1995 Part 1 - At Long Last, Charlie Brown is the Hero

When a kid from another neighborhood takes advantage of the guileless Rerun, Charlie Brown steps up to defend him. Elsewhere, Sally is still Sally, Lucy still loves Schroeder, and Schulz fights through his tremor. Plus: Al Capp 

Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com

Unpacking Peanuts is copyright Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. 

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Thanks for listening.

Episode Transcript

VO (00:02):
Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts.
The podcast for three cartoonists, take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M.
Schulz.

Jimmy (00:18):
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the show.
This is Unpacking Peanuts.
Today, we are looking at 1995, and I will be your host for the proceedings.
My name is Jimmy Gownley.
Hey, I'm also a cartoonist.
I do things like Amelia Rule, 7 Good Reasons Not To Grow Up, The Dumbest Idea Ever, and you can subscribe to all my new comics at gvillcomics.substack.com, and you can do it for free.

(00:41):
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts, and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the band Complicated People as well as for this very podcast.
He's the co-creator of the original comic book price guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules, and the creator of such great strips, the Strange Attractors, The Gathering of Spells, and Tangled River.
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (00:59):
Say hey.

Jimmy (01:01):
He's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics and the creator of the Instagram sensation, Sweetest Beasts, it's Harold Buchholz.

Harold (01:11):
Hello.

Jimmy (01:12):
Making sure everything runs smoothly, it's our producer and editor, Liz Sumner.

Liz (01:15):
Greetings.

Jimmy (01:17):
Well, guys, this is it.
This is the last season of the official reread from beginning to end.
Can you believe it?

Harold (01:27):
I can't believe it, actually.

Jimmy (01:30):
What are our feelings?
I feel great.
I feel a sense of satisfaction, but I also feel great trepidation.
I think we're going to be dealing with sad stuff at points in this season.
Hopefully, we'll keep it light and fun anyway.

(01:53):
What are your thoughts as we head into this final season?
Michael?

Michael (01:59):
Well, I actually don't know what's going to happen.
How he's going to wrap this all up into a nice little bow.
No, I'm curious.

Jimmy (02:13):
Harold, how about you?

Harold (02:15):
I was just thinking this morning, when I was reading these, I actually, when we were making the pics, I had more pics than I'd had in a while, just because there were things I wanted to talk about.
But when I was getting ready this morning for the podcast, the feeling I had was, it was a little bit of wistfulness because what I thought was the strip is getting quieter.

(02:40):
That may sound odd, but it sounds like the voice seems like it's getting quieter.
I think this is particular because last time we recorded, we were looking at some older strips from the 50s and maybe the 60s.
His voice was a little bit louder back then through the characters, and now it's quieter.

(03:04):
That's not necessarily a bad thing other than knowing that it's going to go quiet in five years and no more.
That made me kind of sad.

Jimmy (03:13):
Yeah.
Well, it seems like my trepidation was unwarranted.
Right?
Harold, I bet though you got some interesting stuff about 1995 for us.

Harold (03:30):
Yeah.
1995, thanks to the archives of the editor and publisher, which I've been going to.
Again, it's this magazine that was specifically designed for editors and publishers of newspapers, and they are looking at what's going on in their field, including syndicated cartoons, which whether they liked it or not, was a big part of their business.

(03:50):
And syndicates paid lots of money to advertise in that publication because that was how you reached editors without having to send a salesman around door to door to sell your strips.
First up, Chicago Tribune, big paper, lots of readers.
They have a comics poll.
17,000 people decided that they would respond.

(04:14):
That's amazing.
That shows you the power of comics till 1995, right?
Yeah.
17,000 people took the time to respond.
And again, we're just on the baby edge of internet.
So I think people were probably mailing in responses.
You know, they had to put the stamp on and whatever, you know, that this was not a small thing for them to respond.

(04:36):
And Peanuts shows up in the top list, the top five, at number three, behind Calvin and Hobbes, for better or for worse.
The far side, which had just ended, and Blondie, because the far side had about a 10-year run.
So that's really interesting to me.

(04:56):
That kind of shows you where Schulz is at the moment in 1995, how people are viewing the strip compared to some of these newer up-and-comers.
There is another study where somebody went in to the top 100 circulation papers in the United States, and simply this person said, well, which syndicated features have the most presence in those 100 papers, just by numbers?

(05:26):
The number one strip with 87 of the top 100 papers was For Better or For Worse.
Number two was Peanuts.
Number three was Calvin and Hobbes.
Peanuts was 85 papers, Calvin and Hobbes was 84 papers, Beatle Bailey's 81, tied with Family Circus.
Then Hagar the Horrible was 80, Doonesbury 78, tied with Kathy for number nine and 10.

(05:49):
So that's interesting.
So the question is, well, why might that be?
Why might For Better or For Worse be just a couple higher than Peanuts?
And I think this is one of those cases where the age of the strip possibly works in the favor.
The younger the strip, you might have a little bit of an edge in moving your numbers out because Peanuts could have been picked up by a very small paper in an area where the big paper would like to own it, but they have to honor the little guy who gave it a chance as it was growing over time back in the 50s or 60s, and then, you know, the strength of that paper might have shifted over time relative to other competing papers to get you in the top 100, and Peanuts would be in the number two paper because it can't single-handedly make it the number one paper, right?

(06:37):
So, in any case, obviously, Peanuts super high up there, and, you know, hats off to Lynn Johnson for having 87 of the top 100 papers.
We were talking about readership and how many people were accessing these strips back in the day.
That was a lot of eyeballs for these strips.
Then the last of the 1995 listings was celebrating the 100th anniversary of the comic strip in 1995.

Jimmy (07:08):
Oh, I remember that.
That's right.

Harold (07:10):
Didn't this postage stamps come out that year?

Jimmy (07:12):
They sure did, yep.

Harold (07:14):
They were, that was pretty cool.
I remember getting my sheet, you know, at the post office.
They were really cool, very colorful postage stamps celebrating this.
Kansas City Star doesn't say who listed this, but somebody decided to pick the 10 greatest strips of all time.
And they went in order of when they debuted.

(07:37):
I think it's a pretty good list.
It starts with Little Nemo and Slumber Bitland by Windsor McKay.
Gorgeous strip.
Number two in order of appearance over time was Crazy Cat.
There's not a lot of argument on that one.
And number three was Thimble Theater, Popeye, which I think started in 1919 or thereabouts.

