Peanuts

• 1. Introduction

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  Peanuts, the comic strip by Charles M. Schulz, filled 17,897 installments before it ended. One description called that run "arguably the longest story ever told by one human being."

  The strip began in 1950, and its stars were small children. Grown-ups existed in that world, but they were rarely seen or heard.

  Still, the strip carried philosophical, psychological, and sociological ideas that were unusual for newspaper comics of the 1950s. Its humor came from the way the characters treated one another.

  This documentary asks how a modest gag strip came to hold so much weight. It asks why Schulz disliked the name on his own work, and who these children really are. It follows them as they leave the newspaper page for television, theaters, theme parks, and even spacecraft. And it asks what happened when the story finally stopped.

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• 2. The Name Schulz Hated

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  Li'l Folks was the first title Schulz used, for a weekly panel cartoon that ran in the St. Paul Pioneer Press from 1947 to 1950. That panel was where the name "Charlie Brown" first appeared. It also featured a dog that looked much like the Snoopy of the early 1950s.

  United Features Syndicate answered Schulz's submission of Li'l Folks with interest, so he traveled to its office in New York City. He left the panels at home and brought new comic strips instead. After looking them over, the syndicate said it preferred the strips.

  Tack Knight, who had written a retired 1930s strip called Little Folks, objected to the proposed title Li'l Folk. Schulz wrote to him that shortening Little to Li'l was meant to avoid exactly this conflict. He conceded, though, that the syndicate would make the final decision. Little Folks turned out to be a registered trademark, so a different name became necessary.

  The syndicate's production manager had noticed the popularity of the children's program Howdy Doody. Its young audience sat in a section called the Peanut Gallery, and those children were referred to as Peanuts. That connection produced a title that was forced upon Schulz.

  Schulz resented it for the rest of his life. He accused the production manager of never having looked at the strip, since the name would only make sense if a character were called Peanuts. On the day the strip was syndicated, a friend of his asked a newsdealer in uptown Minneapolis whether any papers carried Peanuts. The newsdealer replied, "No, and we don't have any with popcorn either." That answer confirmed Schulz's fears.

  When people asked how he earned a living, Schulz avoided the title and said, "I draw that comic strip with Snoopy in it, Charlie Brown and his dog." In 1997 he said he had talked about changing the title to Charlie Brown many times. Licensees already printed the old name on their products, so a change would have been costly.

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• 3. Charlie Brown and Snoopy

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  Lucy Van Pelt holds a football, and Charlie Brown tries to kick it. She pulls it away at the last instant, every time. That ritual sums up the central boy of the strip, an everyman who also cannot win a ballgame or fly a kite.

  Charlie Brown is decent, considerate, and reflective. He is also awkward and deeply sensitive, and he is said to suffer from an inferiority complex. When he fails, he sinks into self-pity. His determination in the face of certain failure can be read as self-defeating stubbornness or as admirable persistence.

  The journalist Christopher Caldwell saw that tension clearly. He wrote: "What makes Charlie Brown such a rich character is that he's not purely a loser. The self-loathing that causes him so much anguish is decidedly not self-effacement. Charlie Brown is optimistic enough to think he can earn a sense of self-worth."

  Schulz took the name from a colleague at Art Instruction, whose full name was Charlie Francis Brown.

  Readers and critics kept asking whether Schulz had drawn himself. The boy's sensitive and depressed moods seemed to echo Schulz's own life or childhood. In a 1968 interview, Schulz answered: "I think of myself as Charles Schulz. But if someone wants to believe I'm really Charlie Brown, well, it makes a good story." He added in another interview that the whole strip is a personal expression, so every character carries some trace of him. The biographer David Michaelis described Charlie Brown as simply representing Schulz's "wishy-washiness and determination." Some profiles of Schulz nonetheless stated confidently that the boy was based on him.

  Snoopy, Charlie Brown's pet, owns a typewriter, which is the first hint that he is no ordinary dog. Later in the strip he is described as a beagle. He walks on his hind legs and uses tools, yet he does not speak. Readers connect with him because they can read his human thoughts.

  He extends his identity through alter egos. A "world-famous" attorney, surgeon, and secret agent each turned up only once or twice. The World War I flying ace and the sunglasses-wearing "Joe Cool" returned many times over a period of years. Snoopy mixes innocence with egotism. He has childlike joy, but he is sometimes selfish, and he is fiercely independent while often relying on humans.

  Schulz worked carefully to balance Snoopy's life between a real dog and a fantastical character. The outside of the doghouse is small. Inside, the strip says, are a recreation room, a library, and a pool table, with paintings by Andrew Wyeth and Van Gogh on the walls. Schulz never showed the interior, because it would have demanded an inappropriate suspension of disbelief from readers.

