Peanuts (Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Charles M. Schulz)

We don't have a thread for general Peanuts discussion, do we? I searched for "Peanuts", "Charlie Brown", "Snoopy", "Schulz" and its various misspellings, and nothing came up.

Anyway: MetLife is dropping Peanuts characters from their advertising. This is the only thing on Google news when I look it up, but I don't know why it's such a big deal. Why does it need to sell stuff to be relevant today? The painfully missed irony is that it goes against the message of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Bump

http://kotaku.com/how-peanuts-used-peppermint-patty-to-talk-about-politic-1789460213?utm_campaign=Socialflow_Kotaku_Twitter&utm_source=Kotaku_Twitter&utm_medium=Socialflow

I'm bad at links but you look so lonely in here.

edited 11th Dec '16 6:50:14 PM by phantom1

Huh, my haphazard collection of Peanuts books concentrates quite heavily on the bit earlier ones (or are thematic collections that concentrate on Snoopy) ... so my only recollection of Peppermint is from the animated features (and even them I have not seen all...). The storyline referenced, actually the whole "Peppermint has a crush on Chuck" thing mentioned in that link I had totally missed.

And I thought I knew Peanuts...

edited 14th Dec '16 3:41:34 PM by maus42

Actually, she is generally referred to by her entire name, Peppermint Patty (just like Charlie Brown) rather than either simply "Peppermint" or "Patty" (there is another Peanuts character, primarily in the early strips, named simply "Patty").

Oh, didn't know it something one insists upon. In my defense, all my copies are translations.

(Wait, the point whole was that the my collections is so limited that Peppermint Patty doesn't even feature in them as a character.... okay there goes my defense...)

edited 17th Dec '16 2:19:43 PM by maus42

A lot of people totally forget about Peppermint Patty and her role in the series and such - I'd even go as far as to say most people who remember Peanuts without continuing to read it - which is odd given how much of a prominent, core character she became in both the comics and the specials so soon after she was introduced.

People forget about basically everyone who isn't Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy (with the exception of how other characters relate to them), but it's most bemusing with P. Patty. She was practically the series deuteragonist for a while.

edited 17th Dec '16 10:54:20 PM by KnownUnknown

The fact that she wasn't in A Charlie Brown Christmas or It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown might count for something.

She actually shows up in the fifth Peanuts special, He's Your Dog Charlie Brown, which was first broadcast in 1968, and features prominently in the majority of the specials after that (a couple of them are even mostly about her, like She's a Good Skate Charlie Brown; Schulz even said that he felt he could have done a completely separate strip with just Peppermint Patty and Marcie. Schulz focused strips on a variety of the Peanuts characters at different times, but Peppermint Patty was his third most common focal character (after Charlie Brown and Snoopy).

It's interesting to note that, while it's fairly common to cast girls (or women) to voice the part of a little boy (Charlie Brown himself was played by a girl in the Peanuts history specials), Patty was herself played at least once by a boy in There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown.

edited 19th Dec '16 12:03:31 PM by Robbery

When remembering something we enjoyed from our childhoods, we tend to exaggerate certain things from them and remember other things - even important things - less. Or remember things differently than they actually are, because specific things stuck with them. This especially happens with series that haven't had a popular, widely seen installment in a while.

Peppermint Patty is one of the many characters got caught up with people's doing that with Peanuts. It isn't that people don't remember her, as much as when thinking about her they recall other characters before her and forget what she brought to the table. But it's still interesting to me, because it's one of the few instances I can think of of this happening to a character as prominent as she was - usually those at least fall into the "misremembered" camp, though admittedly there's a lot of that as well.

edited 19th Dec '16 6:50:13 PM by KnownUnknown

Yes, now that I was reminded of Peppermint Patty I immediately recalled the character (and her sidekick) and even some portions of the summer camp plotline, but if prompted "list the main Peanuts characters", I'd might have forgotten her...

I think the main reason for that kind of "forgetfulness" is just that she was introduced later. Schroeder isn't *that* major character either (certainly less iconic than e.g. Linus and the Great Pumpkin or Linus and the Blanket; Schroeder and his piano are more of ... secondary background drop...?), but was he was part of the cast more than a decade earlier compared to Peppermint Patty, so at least I have less problem of remembering that, oh yes, he also exists.

edit.

Wikipedia has a nice list of characters' first appearances, and curiously enough, Peppermint Patty became part of the cast only about a year later than Snoopy started his dogfights with Red Baron.

edited 19th Dec '16 9:24:57 PM by maus42

Schroeder's also gets remembered a lot because people remember Lucy, and bugging Schroeder was on of the three most iconic set-ups Lucy had.

I really liked the story where Lucy and Linus had to move, and Schroeder was surprised to find that he actually missed Lucy.

Schulz apparently based the Lucy-Schroeder scenario on his own early relationship with his first wife, who had apparently been convinced that Schulz would never be able to make a living as a cartoonist (Lucy frequently expresses doubts that Schroeder will be able to make much money as a piano player—despite the fact that he can play complex compositions on a toy piano with painted-on black keys).

I always thought it was funny that, since he's basically the Author Avatar for Vince Guaraldi there, in the animated Peanuts stuff Schroeder' arguably more of a jazz musician than a classical one.

