Peanuts was a syndicated daily comic strip written
and drawn by American cartoonist Charles M.
Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950 to February
13, 2000. The strip was one of the most popular in
the history of the medium. At its peak, Peanuts
ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of
355 million in 75 countries, and was translated
into 40 languages. It helped to cement the
four-panel gag strip as the standard in the United
States. Reprints of the strip are still syndicated
and run in many newspapers.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Schulz lived and
worked for almost 50 years in Santa Rosa,
California (Sonoma County). The Charles M. Schulz
Museum in Santa Rosa celebrates his life's work
and art of cartooning. In 2000, the Sonoma County
Board of Supervisors rechristened the "Sonoma
County - Charles M. Schulz Airport" in his honor.
The airport's amusing logo features Snoopy in
goggles and scarf, taking to the skies on top of
his red doghouse. A bronze statue of Charlie Brown
and Snoopy stands in Depot Park in downtown Santa
Rosa.

History
Peanuts had its origin in Li'l Folks, a weekly
panel comic that appeared in Schulz's hometown
paper, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, from 1947 to
1949. When his work was picked up by United
Feature Syndicate, they decided to go for the new
comic strip he had been working on. This strip was
somewhat similar to the panel comic, but it had a
cast of characters, rather than different nameless
little folk for each page. Maybe the name would
have been the same, though, had it been less close
to the names of two other comics of the time: Al
Capp's Li'l Abner and a now-forgotten strip
entitled Little Folks. To avoid confusion the
syndicate settled on the name "Peanuts", a title
Schulz himself was not particularly fond of. In a
1987 interview, Schulz said "It's totally
ridiculous, has no meaning, is simply confusing,
and has no dignity—and I think my humor has
dignity". The strip soon got an obvious main
character, which Schulz would rather have named
the strip after: "Good Ol' Charlie Brown", a
character informed by some of the painful
experiences of Schulz's formative years. In fact,
the periodic collections of the strips in
paperback book form typically had either "Charlie
Brown" or "Snoopy" in the title, not
"Peanuts".

Peanuts premiered on October 2, 1950 in seven
newspapers nationwide: The Washington Post, The
Chicago Tribune, The Minneapolis Tribune, The
Allentown Call-Chronicle, The Bethlehem
Globe-Times, The Denver Post and The Seattle
Times. At first there was only a daily strip. The
first Sunday strip appeared January 6, 1952, in
the half page format, which was the only complete
format for the entire life of the Sunday strip.
Most readers did not know that they often missed
one or more panels, so their newspaper could save
space.

The strip's early years resembled that which it
finally developed into, but with significant
differences. The art was cleaner and sleeker,
though simpler, with thicker lines and short,
squat characters; for example, in these early
strips, Charlie Brown's famous round head is
closer to the shape of an American football. In
fact, most of the kids were initially fairly
round-headed. Charlie was unique in appearing to
have virtually no hair. Though this is often
interpreted as him being bald, Charles Schulz
explained that he saw Charlie Brown as having hair
that was so light, and cut so short, that it
wasn't seen very well. Schulz described his style
as "The Toothpick School," i.e., as through
drawn with a toothpick.
 
Robert L. Short's The Gospel According to
Peanuts.Peanuts is remarkable for its deft social
commentary, especially compared with other strips
appearing in the 1950s and early 1960s. Schulz did
not explicitly address racial and gender equality
issues so much as he assumed them to be
self-evident in the first place. Peppermint
Patty's athletic skill and self-confidence is
simply taken for granted, for example, as is
Franklin's presence in a racially-integrated
school and neighborhood. As illustrated above,
Robert L. Short wrote several books in which he
claimed he detected theological messages in the
strips. Additionally, he used them as
illustrations during his lecturing about the
gospel. Schulz supported such interpretation but
ultimately attempted not to align himself with it.
Although he was a Christian who once taught Bible
classes, and whose Linus character routinely
quoted scripture, Schulz referred to himself more
than once as a secular humanist.

Schulz could throw barbs at any number of topics
when he chose, though. Over the years he tackled
everything from the Vietnam War to school dress
codes to the "new math". One of his most
prescient sequences came in 1963 when he added a
little boy named "5" to the cast, whose sisters
were named "3" and "4", and whose father had
changed the family surname to their ZIP Code to
protest the way numbers were taking over people's
identities. Another sequence lampooned Little
Leagues and "organized" play, when all the
neighborhood kids join snowman-building leagues
and criticize Charlie Brown when he insists on
building his own snowmen without leagues or
coaches.