(07:58):
And then Dick Tracy was next.
And then a Little Abner from the 30s, Terry and the Pirates, Prince Valiant, then Peanuts, Dunsbury, and Calvin and Hobbes.
I think it's a pretty good top 10 list.

Jimmy (08:17):
That's a good top 10 list.
Is that in order are they ranking them?

Harold (08:20):
In order of their first appearance.
So they weren't trying to mess with who was the actual number.

Michael (08:26):
Where's Flash Gordon?

Jimmy (08:28):
What does it take?

Harold (08:33):
He was number 11.
I don't know.

Jimmy (08:34):
Oh, well.
That's really, really interesting.
Of all of those, there's nothing that has the cultural footprint to this day.
There are comments, like Beatle Bailey is an example that was making these charts.
It has no cultural footprint now.
I don't know that many people would even remember.

Harold (08:56):
And it's still running.
So, I mean, seriously, it's hard to put.
Yeah, especially those legacy ones like Blondie and Beatle Bailey.
They just feel like they're in a different space, right?

Jimmy (09:10):
Yeah.

Harold (09:11):
But it's like they were the top of the game until something shifted.
I think Schulz had a big part of, right?
Yeah, absolutely.

Jimmy (09:22):
Well, thank you, as always, Harold, for setting the scene and showing us some interesting side alleys along the way.
How about we start looking at these comic strips now?

Harold (09:32):
Yeah.

Jimmy (09:33):
All right.
So a few characters out there want to follow along.
The first thing you want to do is go over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread.
That will get you one email a month that will let you know what we're going to be covering here in this final season of regular strips.
So you go do that and then away we go.

(09:54):
January 1st, it's a Sunday and Lucy is has a little board game and she yells off panel, come on, I've got the board.
And then we see from the other direction entirely comes rerun.
What are we playing?
Do I get first move?
Then on the second tier, Lucy's setting up the board and rerun begins talking to her.
He says, before we begin, I'd like to say something.

(10:17):
I have a feeling that I may be a poor loser.
I mean, if I lose, do I have to be nice about it?
I mean, what if I think I'm gonna win, but I don't?
Can I kick the board over?
If you kick the board over, says Lucy, I'm going to pick you up and throw you right out the front door into a snowbank.
And then the next panel we cut to rerun out the front door in a snowbank, yelling back into the house, nice game.

Michael (10:44):
Aren't there laws about this kind of thing?

Jimmy (10:48):
Not in the 90s.

Harold (10:49):
Well, did you know this is Charles Schulz reference to another cartoonist?
Someone we've talked to.

Jimmy (10:57):
Lynn Johnston?

Harold (10:58):
Yeah.

Jimmy (10:59):
In what way?

Harold (11:01):
She did a major Hogan's Alley interview, which is fascinating.
She's very open about her life.
And one of the things she said is, you know, I didn't have the greatest experience growing up in my family.
You know, other parts were good and bad, but there was a lot of bad.
And when I became a parent, I didn't know what I was doing at first.

(11:22):
And the thing that kind of snapped her out of being a bad parent was she found herself throwing her child into a snowbank.
She was so angry.
And then she, she was sad that just shocked her.
But that was kind of the beginning of her seeing herself in a new light as a parent.
And Schulz is referring to this here, which I thought was really interesting.

Jimmy (11:46):
That's wild.
Yeah.
That's absolutely amazing.
And also on some level, he found that funny that she threw her kid into a snowbank, right?

Harold (11:56):
Yeah.
I'm wondering, I'm wondering how Lynn responded to this.
I mean, is this the kind of strip that you then send to somebody inside it?

Jimmy (12:05):
Yeah.
Right.

Harold (12:05):
Here, the low point of your life, but also the peak of your life.

Jimmy (12:09):
Best wishes.

Liz (12:10):
Here you go.

Harold (12:10):
Yeah, right?
But I thought that was fascinating that he put this into the strip.

Jimmy (12:16):
That is pretty wild.

Liz (12:19):
It seems to me that Rerun is kind of a combination of Lucy and Linus in this personality.

Harold (12:26):
Interesting.

Jimmy (12:27):
Yeah.
He's subservient to Lucy.
He's asking her permission to act like Lucy.
So yeah, it is a mixture of the two of them.
You know what?
Well, first off, I'm not sure why on the first tier, Lucy is looking left and then Rerun comes from the right.
That seems very strange.

Harold (12:49):
Maybe it's that kind of thing where you're preparing something and you're yelling at someone who is behind you because you're focused on what you're doing.

Jimmy (12:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
It could be, and if I wasn't doing a podcast about it, I wouldn't even have noticed this.
You know what I mean?

Harold (13:05):
But it is a choice by him.

Jimmy (13:07):
But it is a choice.
Yeah.
The other thing that, and I wonder if this is the Sunday format working against him, because I think the one thing he should have added to this is the name Rerun.
I think every time he shows Rerun at this stage where he's just bringing him, he should name him.

(13:30):
But I guess if he figures, if he cuts that top tier off, like, because obviously the first place would be, come on, Rerun, I've got the board.
But then if you took it off, you would have to say it again in the second tier.
Maybe that's too much.

Harold (13:44):
Before we begin, I rerun.

Jimmy (13:46):
I rerun.
But I think it would help.
January 6th, we're in Peppermint Patty's school.
And Peppermint Patty is asleep at the desk and Marcy is, of course, behind her.
And Marcy says to Peppermint Patty, our regular teacher is Paxer, as Peppermint Patty is snoring away.
But then in the second panel, Patty wakes up and says, welcome back, ma'am.

(14:10):
It's good to see you again.
And then in the next panel, Marcy says, she stepped out of the room, sir.
That's the custodian.

Michael (14:18):
Well, I picked this for one reason only.

Jimmy (14:21):
What's that?

Michael (14:22):
It's when I got to this trip, I went, whoa, what's going on?
Schulz is having a bad day.

Harold (14:32):
Yeah.

Michael (14:33):
I don't know what's going on, but that second panel.
Boy, I mean, that does not look like Schulz.
Or Schulz having a very shaky day.

Harold (14:43):
I was thinking exactly the same thing.
If someone said one person drew a panel for Schulz one day, on his behalf, you know, panel two of this January 6th strip would be a nominee, right?

Jimmy (14:57):
Well, you know, I think panel one, I mean, her hair, look at her hair.

Harold (15:01):
Yeah, she's so rumpled.

