Week 3: Peanuts by Charles M Sparky Schultz


Peanuts by Charles M Sparky Schultz debuted on October 2nd , 1950, and ran until February 13th, 2000 for a total of 17,897 strips published. At its most popular, the strip ran in over 2,600 newspapers, 75 countries, 21 languages, and over 355 million readers. The precursor to Peanuts was a strip Called Li’l Folks that ran from 1947-1950 in Schultz’s hometown newspaper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press. This strip also featured a close look at the lives of children, however did not have a set cast. The name Charlie Brown was even used for four different children in various Li’l Folks strips. When Schultz revised his strip to get picked up for syndication, he was told the name Li’l Folks was too close to the extremely popular Li’l Abner strip. The syndicate decided to call the strip Peanuts, after the peanut gallery from the Howdy Doody TV show. Schultz never like the name, saying “…it is simply confusing and has no dignity.”
Charlie Brown’s famous pet beagle Snoopy debuted in the third Peanut strip on October 4th, 1950, but was not called by name until over a month later and he was first seen walking on his hind legs in 1956. Snoopy was inspired by Schultz’s own childhood dog, Spike. Snoopy himself has had a long association with the space program.; he was the official mascot of the Apollo program, and the Apollo 10 lunar module was named Snoopy while the command module was named Charlie Brown.
Schultz debuted the character Franklin in 1968 at the request of a school teacher. The thought was that seeing friendships between children of different races in the comics would help normalize it for the strips younger readers. At first, Schultz feared that having this character would be seen as patronizing or even as just a token, but in the end, Schultz agreed, and so the character Franklin was born.
Now, Peanuts has been adapted into 45 different TV specials, beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas. Additionally, there have been 28 Peanuts documentary specials, a series called The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, a mini-series called This Is America Charlie Brown, 23 video games, an off-Broadway musical, and 5 feature films. The legacy of Peanuts has included popularizing the term security blanket, inspiring the Beatles song Happiness is a Warm Gun, inspiring the hit Christmas single Snoopy’s Christmas, and teaching generations of young children that adults voices are not as important as they make them seem; which in the present is a very important message indeed.

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