The storyline Charles Schulz was most proud of was
in the early 1970s, when Charlie Brown came down
with a strange ailment that made him see every
round and spherical object as a baseball, like the
sun and ice cream scoops. This condition soon
worsens to the point where he develops a strange
rash on his head that precisely resembles the
stitching pattern of a baseball. Charlie Brown is
sent to summer camp to recuperate, wearing a paper
grocery bag on his head at all times. The other
kids dub him "Mr. Sack", treat him with
unaccustomed respect and even elect him camp
president. Eventually, Charlie believes his
condition is easing and goes out to see the
sunrise hoping not to see it as a baseball. As it
turns out, he does not, but what he does see
indicates, to his frustration, that his condition
has simply become even stranger than before.

 
Peanuts became a part of the American culture;
here, it is featured on the cover of Time
magazine. Top: Snoopy, Linus. Bottom: Charlie
Brown, Schroeder, Lucy.Peanuts probably reached
its peak in American pop-culture awareness between
1965 and 1980; this period was the heyday of the
daily strip, and there were numerous animated
specials and book collections. However, during the
1980s other strips surpassed Peanuts in
popularity, most notably Doonesbury, Garfield, The
Far Side, Bloom County, and Calvin and Hobbes, and
the number of Peanuts books on store shelves
dwindled. However, Schulz still had one of the
highest circulations in daily newspapers, and
because of licensing and marketing, Peanuts
brought Charles Schulz a large income.

The daily Peanuts strips were formatted in a
4-panel "space saving" format since the 1950s,
with a few very rare exceptions of 8 panels. In
1975, the panel format was shorted slightly
horizontally, and shortly after the lettering
became larger to accommodate the shrinking format.
In 1998, Schulz abandonded this strict format and
started using the entire length of the strip, in
part to combat the dwindling size of the comics
page, and to experiment.

Schulz continued the strip for 50 years, with no
assistants even in the lettering and coloring
process. Starting in the 1980s his artistic line
started to shake. This became more noticeable in
the 1990s, along with his format change--in some
ways the art seems to have deteriorated somewhat,
especially where character expression was
concerned. Nevertheless, he continued the strip
until he was unable to due to health reasons, and
died the night before the final strip was
published in newspapers. The final original
Peanuts comic strip was finished on January 3,
2000 and published in newspapers a day after
Schulz's death on February 12. Following its
finish, many newspapers began reprinting older
strips under the title Classic Peanuts.

Cast
Peanuts did not have a lead character from the
onset. Its initial cast was small, featuring only
Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty (not the later
character Peppermint Patty), and a beagle, Snoopy.
The strip soon began to focus on Charlie Brown,
though. Charlie Brown's main characteristic is
his self-defeating stubbornness: he can never win
a ballgame, but continues playing baseball; he can
never fly a kite successfully, but continues
trying to fly his kite. Others see this as the
character's admirable determined persistence to
try his best against all odds. Though his
inferiority complex was evident from the start, in
the earliest strips he also got in his own licks
when socially sparring with Patty and Shermy. Some
early strips also involved romantic attractions
between Charlie Brown and Patty or Violet, the
next major character added to the strip.
 
Lucy and her world famous "five-cents-please"
psychiatric help booth, as depicted at Universal
Studios Japan in Osaka.As the years went by,
Shermy and Patty appeared less often, while new
major characters were introduced. Schroeder, Lucy
van Pelt, and her brother Linus debuted as very
young children--Schroeder and Linus both in
diapers and pre-verbal. Snoopy, who began as a
more or less typical dog, soon started to
verbalize his thoughts via speech balloons;
eventually he adopted other human characteristics
such as walking on his hind legs, reading books,
using a typewriter, and participating in sports.

The Peanuts characters generally do not age, or
age very slowly, except in the case of infant
characters who catch up to the rest of the cast,
then stop. Linus, for example, is born in the
first couple of years of the strip's run. He ages
from infancy to right around Charlie Brown's age
over the course of the first ten years, during
which we see him learn to walk and talk with the
help of Lucy and Charlie Brown. Linus then stops
aging when he is about a year or so younger than
Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown himself was four when
the strip began, and gradually aged over the next
two decades until he settled in as an eight year
old (after which he is consistently referred to as
eight when any age is given, so we can safely
assume that was his "stopping point"). The
Peanuts gang as a whole can be roughly broken up
into three generations:

Charlie Brown and his peers (Lucy, Shermy, Violet,
Schroeder, and others), who are all in 2nd grade.

the younger siblings Linus and Sally, along with
Frieda, Eudora, and a few minor characters. They
are 1-2 years behind the older generation, about
kindergarden grade. 
Rerun, Linus and Lucy's youngest brother. Another
character who joined the strip as an infant, he
eventually reached preschool age. 
 