Jimmy (15:03):
Straight up.
Yeah, it's very rumpled.
What's interesting, because she's waking up in the second panel, it maybe lets them get away with it a little bit.
But what's really weird for me is I think she looks, I actually think she looks just as strange and rumbly in panel one.

(15:23):
But then in panel three, it sort of comes back together.
Yeah.

Harold (15:29):
I mean, look at her nose in panel two.
It's so, it's so big.
I mean, normally he's nailing these characters.
Look at the consistency of Marcy.
He does this interesting skew of Marcy in panel one.
She leans toward Peppermint Patty, which is definitely something you can get away with in cartooning, particularly animation.
If you lean in on something, instead of keeping them in one solid shape, you can put the angle of whatever the character is doing into the drawing a little bit to emphasize something.

(15:58):
But still, Marcy looks pretty consistent.
If we were just looking at Marcy, I don't think we'd have too many issues here, but wow, Peppermint Patty.

Jimmy (16:06):
I mean, I do think it might be him thinking, oh, I should make Patty look a little rumbly because she's sleeping, but not being able to control it fine enough to make it a controlled rumple.
Because his attempt to make it rumbly is compounded by the fact that it's already wavy because of the tremor, right?

Harold (16:26):
Yeah.
Then the Peppermint Patty, the outline of her face just doesn't seem right.
Yeah.
It's off-model or you know.

Michael (16:34):
The balloon in panel two.
I mean, I don't know if his shake was fairly consistent or maybe it just hit for 10 minutes.

Jimmy (16:44):
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I mean, that's what it looks like to me.
It got way worse.

Harold (16:49):
Well, it's interesting you say that, Michael, because you look at the balloon in panel one and panel three, he's moving really slow to make these shapes of the balloon because how fast he's going is how often the tremor appears.
You can see how long it took him to draw each of those things.

(17:11):
Then in panel two, like you're saying, Jimmy, it's like the fact that she's woken up and things are rumpled.
It looks like he's drawn this particularly fast.
Maybe he's experimenting a little bit with that because maybe he thinks that's going to add to the sense of her being out of it.
But when you look at the balloon, the tremors are way far apart from each other, but it's also really wonky in terms of the line.

(17:40):
Because he's burning through that for some reason really fast because he's not going to get the cleanliness that he'd get out of Marcy's.
So it does look like Peppermint Patty is just coming into consciousness or something.
It's this dreamy, weird, not fully formed balloon.

Jimmy (17:57):
We know that towards the end of this run, sometimes he is holding his drawing hand with his other hand to steady it.
And I mean, one of the reasons I wanted to read all of them is because I just feel like that kind of dedication to this is deserving of people looking at it and thinking about it and talking about it.

(18:25):
But there's no way to also not feel sad on some level about it because this is your pal after all these years of re-knowing strips and you don't want to see him struggling.
You know, because I mean, it looks like it's physically painful sometimes.
And I just wonder, what do you think compels someone at that absolute level of unimaginable worldwide success?

(18:53):
Peanuts has transcended a comic strip, it's transcended animated specials, it's transcended plush, it's something bigger than all of those things.
And if he just stopped, he could have taken a victory lap, right?
But he couldn't, why couldn't he?

Michael (19:08):
Well, he could.

Jimmy (19:09):
Wouldn't, well, I mean, but yeah, but within himself, he couldn't.

Michael (19:12):
Well, that depends on the person.
I was thinking about this too, and I thought of two examples from my youth when I was a big baseball fan.
There's two ways to go.
There's Willie Mays and there's Sandy Kovacs.
Okay, Sandy Kovacs, for five years, was the greatest pitcher in baseball, unbelievable.

(19:38):
Nobody could hit him.
He was breaking records all the time, and a few years later, he retired.
He was just gone, and he was having physical problems and said, well, I'm going to go out at my peak, and he did.
It was kind of a shock.
He's gone.
Willie Mays, of course, had over 20-year career, the greatest players of all time.

(20:03):
But there was that moment when he wasn't producing, and the Giants traded him to the Mets.

Jimmy (20:14):
Unthinkable, right?
Just like 18 months.

Michael (20:16):
Well, that's where I stopped listening to baseball.
I was so horrified.
But he had two mediocre seasons, and kind of went out, you know.
It wasn't the old Willie Mays anymore.
I mean, they're both justifiable.
It's kind of weird to see who makes the decision.

Harold (20:35):
Right, and we just mentioned that Gary Larson, who had his amazing 10-year run on the far side, just said, okay, I'm done.
And he had no more to say.
I mean, his style of humor, like Schulz's, was widely imitated.
And when his strip went away, I don't know how many panel strips and regular strips came in to fit that space because it was one of the top strips.

(21:02):
And in 10 years, it just zoomed up to the top.
And yet, you know, it created this huge hole because people loved that style of humor.
They've not seen that style of humor in comics before.
And all of these people who loved far side, including cartoonists, were like, wait a second, he's going away?
It's not gonna be continued.
You know, back in the day, far side would have been continued by another cartoonist because the cartoonist wouldn't have had the power to say it ends here.

(21:27):
Right.
And we're also gonna see the same thing with Bill Watterson very shortly, where his amazing run is over.
And that, in the 10, pretty much 10 years as well, right?
And to Schulz, that's unthinkable.
You know, there's the piece where he knows that this whole industry is on top of him and people are expecting things of him and if he goes away, that's going to affect the syndicate and it's going to affect his, you know, animation buddies and all of this.

(21:56):
You know, he's got this whole machine that he's a part of, that he's kind of tried to shield himself from in some ways so he can do the strip.
But I don't think that's ultimately it.
I think it's because, yeah, I think he does feel compelled to continue to express himself through this as long as he possibly can.

(22:16):
And he's, yeah, he's not a quitter.
It's like Charlie Brown.
He's going to keep going back and going back and going back to the bat.
Absolutely.

Jimmy (22:26):
Did we hear how the Marx brothers ended?
They're doing, you know, it was a night in Casablanca, and it's just Harpo and Groucho, and they're hanging off the end of a fake plane, trying to get this shot.
Groucho just looks over at Harpo and says, had enough?
And Harpo goes, yep.

Michael (22:48):
And then there's people like Steve Ditko, where you kind of wish he stopped, you know, 30 years before.
It's just sad.
I don't know.
I mean, we're dealing with somebody who didn't want to quit for whatever reason, but if you think of a legacy, I don't know if that's the way to go.