  Woodstock, a bird and Snoopy's friend, communicates only through peeps, so readers must guess what he says. Schulz said Woodstock knows he is small and inconsequential, which gives the strip a lighthearted existential note about coping with a much larger world. Snoopy's brother Spike, meanwhile, lives alone in the California desert.

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• 4. Lucy, Linus, and Neighbors

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  Five cents buys a session at Lucy's "psychiatric booth," a parody of a lemonade stand, and Charlie Brown is usually the customer. Lucy is the older sister of Linus. She is bossy, selfish, and opinionated, and she delivers honest commentary in a sarcastic and often offensive way.

  Schulz described her as full of misdirected confidence but able to cut right down to the truth. He said she is mean because it is funny, particularly because she is a girl. In his view, a boy being mean to girls would not be funny at all. Comic strips, he noted, get laughs when supposedly weak characters dominate supposedly strong ones. The psychiatrist Athar Yawar playfully pointed to moments when her actions looked like medical and scientific pursuits, remarking that "Lucy is very much the modern doctor."

  Linus, her younger brother, is Charlie Brown's most loyal and uplifting friend. He brings intellectual, spiritual, and reflective moods to the strip and offers opinions on literature, art, science, politics, and theology. His lofty or pompous ideas tend to be rebuked quickly. Schulz enjoyed that Linus can be "very smart" as well as "dumb."

  Schulz's own first three children, who carried blankets around, inspired Linus's security blanket. Linus also finds comfort in sucking his thumb. Schulz called the blanket "probably the single best thing that I ever thought of." He was proud of how well it worked for visual humor and of how the phrase "security blanket" entered the dictionary.

  Peppermint Patty and Marcie attend a school on the other side of town from Charlie Brown, so they bring in a slightly different social circle. Patty is a forthright and loyal tomboy with what Schulz called a "devastating singleness of purpose." Her misunderstandings drive whole stories. In one, she prepares for a skating competition and learns, with disastrous results, that it is for roller skating rather than ice skating.

  Patty struggles with homework and often falls asleep in school. Jean Schulz, the wife of Charles Schulz, suggested the cause: Patty's single father works late, and she stays awake at night waiting for him. Charles Schulz imagined that some of her problems came from having an absent mother. Marcie is bookish and a good student. Schulz said "she sees the truth in things," even though she always calls Patty "sir."

  Schroeder, a boy fanatical about Beethoven, plays a toy piano and catches for Charlie Brown's baseball team. He celebrates Beethoven's birthday every year, and Lucy's unrequited affection for him is a running joke. Sally Brown, Charlie Brown's younger sister, fractures the English language for comic effect. Pig-Pen walks inside a cloud of dust, and Schulz kept him around because readers liked him.

  Franklin first appeared at a reader's suggestion following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Schulz wanted to avoid being patronizing, so he made Franklin a relatively normal boy who mainly reacts to the oddness of the others.

  Some faces faded. Shermy, a boy with a crew cut, appeared in the very first strip in 1950 and made his last appearance in 1969. Schulz called him "an extra little boy." Violet Gray, introduced in 1951, became memorable for abusing Charlie Brown, especially by not inviting him to parties. Charlotte Braun arrived in 1954 as a female counterpart to Charlie Brown, but she was unpopular. In 1955, Schulz "killed her off" in a tongue-in-cheek letter to a fan.

  Rerun, the younger brother of Lucy and Linus, first appeared in 1973. He began as a background figure and became a foreground character by the 1990s, and he stayed until the strip ended.

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• 5. Fifty Years on Paper

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  On the 2nd of October 1950, Peanuts debuted as a daily strip in seven newspapers. They included the Minneapolis Tribune, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, and The Seattle Times. Two Pennsylvania papers, the Evening Chronicle of Allentown and the Globe-Times of Bethlehem, completed the list.

  Schulz drew the strip in four equally sized panels so that editors could run it horizontally, vertically, or in a 2-by-2 block. By October 1951 it appeared in 36 newspapers. The rivals he hoped to match were Pogo, which ran in 80 newspapers, and Nancy, which ran in 200.

  The 6th of January 1952 brought the first half-page Sunday strip, which ran in 40 newspapers across the United States. By then the characters had less exaggerated proportions and slightly more realistic postures. When the publisher Rinehart & Company proposed collecting the first year of strips in a book, Schulz recommended against reprinting such early work. Within four years the strip began syndication abroad, translated into Spanish for Latin America under the title Carlitos.

  The 9th of April 1965 put the characters on the cover of Time magazine, under the title "The World According To Peanuts." The 1960s are generally considered the golden age of the strip. By 1975, Peanuts appeared in 1,480 newspapers in the United States and 175 abroad.