Snoopy as "Joe Cool", as depicted at Universal
Studios Japan in Osaka.In the 1960s, the strip
began to focus more on Snoopy. Many of the strips
from this point revolve around Snoopy's active
fantasy life, in which he imagined himself to be
(most famously) a World War I flying ace or a
bestselling suspense novelist, to the bemusement
and consternation of the children who wonder what
he is doing but also occasionally participate.
Snoopy eventually took on more than 150 distinct
personas over the course of the strip, from "Joe
Cool" to Mickey Mouse.

Schulz continued to introduce new characters into
the strip, particularly including a tomboyish,
frecklefaced, redheaded girl named Patricia
Reichardt, better known as "Peppermint Patty".
Patty is an assertive, athletic, but rather obtuse
girl who shakes up Charlie Brown's world by
calling him "Chuck", flirting with him, and
giving him compliments he's not so sure he
deserves. She also brings in a new group of
friends, including the strip's first black
character, Franklin, and Peppermint Patty's
bookish sidekick Marcie, who calls Patty "Sir"
and Charlie Brown "Charles". (Most other
characters call him "Charlie Brown" at all
times, except for Eudora, who also calls him
"Charles"; Charlie Brown's sister Sally, who
usually calls him "big brother"; and a minor
character named Peggy Jean in the early 1990s, who
called him "Brownie Charles".) Some have
speculated that Peppermint Patty and Marcie are
portrayals of lesbians, but this may well be idle
fantasy, especially considering both girls'
admitted affection for Charlie Brown. Marcie
resembles, and acts like, a younger version of
Doonesbury's Honey Huan. However, from occasional
references within the strip, it's clear she was
modeled on Billie Jean King.

Other notable characters include Charlie Brown's
younger sister Sally, who was fixated on Linus;
Snoopy's friend Woodstock the bird as well as a
few other birds such as Conrad, Oliver, Bill and
Harriet, all who spoke entirely in vertical lines;
Pig-Pen, the perpetually dirty boy who could raise
a cloud of dust on a clean sidewalk, or in a
snowstorm; and Spike, Snoopy's desert-dwelling
brother from Needles, California, who was
apparently named for Schulz's own childhood dog.

After some early anomalies, adult figures never
again appeared in the strip. "Peanuts" had
several other recurring characters who were
similarly absent from view. Some, such as the
Great Pumpkin or the Red Baron, may or may not
have been figments of the cast's imaginations.
Others, such as the Little Red-Haired Girl
(Charlie Brown's perennial dream girl), Joe
Shlabotnik (Charlie Brown's baseball hero), World
War II (the vicious cat who lives next door to
Snoopy), and Charlie Brown's unnamed pen pal,
were real. Schulz added some additional fantastic
elements, sometimes imbuing inanimate objects with
sparks of life. Charlie Brown's nemesis, the
Kite-Eating Tree, is one example. Sally Brown's
school building, that expressed thoughts and
feelings about the students (and the general
business of being a brick building), is another.
Linus' famous "security blanket" also displayed
occasional signs of anthropomorphism.

At one point, a character named Charlotte Braun
entered the cast. She was louder and more rude
than Lucy, and quickly proved to be unpopular. She
did not appear in more than ten strips. On an
interesting sidenote, Schulz had received a letter
requesting the removal of the character, and his
reply contained a drawing of Braun with an ax in
her head.


Books
Peanuts strips have been reprinted in many books
over the years. Some represented chronological
collections of strips, while others were thematic
collections, such as Snoopy's Tennis Book. Some
single-story books were produced, such as Snoopy
and the Red Baron. In addition, most of the
Peanuts television animated specials were adapted
into book form.

Charles Schulz always resisted publication of
early Peanuts strips, as they did not reflect the
characters as he eventually developed them.
However, in 1997 he began talks with Fantagraphics
Books to have the entire run of the strip
published chronologically in book form. The first
volume in the collection, The Complete Peanuts:
1950 to 1952, was published in April 2004. Peanuts
is in a unique situation compared to other comics
in that archive quality masters of most strips are
still owned by the syndicate. The following books
publish much of this previously-unreproduced
material.

