Charlie Brown Specials

Do you love them, hate them, or are indifferent towards them? Im positive that we all have watched a Charlie Brown Christmas or Great Pumpkin at least once as a kid, but what's your personal favorite special? Talk about the music will be great too.

Holiday specials aside, I very much enjoy You're in Love and All Stars. These two are barely rerun though. I also think the first couple specials were good and the later being...well..bad :|

I also doubt this will turn into a hate thread since discussions on Peanuts/Charlie Brown tend to be calm :)

edited 31st Jul '14 6:57:40 AM by teddy

Of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown are good specials.

As for the rest, I always thought It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown was pretty good.

Probably the nadir of the specials was It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown. What were they thinking?...

man was that an awful special. Horrible voice acting, drawn-out filler, and dated music. >:(

edited 9th Aug '14 10:06:20 PM by Teddy

Well, Peanuts never had particularly good voice acting anyway.

Then again, it was apparently supposed to be a parody of that film, if I'm correct. Which would make it more OK in my eyes.

edited 31st Jul '14 7:15:29 AM by Aldo930

it didn't, but most of the time it was passable.

I heard the idea came up from a parody sketch Schultz of the movie after seeing it. Idk why but that's pretty funny.

edited 31st Jul '14 7:23:07 AM by teddy

Depends on the special for me. While I love Charlie Brown Christmas and Good Man Charlie Brown, I absolutely despise First Kiss.

never watched first kiss but the premise alone sounds dumb. What elementary school has homecoming, huge parades, and football -_-

What I really dislike about it is that Chuck gets all the blame for causing the team to lose the game. Even though Lucy's the real culprit.

edited 31st Jul '14 2:55:39 PM by powerpuffbats

You obviously never watched South Park.

Also, I think all of them are on the same level of okay.

I always thought either Patty x Chuck or Lucy and Charlie were great ships

edited 31st Jul '14 2:57:07 PM by KingKix

Are you talking to me? Becuase if yes, I never really watched that much of any "adult" animated show. Barring Simpsons and Futurama.

I think he was talking to me.

Well with kid characters that are well-known for cussing like sailors, fighting, killing, and etc, that's wouldn't seem strange lol

edited 31st Jul '14 3:41:15 PM by teddy

She's a Good Skater, Charlie Brown is my darkhorse favorite. I never hear about it anywhere, for better or worse, but I thought it was really well done.

Generally speaking, I thought the Snoopy or Patty-centered specials (and even the Linus ones) worked better than the Chuck-based ones. Charlie Brown's loser humor works better in the small, concise doses of the four panel gag format. When you extend it over through a special's format, it tends to fall apart a bit.

edited 31st Jul '14 6:39:11 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Bump

apparently the specials will be licensed by Fox starting 2015. Perhaps the new movie has something to do with this change?

edited 23rd Aug '14 12:57:37 PM by Teddy

Bump

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown 50th anniversary!

I don't know about you, but I'm going to watch it twice this Halloween.

Also, how long before MAD does a parody where the Great Pumpkin is a killer clown and Snoopy's nemesis is Donald Trump?

edited 27th Oct '16 7:49:35 PM by TropesForever

I can honestly say that there's never been a Charlie Brown special that I didn't at least feel was watchable. I've enjoyed lots of them, some of them quite a bit. My personal favorite is probably What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown, while my least favorite is It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown. I even really enjoyed the one where Snoopy has a nightmare that he's an Alaskan sled dog, which I think is called What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown!

People tend to forget just how many of these there are, since a lot of them were only ever shown once or twice on TV.

On a related note, my favorite Garfield special is definitely Garfield: Babes and Bullets.

edited 27th Oct '16 9:53:04 PM by Robbery

Putting aside the holiday specials and going more obscure, I enjoy This is America, Charlie Brown.

edited 4th Nov '16 1:34:52 AM by NateTheGreat

I just wanna state that the Christmas soundtrack is pure classic jazz

I rewatched all four of the Peanuts Christmas specials last night. Two of them with friends. Yearly tradition to fit them all in or course.

I somehow managed to watch none of them

Here's the one Charles Schulz thought was the worst special:

Oh dear,not the worst!

I’m a big fan of Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don’t Come Back!). :)

Did he? From what I recall Charles Schulz was really proud of Red Truck - indeed, actually wrote and directed it as apposed to most of the others - and was under the impression it would do very well, as part and parcel of his general belief that readers liked Cousin Spike as much as he did.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Dec 24th 2023 at 5:33:39 AM

A year or so ago, I picked up the final two Peanuts specials Schulz was personally involved with on video: It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown and It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown.

Schultz has been quoted as saying that "I wanted this to be my Citizen Kane, but it's not."

So it sounds like he was pretty embarrassed by the end result.