A Celebration of "Peanuts"

This Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and this year, 2018, marks the 25th Anniversary of the Peanuts cartoon, You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown! It was a direct-to-video release, exclusively through Shell gas stations.

Charming though it was, I only bring it up to segue into our main topic: the Peanuts franchise.

 The brainchild of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts is a comic strip that needs no introduction. It began as a series of black-and-white dailies in 1950; the color, Sunday version began in 1952.  It originally featured the childhood exploits of its protagonist, Charlie Brown, and his friends, and later expanded its scope to feature his dog, Snoopy. Its characters and images found prime real estate in our popular culture: Linus and his security blanket, Snoopy's long-standing feud with the Red Baron, Lucy beckoning for Charlie Brown to kick a football only to yank it away at the last second...

It stands the test of time by forgoing the usual puckish antics featured in newspaper strips of the time: Schulz's juvenile characters were unusually emotional and insightful. Who hasn't at some point echoed Charlie Brown's catchphrase of "Rats! I can't stand it!"

The franchise really hit the big time with the TV premiere of A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. Since then, there have been feature films, such as A Boy Named Charlie Brown and, most recently, 2015's The Peanuts Movie; Vince Guaraldi's jazz composition "Linus and Lucy;" cartoon shows such as The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show;  a 1967 musical, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown; countless made-for-TV and direct-to-video specials; and enough merchandise to fill two or three warehouses.

...Including this Millennium-themed kid's meal from Wendy's! (Video courtesy Rusty's Toy Reviews.)

These toys perfectly capture the "celebration" aspect of the decade's end.

Sadly, the year 2000 was also the end of an era: On February 12th of that very year, Charles M. Schulz passed away. The final original Sunday edition of his strip went out the day after.

Every day and every Sunday thereafter, his strip would live on in reprints from the 1960s to the 1990s, in no particular order, but there would be no new Peanuts strips. Accordingly, this final strip plunges from the usual bittersweet sentiments into downright melancholy. A series of the strip's most iconic moments surrounds Schulz's message to his fans like wistful memories from long, long ago. Snoopy looks on, reminiscing about the past, and perhaps wondering what the future may hold.

Originally hosted on wizardofbaum.blogspot.com

"Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy...how can I ever forget them..."

We never will. May they all endure into the fourth and even the fifth millennium.