It's one of my favorite things about him. Across the entire franchise, Schroeder can basically play anything he wants to.

edited 27th Dec '16 1:18:11 AM by KnownUnknown

Been watching old Peanuts specials recently, and I have to say that, while I generally find Charlie Brown to be sympathetic, I can't say that I found him as such in Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown. For those that don't know, in that one Chuck spots a pretty little girl in the crowd at a televised football game, and instantly falls in love with her. Corralling Linus to help him, they track her down. Throughout, Charlie Brown is so nervous and shy that it's a profoundly understanding Linus who does all the tracking and detective work. This being Charlie Brown, you can imagine how it ends, and for once, I didn't feel particularly sorry for him.

Contrarily, in the more recent He's a Bully, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown is actually downright heroic, taking on a marbles hustler to retrieve Rerun's marbles. This is a Charlie Brown who isn't taking any crap from Joe Agate, the bully in question. Somehow, it doesn't even seem terribly out of character.

He's A Bully is a weird one. It's a lot more of a traditional kids special, with the hero bucking up and beating a bully, and more specific comic relief.

But yeah, when it comes to matters of the heart Charlie Brown can sometimes be a dick, and he's not always sympathetic. His romantic arcs are all about him sabotaging his own relationships after all.

I did find Charlie Brown sympathetic the time he was paired with Heather the Little Red Haired Girl for a school project but couldn't get up the nerve to talk to her. And the Homecoming or Valentines special (I can't remember which it was) where he actually danced with her, but was apparently concussed from a football game and couldn't remember any of it.

All of the Peanuts characters could be both sympathetic, unsympathetic or anywhere in between when it comes to their unrequited love. Schulz was big on the ways love and insecurity makes people act: sometimes selfishly, sometimes nobly, sometimes sweetly, but usually moronically. He was also very adamant that love is a very self-absorbed thing, even at its most sympathetic.

Charlie Brown could be anything from insecure and unlucky, to self-defeating and too hung up on himself when it comes to love. Likewise, Lucy's infatuation with Schroeder could be shallow and self-centered, or it could be surprisingly sweet and tragic. And Peppermint Patty's problems with Charlie Brown could be just as much the fault of her oblivious overbearing as it could be his oblivious passivity.

The only character I can think of who was almost always sympathetic when it came to her unrequited crush is Marcie, with Charlie Brown. She was very forthright with her feelings but also very kind, so setbacks never felt like they were her own fault. The only character who is almost always presented as unreasonable and unsympathetic is Sally with Linus. And even then, she does wait up with him for the Great Pumpkin.

edited 11th Jan '17 12:50:23 PM by KnownUnknown

I've developed a bit of a pet theory about Linus. Schulz himself had skipped grades in grade school due to being a stellar student, but he floundered once he got to high school due to anxiety and some social isolation stemming from being younger and smaller than his classmates. We've seen Linus in the same class with Charlie Brown, Linus who is Lucy's (who I've always supposed to be approximately the same age as Charlie Brown) younger brother. I'm guessing that Linus was skipped a grade, which would account for his being in the same class as Charlie Brown, and also possibly why he feels he needs his security blanket. Also, possibly, it explains some of Lucy's antipathy towards him (jealousy, perhaps?).

I know age is pretty variable in Peanuts. Lucy started out in the strip significantly younger than Charlie Brown, as did Schroeder (who was a piano-playing baby when he first appeared). This is to say nothing of Sally going from a baby to a 4-year old in about a year and a half. I imagine it's all stuff Schulz ignored for the most part. Still, one can't help speculating.

I think Linus is supposed to be the same age as Sally, but it's not set in stone. Especially given that he was a lot older than her when she first appeared.

I took him to be about two years older, myself, with Charlie Brown being three years older than Sally. Though, as you say, in the strips where Sally first starts following Linus around, Linus says he's five years older than Sally. When Schulz got everyone aged where he wanted them, I think Charlie Brown and most of the cast were 8, Linus was 7, and Sally 5 or 6. Though I'm probably thinking about this more than anyone was intended to.

edited 11th Jan '17 9:53:34 PM by Robbery

Oh I missed this place going up again, I think weirdly I have the opposite thing with Peppermint Paddy's prevalence in that I really thought she was in the Halloween and Christmas specials because I remember her and Marcie so strongly and the things run together for me, due to childhood memories being like that.

Something that occurred to me recently is that, in A Charlie Brown Christmas, there's not only a joke that never appeared anywhere in the comic strip, there's a joke that wouldn't have worked there. The bit where Lucy is asking Shroeder if he can play Jingle Bells, and he runs through several elaborate versions before irritatedly plinking out the bare bones. That joke would only really work in a medium with an auditory component. It's a small thing, really, but it demonstrates that Schultz was thinking about the medium in which he was working.

Yeah that's true.

Given it was kind of a late development, starting towards the late eighties, but I wish some of the specials had (or that some future specials would, if we ever see another one) given us a little more of Marcie's troll traits.

I guess because she's otherwise so nice, that girl could be the most hilariously savage character in the strip.

edited 29th Jun '17 10:10:13 PM by KnownUnknown