s. By the 80s, the strips were dreck, and his completely indiscriminate commercializing of the franchise to everything from pastries to insurance robbed the characters of any trace of integrity. But he continued drawing the strip literally till the day he died in 2000. I was quite dismayed to see how low it sunk in its final years. To the point of the OP, just two weeks ago I gave my 9-year-old granddaughter the first four hardbound collections of Peanuts strips, 1950-1954. She loved them. However, like others here, I had no recollection of Snoopy playing the jaw harp. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/52 "2022-06-23T02:31:05Z")
I’ve heard of a Jew’s harp, never a jaw harp. Never saw or played one though, and never associated it with Peanuts. I’ve only seen the Peanuts Christmas special and maybe a collective few _minutes_ of the old cartoon episodes. I saw the “new” movie years ago. The Red-headed girl was a new character to me. Most of what I know about Peanuts comes from the funny section which I, not being a newspaper subscriber, read _very_ infrequently. I recognize Snoopy though, and so do very young cousins who watched the Christmas special. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/53 "2022-06-23T02:43:25Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > I saw the “new” movie years ago. The Red-headed girl was a new character to me. She was a new character to everyone. In the strip, she was never shown, just referred to (“She nibbles on her pencil! She’s **human**!”), and she was shown but not voiced in one TV special, which Schulz only reluctantly agreed to and regretted ever afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/54 "2022-06-23T02:58:45Z")
I never saw any Charlie Brown movie (that I recall - by the time the movie “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” came out I had pretty much outgrown Peanuts) so I’m certain there is jaw-harp playing in some of the TV stuff, as well as in the film. I like @Elmer_J.Fudd’s theory that it was Bill Melendez’ idea. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/55 "2022-06-23T03:34:15Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > But Shulz ran out of steam and ideas sometime in the 1970s. By the 80s, the strips were dreck, and his completely indiscriminate commercializing of the franchise to everything from pastries to insurance robbed the characters of any trace of integrity. But he continued drawing the strip literally till the day he died in 2000. I was quite dismayed to see how low it sunk in its final years. I agree that, in its later years, _Peanuts_ was a shadow of its former self, but I disagree that it was complete dreck. If you want me to defend this, see my post in this old thread: > [@comics that cracked me the hell up](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/comics-that-cracked-me-the-hell-up/365235/10): > > Even the funny strips more often produce a smile from me than a laugh out loud. The only two strips I can remember for sure ever made me laugh out loud are Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, but there may well have been times when I LOL’ed at The Far Side, Bloom County, Foxtrot, Zits, maybe even Blondie a time or two. I seem to recall laughing at the Calvin & Hobbes Draelin mentioned. But the one I for sure remember cracking up over—and like so many good strips, it depends a lot on the artwork—is o… ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/56 "2022-06-23T03:59:41Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > When I was a kid, in the late '60s and early '70s, there was a TV host here in Chicago (Frazier Thomas, on WGN Mr frazier of bozos circus …he’s one of the reasons I like old movies because right after bozo on Sundays he did a masterpiece theatre type of thing with a golden age of Hollywood movie and it was because of that I watched Scaramouche with the epic sword fights … and the original lassie movies… and even Errol Flynn’s robin hood … ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/57 "2022-06-23T04:18:15Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > This is kind of surreal: My God! Whoever made this should 1) get an Award, and 2) get Jail Time. By the way, I always thought Snoopy was kind of a Dick. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/58 "2022-06-23T04:18:44Z")
> [@CairoCarol](#): > > I never saw any Charlie Brown movie (that I recall - by the time the movie “A Boy Named Charlie Brown” came out I had pretty much outgrown Peanuts) so I’m certain there is jaw-harp playing in some of the TV stuff, as well as in the film. This site has a link to another scene from _ABNCB_ where he is playing a jaw harp\*. > **[12 Strange and Nerdy Manifestations of Peanuts | The Robot's Voice](https://www.toplessrobot.com/2015/11/peanuts-charles-schultz-dinosaurs-dracula-alfred-e-newman-mad-magazine-snoopy.php/2)** > > When you consider that Peanuts ran more or less every day for about half a century, it’s inevitable that now and then it got weird. \*I’m not going to use the highly offensive name for the instrument, the “trump” > **[Trumps (Jew's Harps)](http://www.mouthmusic.com/trumps.htm)** > > Trumps (Jew's Harps) from around the World ---
**Author:** ![AppallingGael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9bd4f/32.png) [@AppallingGael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AppallingGael)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/59 "2022-06-23T05:08:47Z")
I gave the kids a Peanuts quiz just after Schulz died. Would you believe nobody knew Joe Shlabotnik or Miss Othmar? I only knew the instrument as a “Jew’s harp”, though I never had occasion to speak the term. I also wouldn’t have recognized it in or out of Snoopy’s mouth. I don’t know if “funny” was really the point of Peanuts. At least, I enjoyed it most when I was too young to understand much of it. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2022, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536/60 "2022-06-23T11:58:28Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#): > > By the way, I always thought Snoopy was kind of a Dick They are all kinda terrible, in different ways. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-peanuts-still-popular-with-kids-today/966536.md?page=4)