Jimmy (23:09):
Yeah, I think he's so unique.
And it's also like the Willie Mays thing is that their legacy was already untarnishable.
I think it's more for like, like if I go back to the baseball thing, my favorite current player is Andrew McCutcheon, and he might get into the Hall of Fame, right?
But he might not.
I see the impulse for him to keep going more than I would for Willie Mays or Charles Schulz or something like that.

(23:35):
If that makes any sense, you know what I mean?

Harold (23:37):
Well, it seems like the legacies in terms of somebody who goes on beyond what the general public would say was their peak, it seems like, yeah, you're not tarnished by continuing.
You'll be remembered for the parts you did.
Unless somebody interprets you changing as a person.

Jimmy (23:54):
Yes.

Harold (23:55):
And then you become somehow that tarnishes what happened in the past because you wound up in a place that someone doesn't like.

Jimmy (24:02):
The Al Capp situation.

Harold (24:03):
Al Capp, yeah.
Al, incredible satirist.
He shifts his political leanings, and so certain people who were like, yeah, I'm with you, I'm with you, I'm with you.
All of a sudden, he's dealing with hippies in this conservative old man way, and they're like, oh, you lost it.
Therefore, Li'l Abner doesn't have the reputation in my mind, let's say, that you would have had if you had continued up through, say, the 50s.

(24:30):
Right.

Jimmy (24:31):
But the funny thing about Capp is he would say he didn't change, that everybody else changed.

Harold (24:35):
Right.
Yeah, the world changed around him, and there's some truth to that.

Jimmy (24:37):
Sure, there is.
There's a lot of difference between the New Deal and the 1968 Democratic Convention, right?
I mean, that's a world's apart.
So I have sympathy for that too.
It's getting older.

Harold (24:49):
Right, yeah.

Jimmy (24:52):
January 10th, Snoopy's talked in with Charlie Brown.
Snoopy's got a little night cap on, which is available.
Charlie Brown has some books he's going to...
He's giving Snoopy the option of reading.
And Charlie Brown says, Well, what shall we read tonight?
Gone with the Beagle, the Maltese Beagle, or Snow White and the Seven Beagles.

(25:12):
And in the last panel we see Snoopy is immediately asleep.
And Charlie Brown says, We never get past the third Beagle.
I picked this one because of that last drawing of Snoopy.
We've never seen...
That is just weird that we've never seen that angle, to my knowledge, of Snoopy in whatever it is now, 15,000 comic strips.

Harold (25:37):
With his head straight up against the pillow when we're looking at him straight on.
What's kind of weird is you look at it from the side and it's almost like that's his closed eye with his nose and he just has his two ears splayed out in both directions.

Michael (25:52):
Little goatee there.

Harold (25:55):
That's funny.
A little Escher Snoopy.

Jimmy (25:58):
Yeah.

Michael (25:59):
Wow.

Jimmy (25:59):
Or you zoom in really, really close.
It's an alien with arms and that like the nose on the top is his eye.

Michael (26:06):
I see a pear with a couple of leaves.

Liz (26:09):
Is it a shmoo?

Michael (26:11):
Could be a shmoo.

Harold (26:13):
There's a little Abner for you.

Jimmy (26:17):
The other thing I do like about it is Snoopy tucked in with the nightcap.

Harold (26:23):
I just think Andy when I see these versions of Snoopy with his owner.
Absolutely.

Jimmy (26:31):
January 18th, Sally is writing away at the table and Charlie Brown is watching her and he says, When I write a paper, I try to show the teacher that she has somehow enriched my experience.
Then we see what Sally has written, which is, this is my report on the dumb field trip we took yesterday.
In the last panel, Charlie Brown says, Then again, what do I know?

(26:53):
Sally says, How can I write when you're talking?
I love that Sally is still sticking it to the man and speaking her truth.
I also think in some level, these teachers in the Peanuts World deserve it.

Harold (27:15):
Here's this Charlie Brown, the philosophical Charlie Brown that seems like we're seeing more and more of, where he's speaking a wisdom that people could agree with or has some insight, like, oh yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
Then he undermines it through Sally.
But he seems to be giving a dignity to Charlie Brown in these final years, that he's never quite had before.

(27:37):
He's kind of grown into this character emeritus.
He's given this honor by Schulz.

Jimmy (27:47):
Well, there's definitely a feeling of the aging patriarch of the family giving advice, which everyone is free to ignore.
Because it's not, and that's totally fine, which I like.
I like that Charlie Brown does not get upset about the fact that Sally's a merchant.

Michael (28:08):
What do I know?

Jimmy (28:11):
And this continues on January 19th.
Charlie Brown is in the old beanbag chair watching some TV, and Sally comes in and says, my teacher's mad at me.
She's mad because I called our field trip dumb.
And Charlie Brown says, what are you going to do?
And then Sally says, I'm trying to figure out how I can put the blame on you.
And of course, Charlie Brown sinks into the bean bag chair and his food go flying up.

Michael (28:35):
I don't think that response is worthy of actually flipping over.
You flip over when, like, I mean, that's like the classic comic strip thing when you're really like freaked out and surprised.
Is that a surprise?

Harold (28:53):
To me, it's like he's sinking because, you know, Sally is just so off base here.
I mean, Charlie Brown could have said in panel two, I told you so.
And instead, she's turning completely against him.
Like, you know, you gave me the good idea, but I'm still trying to find out how I could blame you.

(29:15):
You know, that to me is possibly sinking into the beanbag chair worthy because it's such, it's such the opposite of what Sally should be doing, right?

Jimmy (29:28):
Right.
Right.
Because she also, she is so adamant that she wanted to express that thing.
If the field trip was dumb, she should own it.
No, ma'am, I'm sorry.
The field trip was dumb, you know?

Harold (29:41):
Right.

Jimmy (29:42):
I don't know who complains about a field trip.

Michael (29:45):
Yeah, it was an excuse to get out of class.

Jimmy (29:46):
To get out of class, come on.
There's no such thing as a dumb field trip.
January 29th, it's a Sunday and we start with Snoopy lying atop what looks like a, what is he lying atop?
A bag of dog food.
I guess.

(30:07):
Oh yeah, it's a bag of dog food.
All right.
Snoopy is lying atop a bag of dog food.
And in the next panel we cut and it's Charlie Brown and the World War I flying ace doing something.
Turns out they're shopping.
And Charlie Brown says, over here.
And now we can see a little bit more.
There's bags of pet food everywhere in this little store.
And Charlie Brown's speaking to the cashier saying, yes, sir, we're looking for a bag of dog food.

