I wonder how many younger people have no idea what Peanuts is, and only know the characters from the TV movies and series and the merchandizing, and so think of it as the Charlie Brown & Snoopy franchise, since most of the titles use one or the other… so “The Peanuts Movie” must have been a bit mystifying.
As I mentioned above, the contestant on The Weakest Link knew of the name “Peanuts,” but seemed to think it might be a character.
Schulz himself hated the name “Peanuts” for the strip–it was imposed on him by his syndicate early on–which is why by the time he had enough control to have a say in the titles of the various specials and movies, the word “Peanuts” didn’t get used very often.
Even if the last decade or so of the strip was dreck, that still leaves multiple decades worth of good material. Which is enough that you can just keep re-running those multiple good decades indefinitely, and by the time you loop around, it’s new again.
…and takes up space on the funny pages that could go to a new talent.
The funniest thing I remember from any peanuts special was Snoopy becoming a helicopter with Woodstock as the pilot.
Well, the solution I’d like to see to that would be to just expand the funny pages, to make room for both the old classics and the new up-and-comers.
Of course, the up-and-comers these days are probably writing webcomics, and not even trying to publish on dead trees.
Depends what decade. He’s surprisingly nice in earlier years. Funny, in A Charlie Brown Christmas, he’s both. A long time reader of the strip can see where all the individual parts came from. Same with the Halloween special.
There were a lot of Great Pumpkin strips over the years, too. I always wish they had made several Halloween specials using the different materials, and just rotated them randomly. “Wonder which one we getting this year?”
I wish they’d put more effort into the specials. I can watch ITGP,CB or ACBC over and over, but, say, It’s Arbor Day Charlie Brown just…doesn’t cut it.
I’ve never seen A Boy Named Charlie Brown. I think I’ve been afraid it will suck, or violate canon, so I’ve never seen it, or Snoopy playing the J-word harp.
Because of this thread, I did a search on YouTube for clips of animated Peanuts specials/movies that might show Snoopy playing the jaw harp. I found and watched a 25-minute compilation of “favorite moments” put together by Bill Melendez - I can’t find it now so I can’t link to it, and anyway, it is NOT worth watching, it’s actually really terrible quality, with jarring transitions and characters’ words getting cut off mid-syllable.
Anyway, what amazed me was how much violence there was - Snoopy’s nose being painfully twisted by Lucy, a girl tying Snoopy up with a too-tight rope that choked him, etc. It really surprised me that there was so much animal “abuse” that kids might emulate. Yeah, I know, old-fashioned cartoons were notoriously violent, but they SEEMED like “cartoon violence” of the “don’t try this at home, kiddies” sort. Peanuts wasn’t like that - anything presented there seems to automatically come with an imprimatur of wholesomeness. But if any kid did to their dog some of the things that were done to Snoopy on screen, it would be animal cruelty.
I was surprised, since I didn’t remember it that way. Not sure if I just didn’t pick up on the violence, or didn’t see the productions that a lot of the selected clips came from as they were from a later era. Probably a little o both.
The first decades take place in an antiquated world no longer relevant to today’s youth. Just one example strip:
How many kids today “play marbles”?
Constant recycling of old legacy strips in the limited newspaper space is like playing reruns of Leave it to Beaver in Prime Time on a major network.
The Peanuts strip was rarely relevant to any era’s youth. The only character that actually has the personality of a child is Snoopy.
So Snoopy never played the harp or harmonica in a regular strip (leaving aside animated features)?
Not to hijack this, but what’s the hard data (probably also varies by country)? Surely kids are still encouraged to play social games (marbles, jacks, tops, jump rope, hopscotch, slack line, tag, soccer, basketball, etc.)
The (US) National Tournament has all of 30 contestants this year. Not even one per state.
There’s not much point to “playing” the jaw harp in a drawing, without motion or sound. IDK if there are any comic strips that show Snoopy with a musical instrument, but that would be far less memorable than him playing in a medium you could hear.
On the one hand, you might reasonably consider the game outdated except maybe to a “niche market.” On the other hand, the behavior we see in that strip is timeless.
That said, if the decision were up to me, I’d be in favor of opening up more space on newspaper comic pages to new talent. But as already alluded to, maybe printed newspapers are no longer as important a market for cartoonists as they once were.
Indeed, I suspect that the reason “older readers” have such sway with newspaper editors is that “older readers” are the largest segment of those still buying print newspapers.
I read Peanuts (along with many other comics) on the Go Comics website, where space is not really a consideration. Likewise, I mostly get my news online. I haven’t bought a physical newspaper in years. I think that people who are genuinely interested in finding new comic strips know that they need to be looking on the web, not in their local newspaper.
I have no idea how to play marbles, and only the vaguest idea how to play jacks.
Surely the cartoonist is capable of doing it justice?
Approximately 15,872 Peanuts strips fratured a toy piano.
I polled my friends young kids (3, 4, 4, 7) and they all know Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy. None of them knew what I was talking about when I initially asked about Peanuts.
The instrument question was funny because they all gave different answers. No one even came close to the jaw harp though. I was expecting at least one to say “the thing with his mouth” or something similar.
I watched A LOT of animated Charlie Brown as a kid and I read the comic every Sunday. I primarily remember Snoopy playing the jaw harp in one or two strips but I definitely remember it from a few of the cartoons.
I’m 38 and I’ve never played jacks, tops, or hopscotch. I had a set of marbles and a book with marble games but I couldn’t tell you how to play any of those variations now. I worked at summer camps (and in a preschool) 10-15 years ago in NJ and PA and we didn’t have any of those games. I had to look up what a slack line is.
I grew up in suburban NJ and we played outside all the time. I learned to turn (and jump) double dutch and we played a lot of different forms of tag. Manhunt, soccer, basketball, kickball, and boxball (4 square?) were probably the most popular activities aside from riding bikes. My (admittedly dated) summer camp experience matched my childhood experiences pretty closely.
If Schulz ever depicted a jaw harp in a daily strip, I’d love to see how he did it. The thing is tiny and would be lost among the lines of Snoopy’s mouth and hands. Even the image on the box above isn’t very clear even with the increased size of the drawing and red accents. But most of all, there is nothing funny about what the instrument looks like; just the way it sounds.
That’s just it though; who reads the funny papers anymore? Certainly no children.
Which is probably why Peanuts/Snoopy/Charlie Brown probably occupy the same sort of kitschy/nostalgic space for children and young people that Betty Boop once occupied for people of my generation. Something kind of weird and a little funny from years gone by. But nothing we’d ever actually seen anywhere- it was something of our parents or even grandparents’ era.