  Leap Day of 1988 ended the four-panel format for the daily strip. Schulz moved to a free-form horizontal layout that gave him more creative freedom, and he began drawing strips of one to three panels. His pen lines grew frazzled and wobbly because he had developed an essential tremor in his hand.

  Other popular strips of the era used assistant artists, and the tremor would normally have justified hiring one. Schulz held to his ideals of craftsmanship instead. Across nearly 50 years he drew every strip himself, lettering and coloring included, with no assistants.

  Schulz announced his retirement on the 14th of December 1999. The last daily strip appeared on the 3rd of January 2000. The last Sunday strip, which was also the final strip overall, ran on the 13th of February 2000.

  Schulz died in his sleep at his home in Santa Rosa, California, on the 12th of February, the night before. Commentators have noted how unusual that timing was. Michaelis surmised: "To the very end, his life had been inseparable from his art. In the moment of ceasing to be a cartoonist, he ceased to be."

  At the time of his death, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers. Its readership was roughly 355 million across 75 countries, and it had been translated into 21 languages. Reruns carried it onward after the last new strip.

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• 6. Screens, Stages, and Songs

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  The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show gave the strip its first turn in animation. A documentary called A Boy Named Charlie Brown followed in 1963, with newly animated segments, but it never aired because no channel would broadcast it. It did, however, shape the team behind A Charlie Brown Christmas, a half-hour special broadcast on CBS in 1965.

  That special met extensive critical success and won a Peabody Award and an Emmy. Across all the specials, Peanuts has collected two Peabody Awards and four Emmys. It started a run of holiday specials that still air annually in the United States, including It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in 1966 and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving in 1973. By 1972, the specials were described as regularly appearing in the top 10 in the ratings.

  The first feature-length film, A Boy Named Charlie Brown, arrived in 1969. It was one of four produced before the strip ended. Snoopy Come Home followed in 1972, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown in 1977, and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!) in 1980. The Peanuts Movie, released in 2015 by 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios, is the latest feature-length film. Apple TV+ acquired many of the older specials in 2020.

  Vince Guaraldi's jazz trio recorded the soundtrack album A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965. Its sombre and whimsical style gives songs such as Christmas Time Is Here a muted, quiet melody, while the traditional carol O Tannenbaum is improvised at a light, off-center pace. Chris Barton of the Los Angeles Times called it "one of the most beloved holiday albums recorded" in 2013. The Library of Congress added the album to its national recording registry in 2012 as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important."

  The rock band The Royal Guardsmen released Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron in 1966, a novelty single based on Snoopy imagining himself as a World War I pilot fighting the German flying ace. Return of The Red Baron and Snoopy's Christmas followed in 1967, and Snoopy for President came in 1968.

  The musical You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, scored by Clark Gesner, brought the characters to the stage in 1967. It is a string of musical sketches in which they explore their identities and their feelings for each other. It played off-Broadway, was telecast live on NBC, and became a favorite of amateur theater groups such as schools. Snoopy! The Musical premiered in San Francisco in 1975, with music by Larry Grossman and lyrics by Hal Hackady, and later ran for 152 performances off-Broadway.

  Fantagraphics Books, in talks that began with Schulz in 1997, published The Complete Peanuts, a 26-volume set released over 12 years. The first volume appeared in May 2004 and covered strips from 1950 to 1952. The volume with the final newspaper strips came out in May 2016, and it also included the complete run of Li'l Folks.

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• 7. Licensing and Ownership

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  In 1958, the Hungerford Plastics Corporation made a set of five vinyl dolls: Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, and Schroeder. An earlier appearance in promotion came in 1955, when Schulz drew strips and illustrations for The Brownie Book of Picture Taking, an instructional booklet for the Kodak Brownie camera.

  Ford Motor Company used the characters from January 1960 into 1964 to promote the Ford Falcon, in magazine illustrations, brochures, and animated television spots. Schulz credited that campaign as the first time licensing earned "a lot of money." He disliked illustrating the ads, called it "hard work," and would rather have spent the effort on Sunday strips. Hallmark began printing greeting cards and party goods with the characters in 1960.

  In the late 1960s, Sanrio, best known for Hello Kitty, held the Japanese licensing rights for Snoopy. Beginning in 1985, the characters served as mascots for the insurance company MetLife, meant to make the business more friendly and approachable. Schulz said the deal helped pay for his philanthropic work, though he would not describe it in detail. The 31-year relationship ended in 2016 and resumed in 2023 with Snoopy as a mascot for pet insurance.

  By 1999, an estimated 20,000 new licensed products appeared each year, from plush Snoopy toys and Thermos bottles to lunch boxes and music boxes. The characters also sold Dolly Madison snack cakes, Chex Mix, Bounty paper towels, Kraft macaroni cheese, and A&W Root Beer. Together with its merchandise, the strip earned Schulz more than $1 billion.