(30:31):
And then he's perusing a pile of them and says, for puppies, no, you're not a puppy anymore.
And he's looking at some other bags and reading the description of them and sees light, active, adult, young adult, mature dogs, old dogs, golden years dogs.
But Snoopy, from the other side of the panel, spies exactly what he's looking for and says, here we are.

(30:56):
And then Charlie Brown takes that to the cashier saying, yes, sir, this one.
As they walk out of the pet store, Charlie Brown says, I didn't know they had a brand for dogs who understand a little French and flew during World War I.
And Snoopy concludes with, I've learned to become a smart shopper.

Michael (31:15):
I refuse to accept this.

Harold (31:19):
Why is that?

Michael (31:20):
I will not accept that there is a bag of dog food like that.
I'm sorry, it just strains the bounds of what I will accept in a comic strip.

Harold (31:30):
This is a step too far, huh?

Michael (31:32):
Yeah.

Harold (31:34):
I love reading the things that Schulz takes the time to put on the sides of these bags.
It's like chow, vitamin plus, active puppy.

Jimmy (31:46):
Alert, everyone is right.
Oh, look at that one with a little face of the puppy on it.
I didn't even notice that until I zoomed in real close.

Harold (31:53):
But the thing I didn't notice, apparently they're in the grocery store and this is just the dog food section.
They sell magazines and look at what the magazine title is.
Talk about the old guy griping about the state of the world.
Trash magazine is being sold at the checkout.

Jimmy (32:15):
Oh man, that's funny.
That alone is worth zooming in for.
Good old trash magazine.
Now we long for the days of the high journalistic standards of trash magazine.
February 3rd, Rerun and Lucy are sitting in a chair at the Van Pelt household and Rerun says to Lucy, my snowman melted, I'll never see him again.

(32:46):
Lucy says to Rerun, you must have been very close.
Then Rerun says, I was with him when he melted.
That made me burst out laughing.
I just picture the whole scene of Rerun comforting his dying snowman and I just found it really, really funny.

(33:07):
That's all I have to say about it.

Harold (33:08):
It's a great expression of Lucy in that third panel.
How do you describe what that look is?

Jimmy (33:13):
Yeah, she's shocked by his statement, but again, he's still able to do that.
It's the exact same face that's in the panel previous to it with Lucy, but somehow this one is surprised and the second one isn't.

Harold (33:35):
She's like halfway between consideration and judgment.

Jimmy (33:39):
Yeah, right.

Harold (33:40):
Or concern or empathy.
There's a lot going on in those little lines.

Jimmy (33:45):
It's that moment of whatever it is clicking in her brain that she's reacting.
We're seeing almost like her pre-verbal reaction.

Harold (33:54):
Yeah.
I love that drawing of Lucy.
And the rerun where he's just kind of, he's slumped off to the side slightly.
This one didn't make me laugh.
It moved me, actually.
Because there's this little rerun character I'm getting to know, and he's obviously a sensitive soul.
And yeah, that was like, oh my goodness, this poor kid.

Jimmy (34:17):
So funny.
That's the difference between Harold and I.
Harold's like, oh, and I'm like, ha!
February 6th, Charlie Brown's still in the beanbag chair watching TV, and Sally says to him, no one ever asks me when I think about something.
So Charlie Brown asks, well, what do you think about something?
And Sally replies, who knows?

(34:40):
Very Sally.
Is that all we have to say about that one?
Did I pick that one?

Michael (34:43):
Very Sally.
I picked it probably because it's very Sally.
Oh wait, I didn't pick it.
Yes, I did.
Because it's very Sally.

Jimmy (34:51):
It's a great portrait of a little kid who wants to be included, especially I think in grown up conversations and stuff like that, but really doesn't have anything to contribute.

SPEAKER_7 (35:02):
Very cute.

Jimmy (35:04):
All right.
So how about we take a break right here and then come back on this side.
We'll answer the mail, talk about some more comic strips, hang out and have fun.
Sound good?

SPEAKER_7 (35:14):
Yep.

Jimmy (35:15):
Groovy.
See you on the other side.

Liz (35:18):
Hi, everyone.
We love it when you write or call to tell us how much you enjoy the show.
But don't just tell us, tell your friends, tell complete strangers, share your appreciation in a review.
It doesn't have to be on Apple podcasts.
Sixty percent of you listen on other apps.
Some of those apps have review sections.

(35:38):
Think of all the poor Peanuts fans out there who haven't found us yet.
There are review instructions on our website at unpackingpeanuts.com/spread the word.
Thank you for your support.
And now let's hear what some of you have to say.

Jimmy (35:55):
Okay, we're back.
Kayla's hanging out in the old mailbox.
Do we got anything?

Liz (35:59):
We do.
We got some emails and some voicemails.
Joanne Rubenstein wrote to us and said, hi all, listening to the 94 part four podcast reminded me of a framed poster hanging in a physical therapy office that I often walk past.
It has Lucy teeing up the football, Charlie Brown getting ready to kick and the words never ever give up.

(36:26):
Needless to say, I would never go there if I was in need of treatment.
Your long time listener, Joanne Rubenstein.

Harold (36:36):
That's so funny, we were just talking about Charlie Brown not being a quitter and Charles Schulz not being a quitter on his trip.

Jimmy (36:43):
Sometimes you got to know when to quit.

Harold (36:48):
That poster doesn't sell as much.

Jimmy (36:52):
It's e-motivational.

Harold (36:53):
Who's going to put that up in their office?

Jimmy (36:57):
It's just a picture of Woodstock.
Have you ever considered you're past your brime?

Harold (37:01):
Yeah, it's like those motivational posters with one word, you just have failure.

Jimmy (37:08):
Done.
That's funny.
Thank you for writing.

Liz (37:16):
Shayna Hickey writes, she says, she wants us to know there are still FYE stores, one at Singing Hills Mall in Sioux City, Iowa.

Harold (37:26):
Go FYE.

Liz (37:27):
She wishes she had known they were selling the Linus blanket.
She would have loved to have had one.

Jimmy (37:33):
Well, I think you could probably go into it.
I assume this FYE is still having whatever stock it had in the 90s.

Liz (37:42):
Just there.

Harold (37:44):
Well, that's impressive that they've hung in there.
I guess they've been shifting their stock around a little bit to keep people coming in.

