United Feature Syndicate appears to be reprinting Schultz’s Peanuts strips from the 1950s (early 1960s?), starting in 2006. Earlier, they were covering late 1960s material.
After Schultz’s death, I seem to recall that they jumped in with cartoons originally penned in the 1970s.
Note the difference in style starting on 1/1/2006:
Can somebody confirm this? Is there a press release somewhere? Is there an alleged reason for the change? What date are they starting from? It doesn’t look like the very earliest work to me. Any further background info?
As someone who read nearly all of the “Peanuts” compilations as a kid, I will confirm for you that the strips from the last few days are from the late 50’s. For one thing, Snoopy is a lot lankier than he is in later strips.
The really really old ones will show Charlie Brown with a significantly larger head, Snoopy far more dog-like and smaller overall; and aside from those two, you might not recognize any of the characters (Patty? No, not Peppermint Patty, the other Patty…Shermy? Violet?) Linus and Schroeder came along a little later and didn’t speak at first (both of them started out as infants). Lucy came in somewhere in between (before Linus, after Schroeder?) and was a very young girl toddling along after Patty and Violet who were taller and older.
Snoopy as drawn in the strip in question is way larger and far more big-nosed and goofier than he was in the early strips.
It’s really in the late '50’s that Snoopy changed radically. In the early strips he was dog-like, even though with a typically larger snout than in his first strip. I’m currently reading my Christmas copies of The Complete Peanuts 1955-1956 and 1957-1958, and in the last several months of the first volume (late '56) Snoopy has begun to evolve more quickly into something resembling the “later” Snoopy than he did in the first five years of the strip.
Anyway, I can’t recommend the Complete Peanuts volumes enough. They’re wonderful. I look forward to continuing this series for the decade to come.