Chip Kidd, ed. (2001) Peanuts: The Art of Charles
M. Schulz. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN
0375420975 (hardcover), ISBN 0375714634
(paperback). 
Derrick Bang, ed. (2004) Lil' Beginnings. Santa
Rosa, California: Charles M. Schulz Museum. The
complete run of Li'l Folks (1947–1950) 
Charles M. Schulz (2004) Who's on First, Charlie
Brown?. New York: Ballentine Books. ISBN
0345464125. 
The entire run of Peanuts, covering nearly 50
years of comic strips, will be reprinted in
Fantagraphics Books' The Complete Peanuts, a
25-volume set to come out over a 12-year period,
two volumes per year. The final volume is expected
to be published in 2016. 
(April 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1952.
ISBN 156097589X 
(October 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1953 to 1954.
ISBN 1560976144 
(October 2004) The Complete Peanuts: 1950 to 1954
Box Set. ISBN 
(April 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1955 to 1956.
ISBN 1560976470 
(October 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1957 to 1958.
ISBN 1560976705 
(October 2005) The Complete Peanuts: 1955 to 1958
Box Set. ISBN 
(scheduled for April 2006) The Complete Peanuts:
1959 to 1960. ISBN 1560976713 
(scheduled for October 2006) The Complete Peanuts:
1961 to 1962. ISBN 1560976721 
(scheduled for October 2006) "The Complete
Peanuts: 1959 to 1962 Box Set". ISBN 
(scheduled for April 2007) "The Complete Peanuts:
1963 to 1964". 
(scheduled for October 2007) "The Complete
Peanuts: 1965 to 1966". 
(scheduled for October 2007) "The Complete
Peanuts: 1963 to 1966 Box Set". ISBN 

Some of the Fantagraphics books contain an index
by subject for the comics reprinted within its
volume (the 1955-56 collection is one such
example). This allows users to find, for example,
all strips containing Linus (or, in the 1955-56
book, the rare character Charlotte Braun).

Each of the volumes has an introduction written by
a famous person. Authors who have created intros
so far include Walter Cronkite, Garrison Keillor
and Matt Groening.


Television, film, and theatre
In addition to the strip itself and numerous
books, the Peanuts characters have appeared in
animated form on television many times. This
started when the Ford Motor Company licensed the
characters in 1961 for a series of black and white
commercials for the Ford Falcon. The ads were
animated by Bill Melendez for Playhouse Pictures,
a cartoon studio that had Ford as a client. Schulz
and Melendez became friends, and when producer Lee
Mendelson decided to make a two-minute animated
sequence for a TV documentary called A Boy Named
Charlie Brown in 1963, he brought on Melendez for
the project. Before the documentary was completed,
the three of them (with help from their sponsor,
the Coca-Cola Company) produced their first
half-hour animated special, the Emmy- and Peabody
Award-winning A Charlie Brown Christmas, which was
first aired on the CBS network in 1965.

The animated version of Peanuts differs in some
aspects from the strip. In the strip, adult voices
are seldom heard, and conversations are usually
only depicted from the children's end--in other
words, the characters just answer questions or
repeat the questions posed to them. To translate
this aspect to the animated medium, Melendez
famously used the sound of a modified trombone to
simulate adult "voices". A more serious
deviation from the strip was the treatment of
Snoopy. In the strip, the dog's thoughts are
verbalized in speech balloons; in animation, he is
typically silent, his thoughts communicated
through growls, laughs, and pantomime, or by
having human characters verbalizing his thoughts
for him. These treatments have both been abandoned
temporarily in the past; they experimented with
teacher dialog in She's a Good Skate, Charlie
Brown, and in the animated adaptations of the
plays, Snoopy's thoughts were conveyed in
voiceover. The elimination of Snoopy's "voice"
is probably the most controversial aspect of the
adaptations, but Schulz apparently wanted or at
least approved of the treatment.

The success of A Charlie Brown Christmas was the
impetus for CBS to air many more prime-time
Peanuts specials over the years, beginning with
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and Charlie
Brown's All-Stars in 1966. In total, more than
thirty animated specials were produced. Until his
death in 1976, jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi
composed highly-acclaimed musical scores for the
specials; in particular, the piece "Linus and
Lucy" has become popularly known as the signature
theme song of the Peanuts franchise.

Schulz, Mendelson, and Melendez also collaborated
on four threatrical feature films starring the
characters, the first of which was A Boy Named
Charlie Brown (1969). Most of these made use of
material from Schulz's strips, which were then
adapted, although in other cases plots were
developed around areas where there were minimal
strips to reference. Such was also the case with
The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show, a
Saturday-morning TV series which debuted on CBS in
1983 and lasted for two seasons.