Jimmy (37:50):
I guess that's cool, though.
Way to go FYE.

Liz (37:56):
Barbara Castleson has been reading ahead.

Jimmy (38:01):
Is she allowed to do that?
I don't know.
I don't think I authorized that.

Michael (38:06):
All right.

Jimmy (38:06):
Well, you're on notice, Barbara.

Liz (38:08):
Well, she is Aziza's grandmother, so we give her an extra-

Jimmy (38:12):
Oh, then she's allowed.

Michael (38:13):
Okay.

Liz (38:13):
Dispensation.
Anyhow, she writes, I had to go hunting for Charles Schulz's last Sunday strip.
Listening to the boys and checking out that strip, I got a bit teary.
I could almost hear Schulz's voice in the goodbye message.
The podcast was right.
No other cartoonist that I'm aware of has impacted the culture the way he did, and thence was celebrated so widely and later missed by millions.

Harold (38:42):
Yeah.

Liz (38:42):
Absolutely.

Harold (38:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is a moving strip.

Jimmy (38:47):
For sure.

Liz (38:48):
But we're not there yet.

Michael (38:49):
It might end differently this time.

Jimmy (38:53):
My dad used to say that to me all the time.
I watched the karate kid like thousands of times.
He goes, you know, he wins this time too.

Liz (39:03):
Well, nobody else read ahead.
We'll get there.
We'll get there.
Okay.
Then we heard from regular contributor Sawyer Honeycutt.
Hello.
It's Sawyer Honeycutt.
And I just wanted to make a comment about how y'all have been talking about in the 80s when Garfield became a big part of the 80s and was a contender with peanuts.

(39:34):
Well, it's 2025.
And the only thing that Garfield had so far is a movie in 2024.
But I don't really see people wearing Garfield shirts, Garfield hoodies, Garfield hats, or any of that.
I see people wearing peanut hats and hoodies and shirts.

(40:00):
And I even just recently bought a pair of peanut Chuck Taylor Converse.
So that's just going to show you the longevity and the popularity of peanuts.
Well, have a good day and be a good cheer.
And Jimmy, I just didn't want you to worry.

Harold (40:23):
Well, I can certainly speak for being somebody around when Garfield was really in the early 80s, becoming a phenomenon.
The little Garfield dolls were everywhere.
They were a phenomenon.

Jimmy (40:37):
Especially the one that was stuck to the car window.

Harold (40:40):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it was like it was Garfield.
And then I think the next huge thing was Bart Simpson.
You know, he owned the Decade and those paperback, Boblog paperback books like his 38th book or whatever.
For years, those were massive bestsellers.
And even Odie was doing pretty well.

(41:01):
I had an Odie and a Garfield.
It was a big deal at the time, a really big deal.
That's my recollection of Garfield.
But yeah, he doesn't have the physical presence even though, like you say, there's a major motion picture.
I haven't seen tons of Garfield merchandise, which is kind of interesting.

(41:21):
You think that they take advantage of that to put it out again because it has such an amazing history as merchandise.

Jimmy (41:29):
You know the story of how Bill Murray ended up playing Garfield?
Okay.
Well, the guy who directed the Garfield movies, name is either Joel or Ethan Cohen, as in the Cohen brothers, and Bill Murray thought it was those Cohen.
Oh, no.
And didn't know.

Liz (41:49):
Yeah.

Harold (41:51):
Oh, my.

Jimmy (41:52):
That is, he's legendary for not having a manager or an agent.
And, you know, that comes with a downside.
In that, you accidentally become Garfield.

Harold (42:04):
Wow.
That's amazing.

Michael (42:06):
Yeah.

Harold (42:06):
That's amazing.
Well, I guess I know who to change my name to the next time.

Michael (42:11):
It's paid off for me.

Liz (42:16):
Right.

Harold (42:20):
This is Steve Spielberg.

Michael (42:23):
Michael Cohen.
Everybody knows him.

Harold (42:27):
Yeah.

Michael (42:27):
Right.

Liz (42:29):
And finally, we heard from Jason.

SPEAKER_7 (42:33):
Hi.
It's Jason calling again.
I know it's been a while, but I know how you get worried, Mike.
Well, before we close out the second to last five-year period of Peanuts, there's a strip you missed in the last 1992 episode that you did.
It says so in the email, but I wanted to give my take on it.

(42:54):
So you put the music in post, we'll get going here.
August 9th.
This is 1992, by the way.
Snoopy and Charlie Brown are all on the golf course.
Charlie Brown is carrying the bag.
He's being the caddy, of course, and Charlie tells Snoopy, You're lucky you don't have to wear golf shoes.
And with that, Snoopy and Charlie Brown make their way to the first hole, like they're in a big golf tournament, because we see a good many Snoopys in the gallery.

(43:22):
Some are smiling, some have neutral looks on their face, and there's various angles.
Looking at Snoopy as he's teeing off at the first hole, and then there's a box that says, as he prepared to tee off in the last tournament of the year, he was surprised at how many friends and relatives were in the gallery.
Well, that's my take on that strip.

(43:44):
Thanks again for the podcast, and as always, be of good cheer.
Bye now.

Michael (43:48):
Hey, thank you.
I remember doing that.
Selecting it or-
At least I was never prepared to say something, because I thought-

Harold (43:56):
Yeah, we must have skipped-

Michael (43:57):
My comment would have been that they're kind of cheap in Snoopy because there's like thousands of them.
He's not unique.

Jimmy (44:04):
That would be close to 90, I think he drew.

Harold (44:07):
Here's my theory from this strip.
Schulz was looking at a model sheet for animation because you have to turn the character, and that gave him the idea.
What's really fascinating, Liz, if you are at all interested in the looks of Snoopy, check out the August 9th, 1992.
Thank you for reminding us that we did skip over this, because it just happens every once in a while.

(44:29):
We did select it, but we didn't talk about it.
I find it most, other than it's just a strange strip, looking at all of the Snoopies looking at Snoopy from different angles, you get to see Schulz's attempt to transition from the head on in the middle to the famous Snoopies looking at an angle, and how there's no in between there.

(44:58):
There's no subtlety from the head on version of Snoopy and the three-quarters view.
So all you can do is move the eyes a little bit to the left or to the right to make it look like all of them are looking at Snoopy in the bottom middle.
And that's just fascinating because you can see the animator's dilemma right here.
How do we transition the Snoopy who only exists in certain poses that people recognize?