  The Los Angeles Times reported that some critics said Schulz was distracted by marketing demands and that his characters had become caricatures of themselves. Schulz disagreed. "Anyone saying we're overdoing it is way off base because actually we are underdoing it," he said. He also insisted the program was built on characters who are "figuratively alive."

  Knott's Berry Farm in Southern California became the first theme park to license the characters in 1983, creating the first Camp Snoopy area. In 1992 Knott's opened an indoor park in the Mall of America, called Knott's Camp Snoopy. Cedar Fair acquired the Knott's parks in 1997, and in 2024 Cedar Fair merged with Six Flags, which inherited the license. Camp Snoopy areas remain at Cedar Point, Carowinds, Kings Island, Knott's Berry Farm, and Michigan's Adventure.

  On the 3rd of June 2010, United Media sold all its Peanuts-related assets to a new company, Peanuts Worldwide LLC. Iconix Brand Group owned 80 percent of it, and Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates owned 20 percent. United Feature Syndicate kept syndicating the strip until the 27th of February 2011, when Universal Uclick took over.

  In May 2017, the Canadian company DHX Media, now WildBrain, announced it would buy Iconix's entertainment brands, including the 80 percent stake in Peanuts Worldwide, for $345 million. In May 2018, Sony Music Entertainment Japan agreed to buy 49 percent of that stake for $185 million.

  On the 19th of December 2025, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Sony Music Entertainment Japan announced a joint $457 million purchase of WildBrain's remaining stake. The acquisition was completed on the 3rd of March 2026. WildBrain continues to produce the Snoopy Presents specials, future series, and the upcoming Peanuts film for Apple TV.

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• 8. Honors, Critics, and Echoes

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  Schulz won the Reuben Award in 1955 and again in 1964, making him the first cartoonist to receive it twice. The National Cartoonists Society gave him its Humor Comic Strip Award for Peanuts in 1962. The Elzie Segar Award followed in 1980, and the Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. Both Schulz and Snoopy have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  In 1999, The Comics Journal ranked Peanuts second on its list of the greatest comics of the 20th century. First place went to George Herriman's Krazy Kat, a strip Schulz admired as one of his biggest inspirations. He accepted the ranking in good grace and agreed with it. The Time article from the 1960s called Peanuts "the leader of a refreshing new breed that takes an unprecedented interest in the basics of life."

  Not every critic was kind. In an essay titled "Against Snoopy," published in the New York Press when the last daily strip ran in January 2000, Christopher Caldwell argued that Snoopy's growing role in the 1970s "went from being the strip's besetting artistic weakness to ruining it altogether." Other critics alleged a decline in the later years, as Schulz drifted from cerebral themes toward lighter, more whimsical fare.

  Cathy Guisewite, who drew a comic strip of her own, said, "A comic strip like mine would never have existed if Charles Schulz hadn't paved the way." Lynn Johnston and Patrick McDonnell also cited his influence. The December 1997 issue of The Comics Journal gathered testimonials from over 40 cartoonists. Gilbert Hernandez wrote that Peanuts inspired him to create the village of Palomar in Love and Rockets. Tom Batiuk said the strip showed "a vital aspect of our common humanity."

  On the 27th of May 2000, many cartoonists worked references to Peanuts into their strips. Planned as a tribute to his retirement, it became a tribute to his life and career after his death. Similar tributes came on the 30th of October 2005, built around the special It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. On the 26th of November 2022, over 100 cartoonists honored Schulz's 100th birthday this way.

  Since 1968, Snoopy has been the personal safety mascot for NASA astronauts, and NASA gives a Silver Snoopy award to employees and contractors who promote flight safety. The black-and-white communications cap worn by Apollo, Skylab, and Space Shuttle astronauts was commonly called the Snoopy cap. On Apollo 10, the lunar module carried the call sign Snoopy and the command module Charlie Brown. Schulz drew a picture of Charlie Brown in a spacesuit that was hidden aboard for the astronauts to find in orbit. It is now displayed at the Kennedy Space Center.

  Giant helium balloons of Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Woodstock have flown in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City since 1968. St. Paul, Minnesota, began Peanuts on Parade in 2000 by placing 101 statues of Snoopy, each 5 feet tall, around the city. The Charles M. Schulz Airport near Santa Rosa took its name in 2001, and its logo shows Snoopy as the World War I Flying Ace atop his red doghouse. A U.S. stamp showing that Flying Ace went on sale on the 17th of May 2001 at 34 cents.

  The Brazilian rock band Charlie Brown Jr., formed in 1992, took its name from the character. Its lead singer, Chorão, got the idea after running over a coconut water stand that had an image of Charlie Brown printed on its facade.

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