By the late-1980s, the specials' popularity had
begun to wane, and CBS had sometimes rejected a
few specials. An eight-episode TV mini-series
called This is America, Charlie Brown, for
instance, was released during a writer's strike.
Eventually, the last Peanuts specials were
released direct-to-video, and no new ones were
created until after the year 2000 when ABC got the
rights to the three fall holiday specials. The
Nickelodeon cable network re-aired the bulk of the
specials, as well as The Charlie Brown and Snoopy
Show, for a time in the late 1990s. Many of the
specials and feature films have also been released
on various home video formats over the years.

The Peanuts characters even found their way to the
live stage, appearing in the musicals You're a
Good Man, Charlie Brown and Snoopy!!!. You're a
Good Man, Charlie Brown was originally an
extremely successful off-Broadway musical that ran
for four years (1967-1971) in New York City and on
tour, with Gary Burghoff as the original Charlie
Brown. An updated revival opened on Broadway in
1999. It was also adapted for television twice, as
a live-action NBC special and an animated CBS
special.


Feature films
A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969) (76-Minute Movie
Special) 
Snoopy, Come Home (1972) 
Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown (1977) 
Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!)
(1980) 

Animated TV specials
A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1963) (2-Minute
Special) 
A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) 
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) 
Charlie Brown's All-Stars (1966) 
You're in Love, Charlie Brown (1967) 
He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown (1968) 
Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz (1969) 
It Was a Short Summer, Charlie Brown (1969) 
Play It Again, Charlie Brown (1971) 
You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown (1972) 
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973) 
There's No Time for Love, Charlie Brown (1973) 
It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown (1974) 
It's the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown (1974) 
Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown (1975) 
You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown (1975) 
It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown (1976) 
What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown! (1977) 
It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown (1977) 
Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown (1979) 
You're the Greatest, Charlie Brown (1979) 
Life Is a Circus, Charlie Brown (1980) 
It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown (1980) 
She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown (1980) 
It's Magic, Charlie Brown (1981) 
Someday You'll Find Her, Charlie Brown (1981) 
A Charlie Brown Celebration (1982) 
Is This Goodbye, Charlie Brown? (1983) 
What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983) 
It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown (1984) 
Happy New Year, Charlie Brown! (1985) 
You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown (1985) 
Snoopy's Getting Married, Charlie Brown (1985) 
It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown
(1988) 
The This is America, Charlie Brown mini-series
(1988-1989) 
The Mayflower Voyages 
The Birth of the Constitution 
The Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk 
The NASA Space station 
The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad 
The Great Inventors 
The Smithsonian and the Presidency 
The Music and Heroes of America 
Why, Charlie Brown, Why? (1990) 
You Don't Look 40, Charlie Brown (1990) 
Snoopy's Reunion (1991) 
It's Spring Training, Charlie Brown (1992) 
It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992) 
You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown! (1994) 
It Was My Best Birthday Ever, Charlie Brown!
(1997) 
Good Grief, Charlie Brown: A Tribute to Charles
Schulz (2000) 
Here's to You, Charlie Brown: 50 Great Years
(2000) 
It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown (2000) 
A Charlie Brown Valentine, Charlie Brown (2002) 
Charlie Brown Christmas Tales (2002) 
The Making of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (2002)

Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown (2003) 
I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown (2003) 

Other media
The Peanuts characters are currently spokespeople
in print and television advertisements for the
MetLife insurance company. Over the years, they
have also appeared in ads for Dolly Madison snack
cakes, Friendly's restaurants, Cheerios breakfast
cereal, and Ford automobiles. The characters were
licensed for use as atmosphere for the national
Cedar Fair theme park chain as well as the Camp
Snoopy attractions in Minnesota and Southern
California. Pig-Pen appeared in a memorable spot
for Regina Vacuum Cleaners.

"Snoopy on Ice", a live Ice Capades-style show
aimed primarily at young children, has had many
touring productions over the years. A giant helium
Snoopy balloon has long been a feature in the
annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York
City.

The characters have been featured on Hallmark
Cards since 1960, and can be found adorning
clothing, figurines, plush dolls, flags, balloons,
posters, Christmas ornaments, and countless other
bits of licensed merchandise.

The Peanuts characters were featured on Eric
Schwartz's 2000 comedy/parody album "Pleading
the First: Grass My Mother Hates," in the song
"Charliesomething." Penned as a letter from
Charlie to his sister Sally later in life, it
features (amongst other life updates) Charlie
coming out as gay, Linus and the Red-Haired girl
on the run for illegal drug cultivation in the
pumpkin patch, Marcie and Patty and lesbian
lovers, Snoopy having been neutered, and Sally as
working in the pornographic movie business.


See also
The Peanuts Characters category, for a list of
Peanuts characters who have their own articles. 
The Apollo 10 Lunar module was nicknamed
"Snoopy" and the command module "Charlie
Brown".