(45:22):
That's what's fascinating to me here other than how strange this strip is.
There's no real comedy here.
I think he's trying to...
Maybe he's got a friend he wants to send a strip to.
I don't know who was involved in something he was involved in.
But it's a very, very unusual strip in terms of just being a peanut strip.
You don't see these things very often.

Jimmy (45:43):
Just the composition of all the Snoopies.
It's like a pile of Snoopies, but not a pile of Snoopies.
It's like the Sergeant Pepper Collage or something like that.
It doesn't look quite real.

Liz (45:52):
It's like a landscape.

Jimmy (45:53):
Within the context.
Yes, it is like a landscape, very much like a mountain.

Harold (45:58):
Yeah, he has grass in front of them.
So it looks like they're in a flat plain and yet they're not.
They're moving all the way up to the, and yet they're above Snoopy.
So they seem to be, it's very interesting composition.

Jimmy (46:11):
Well, thank you for drawing our attention to that, redrawing our attention to that.

Liz (46:17):
So that's it for the mail and the hotline.

Harold (46:21):
Yeah, and I wanted to throw in that one of our listeners, David Schaer, was just over at the Schulz Museum, and he got to see the exhibits there, including the new Zip-A-Tone exhibit, which we would recommend you check out.
We were excited to hear that the Schulz Museum was doing a thing on Zip-A-Tone.
It's been a big part of our podcast for the last few years.

(46:43):
And I asked David if he would send me some photographs that he had taken, because I was fascinated to see, you know, what does a Zip-A-Tone look like on an actual piece of original art?
And we're just seeing it either black or white, but there's some subtleties here and it can age the strip, make it, you know, yellow and all that.
I was really interested to see what they look like in 2025.

(47:07):
He was very kind to send some photos, which we will possibly use as a bit of conversation in a future episode.
So stay tuned.

Jimmy (47:17):
We did get one other thing to the hotline from a friend of the show, cartoonist Todd Webb, who has taken up Michael's challenge of Schulzifying Catcher in the Rye.
He had, it's brilliant.
It's a, he's created a little mini comic, not, you know, just a fan product, nothing commercially available, but he's recreated peanuts strips and panels using lines from Catcher in the Rye.

(47:45):
It's super cool.
He's calling it Charlie in the Rye.
And I'll make, I'll send Liz some of the pictures he sent me and I'm sure we can put them somewhere.

Liz (47:54):
That sounds great.

Jimmy (47:56):
All right.
What do you say we get back to the old strips?
February 14th.
It's a daily strip and Charlie Brown is lying in his bed at night and he has been going to dance lessons.
So this is a sequence where good old Chuck has been taking some Arthur Murray dance lessons and he's now lying in bed reflecting on one of the students and he says to himself, sometimes it's nice to lie in bed and think of something wonderful that's happened to you.

(48:26):
And then we see just an echoing photocopied repeat of the little girl named Emily saying to Charlie Brown at the dance class, hi, my name is Emily.
Would you like to be my dance partner?
And we see that again and again and again.
That is what Charlie Brown is thinking about.

Michael (48:43):
This is one of the cruelest things Schulz ever did.

Jimmy (48:47):
Pretty wild.

Michael (48:47):
The sequence.

Harold (48:48):
Why is that?

Michael (48:49):
It was stunning.
I mean, it reveals him to be, first of all, insane.

Jimmy (48:55):
Completely insane or haunted by maybe, that girl died 15 years ago.
It's that kind of situation.

Liz (49:04):
Well, that's not going to mean anything to people who haven't read up to this and after.

Michael (49:09):
I thought everybody was reading everything like we were.

Jimmy (49:12):
You better be.
So basically, what happens here, well, coming up next is, well, the sequence is Charlie Brown is advised by Lucy to take some dancing lessons because even if he still had no friends, he'd be somewhat no friends who had danced.

Harold (49:30):
That's worth a nickel.

Jimmy (49:31):
Yeah.
So he goes to this Arthur Murray-style place, and this little girl named Emily asks him to dance, and this is what he's thinking about.
But, well, Michael, tell him what happens next.

Michael (49:44):
He sort of is nervous about going back to the dance studio and seeing her again, and then he discovers that this girl never existed.
There was no one at the dance studio with this name, which means he hallucinated the entire thing.

Jimmy (50:01):
Or a ghost.

Michael (50:02):
Or a ghost.

Harold (50:05):
Or only he remembers.

Jimmy (50:07):
Yeah.
It's very, very, like, spooky and uncanny sequence.

Harold (50:17):
Yeah.
And it's interesting.
We've seen so much of Charlie Brown lying alone at night in his bed saying, why?
Or, you know, why are things this way?
And then a voice says to me, and there just these really sad moments.
And this is this one panel, essentially strip of him with a big smile on his face in bed is quite a shocker.

Jimmy (50:41):
Yeah.

Harold (50:42):
It takes me back.
When I was in junior high school, I think it was eighth grade, they had a thing in Columbia, Missouri called a cotillion.
And I don't know how you got on this thing or how you got to be a part of it.
But you had to dress up and you went for, I don't know, it was like eight weeks of these dance things.
And everyone was signed up and you're learning how to dance.
And you would take turns squaring off with a different partner.

(51:05):
And there was a particular little girl in a pink dress who I'll never forget.
Because in eighth grade, you're not, at least I wasn't, dancing with someone, certainly not holding their hand and the hand on the waist and all of that.
And how electric that was.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, my gosh, this was like the first time and I couldn't get this girl out of my mind.

(51:28):
And it was kind of like Charlie Brown, it was probably one of the first or second of these events.
I never ever got her as a partner again.
But I was like Charlie Brown, I was hoping I get a chance to dance with her.

Michael (51:44):
Well, this sequence makes me think that he never did hit a home run.
I think he elucidated that too.

Jimmy (51:51):
He elucidated that.

Harold (51:55):
Yeah, it's a strange mixture of growth and strange, strangeness.

Jimmy (52:04):
Well, here's what I want to know, and I'm only looking at this from Go Comics.
So maybe it looks different in the book.
But I'm assuming he photocopied the zippotone on Emily's hair when he's repeating this panel over and over again.
And I'm assuming that didn't work.
Because you can't really do that.

Harold (52:25):
I've got the book here.
Let's see.

Jimmy (52:27):
Because it would mourn.

