Trivia / It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The famous "I Got a Rock" line has often been misquoted as "All I got was a rock" (Charlie Brown does say "all I got was a bag full of rocks" at the end).
• Channel Hop: From CBS to ABC in 2001, and then to Apple TV+ in 2020, with PBS supplementing Apple TV+ in 2021.
• Children Voicing Children:
  • As per usual Peanuts practice. One notable thing is that Cathy Steinberg, the original Sally in A Charlie Brown Christmas, was now old enough to actually read her script, rather than just get fed the lines phonetically, so she gives a much more polished performance.
  • Speaking of Steinberg, she actually had a loose tooth when recording her lines as Sally, and she was afraid of it coming out having her speak with a lisp. As soon as she finished recording her rant to Linus, her tooth went flying out of her mouth!
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Bill Meléndez said this was his favorite Peanuts special. Peanuts animation producer Lee Mendelson felt that it marked the true Growing the Beard moment for Peanuts on TV, in particular citing Vince Guaraldi's score as his most single most definitive one.
• Crossdressing Voices: Pig-Pen's lines ("They'll never guess it's me under here! and "How did you know it was me?") were provided by Gai DeFaria.
• Edited for Syndication: To allow for longer commercial breaks, the special got some of this over the years when broadcast on TV...
  • Starting around the 1970s or '80s, the trick-or-treat scene was drastically cut short by CBS so it only showed the gang stopping at one house and the Pet the Dog detail that Lucy was asking for extra candy to give to Linus was lost. In the '80s, Schroeder playing the medley of WWI songs for Snoopy would sometimes be cut as well. In its final years on that network, Lucy challenging Charlie Brown to kick the football was also cut.
  • ABC typically cut a few scenes such as the football gag and the Schroeder piano scene, often to make room for showing Scared Shrekless and later Pixar's Toy Story of Terror uncut. The unedited version would be aired at least once a year, though, alongside You're (Not) Elected, Charlie Brown, which had previously only aired during presidential election years, but ABC typically only used the “uncut” version as filler material, unpromoted, and placed on a random night where nothing new is scheduled in the time slot.
  • Coca-Cola and Dolly Madison were the special's original sponsors, and two brief shots were animated near the beginning of and at the very end of the special mentioning this. The first sponsor plug occurs after the owl flies towards the screen and we see the Peanuts gang running past a scarecrow advertising Coca Cola and then they come upon a ghost standing near another scarecrow advertising Dolly Madison. The ghost then takes off it’s sheet revealing it to be Snoopy as he dances on a pumpkin. The second sponsor plug occurs during the end credits as Greetings from both companies show up while Linus continues to ramble at Charlie Brown. Both of these have since been edited out but have appeared on Youtube courtesy of a 16mm print of the special.
• He Also Did: Ronnie Lang, the flute player utilized by Vince Guaraldi for the score, later played the saxophone lines in Bernard Herrmann's iconic score for Taxi Driver.
• Kids' Meal Toy: In 2016, McDonald's sold two Halloween pails to commemorate the special's 50th anniversary.
• Long-Runners: It's only one special, but considering how many consecutive years it's aired on TV? It definitely counts. (Fifty-three years.)
• Missing Episode: The master tapes for the soundtrack were seemingly lost for a long time. The 2018 soundtrack album by Craft Recordings had to resort to using the "music and effects" track from the TV special itself, which means low-fi mono sound, obtrusive sound effects, abrupt fades, and an album so short it could fit on one side of the vinyl LP issue.
  • But during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Lee Mendelson's family dug through his archives and found the original source audio session reels, leading to a new release of the album, including 7 alternate takes.
• Referenced by...:
  • The episode of the podcast Welcome to Westfield covering the sixth episode of WandaVision is titled "It's the Great Pumpkin, Wanda Maximoff".
  • The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror XIX" contained a parody called "It's The Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse", playing on the religious subtext by having Milhouse recite an ode to the Grand Pumpkin based on the Nicene Creed.
  • The Patrick Star Show has "The Haunting of Star House", where both GrandPat and Squidward use Sally's line "You owe me restitution!"
• Screwed by the Network: By ABC during the 2010s. Although they aired it annually, they didn't really promote it much, and when they aired the uncut version combined with You're Not Elected Charlie Brown, they basically treated it as filler material on the schedule. Additionally, unlike the promotions for the 50th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas, ABC did nothing to celebrate Great Pumpkin's same Milestone Celebration the following year. From 2017 onwards, there was virtually no promotion of any of its airings, and the ratings saw a significant drop, though of course they still promoted its' rival special Toy Story of Terror a bit (though this is Justified as Disney, owner of Pixar, also owns ABC).
  • Eventually in 2020, ABC dropped airing any Peanuts specials without warning. A combination of the Schulz estate's 2018 deal with Apple and ABC's seeming lack of interest in a non-Disney-controlled franchise suddenly placed Great Pumpkin as an streaming exclusive on Apple TV+. A backlash led to Apple making an arrangement with PBS and PBS Kids to air Peanuts specials on over-the-air TV that year, but it came too late for this special, and thus it wouldn't air on broadcast television in 2020. In 2021 the special was aired on PBS and PBS Kids as part of the deal but that deal to air the classic "Peanuts" specials would not last beyond that year.
• Short Run in Peru: For unclear reasons, it debuted in Canada on CBC on October 26, 1966 — one day before its formal CBS premiere.
• Word of God: Charles Schulz later stated he never intended for the Great Pumpkin to have any underlying religious symbolism. He just thought it'd be funny for Linus to get Halloween customs mixed up with Christmas. This, of course, has not stopped some people from believing that such symbolism is there.

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