Harold (52:28):
And we should also mention that this is his Valentine's Day 1995 strip.
So I'm taking a look here.

Michael (52:36):
Well, you don't think he just photocopied the panel and then shrunk it with the zippotone photocopied?

Jimmy (52:44):
Yeah, that is what I think.
And I think-

Harold (52:47):
Here's my theory.
He knew what he was going to do.
He knew he had a look that he was going for.
And he actually went on and had a photostat made, which was much crisper because they look fine in the book.

Jimmy (52:59):
Or Phanagraphics cleaned it up.

Harold (53:02):
You can't clean up zippotone.
No, I mean-
Can you imagine?

Jimmy (53:06):
Well, yeah, you replace it entirely.

Harold (53:08):
That's how you would clean it up.
No, this looks like the same.
Because you know how unique each of the zippotone things, it's not just following lines.
So I don't think it's-
I think he didn't do it more than once, or nobody did it more than once because it's super consistent.
So it must have been a photostat, because those were before photocopies, they were expensive.

(53:31):
I mean, for someone like me as an artist, that might have cost him $40 to go somewhere in Santa Rosa where the newspaper was and say, hey, can you take shots of this?
Or maybe you sent it to United Feature.

Liz (53:42):
Or at this point, he had a photostat booth in his studio.

Jimmy (53:46):
Phanagraphics could replace zippotone in all the strips easily.

Harold (53:49):
I don't think you can do that as easily as you're saying.

Jimmy (53:51):
Well, Sean Robinson can do it from Living the Line Publishing, and you can find his entire...
On a moment of cerebus.com, you can find his essays on how he restores old zippotone art.
And it is...
He replaces all of the tone with clean tone across the board.
And it's stunning.

Harold (54:11):
It's absolutely stunning.

Jimmy (54:14):
February 24th, Snoopy is atop the dog house and he's looking down.
And then the next panel, we see Woodstock has shoots up in the air from off panel, off the bottom of the panel.
And then Snoopy's eyes go up and watch that.
And then we see in the other panel, Snoopy's eyes are back down on the ground because Woodstock has obviously succumbed to gravity.

(54:34):
And then the next panel, Woodstock is shooting back up into the sky.
And Snoopy says, you like the new trampoline?

Michael (54:40):
I think it was a real classic.
Just so put as opposed to that last one, which was like this cluttered, who knows what it was.
Just so simple.

Liz (54:53):
Yep.

Jimmy (54:54):
Very simple, very clean, perfect compositions.

Harold (54:58):
Yeah, we might mention that Woodstock is horizontal to the ground as he shoots up two different directions in panels two and four, which is this really stiff little Woodstock, which is really fun.

Jimmy (55:13):
That's the only Woodstock we picked for this whole episode.
There was not much Woodstock in the air.

SPEAKER_2 (55:20):
Interesting.

Jimmy (55:22):
February 26th.
It's a Sunday.
We start with a symbolic panel of Charlie Brown's face on a kite and a big bite taken out of one of the corners of the kite.
And then Charlie Brown takes that kite outside.
Thank you, Charlie Brown, for letting me watch you fly your kite, says Rerun as Charlie Brown is getting things set up to try to fly it.
And then we see Charlie Brown and Rerun passing the kite-eating tree, which is a big grin on his face.

(55:47):
And Charlie Brown sort of ignores it, but then says to Rerun, I'm glad to have you along, Rerun.
It's going to be fun.
And then in the next panel, we see Charlie Brown has the kite up in the air and Rerun is following him.
And Rerun looks delighted at the whole thing.
But then, of course, it's Charlie Brown.
So in the next panel, we see the kite has come crashing to the ground or presumably into the tree.

(56:08):
And then, we cut to Rerun at home, explained to his sister Lucy, I just saw the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
Charlie Brown's kite got caught in a tree and the tree ate his kite.
It was terrible.
Rerun contemplates this for a moment and then says, maybe it's wrong to bring a kite into the world the way things are today.

Michael (56:29):
What was wrong with the way things were in 1995?
It seemed kind of idyllic looking back on it.

Jimmy (56:37):
Yeah, no, it's clearly 1995 was the peak of Western civilization.
Everything starts going really wrong the next year.
But you never know that in the moment.
Do you know the good days when they are here or just when you're back thinking about them?

Harold (56:56):
It sounds like a sitcom, the opening.

Jimmy (57:01):
One that was canceled after 13 years.

Harold (57:04):
So Schulz took your note there in that panel there where Charlie Brown says, I'm glad to have you along, rerun.
It's going to be fun.
So I'm guessing he probably got some letters about that previous one saying, I really like that Linus strip you did.
And he's like, Linus?

Jimmy (57:23):
Yeah.
I was thinking about this.
If I was Schulz editor, how would I handle that?
And I think what I would do is call him.
Yeah.
Well, kid gloves.
And here's how you do it.
Oh my God, Sparky.
I just read your lightest batch of strips.
They are brilliant.
This one's really funny.
It's Charlie Brown and Linus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

(57:43):
And then he would know that, oh, yep, see?
It's all compliments.
You didn't criticize them once.

Harold (57:51):
Yeah, and then you get fired because you can't tell who Linus and Rerun is.

Jimmy (57:56):
Either way.

Harold (57:57):
How can you be my editor?

Jimmy (57:58):
Oh, then I, well, then it would go like this.
Oh, I can tell Sparky, I can tell, but it's your fragile ego that's making me lie about it.

Liz (58:07):
Tell me how.

Harold (58:10):
That's where the diplomacy really kicks in.

SPEAKER_2 (58:12):
Yeah.

Harold (58:14):
Well, this is the other thing.
I don't know if it's because Linus and Rerun look so much alike that Schulz does not like to put the two together very much.
But Charlie Brown becomes the big brother to Rerun.
Linus is AWOL with his little brother.
It's Charlie Brown who's engaging with him.

Jimmy (58:32):
I love the panel of them running with Charlie Brown with the kite in the air.
That's a great drawing and a great panel.
Again, now we see it feels like the tremor is under control.

Michael (58:43):
Yeah.
I think it was just a bad day.

Jimmy (58:47):
Bad day.

Harold (58:47):
Maybe.
That's wild.

Jimmy (58:51):
March 9th, and here we see Charlie Brown and Rerun again.
Charlie Brown is teaching Rerun how to play marbles because back 18 months ago when Charlie Brown was a kid, marbles were a thing.
The timeline works really wonky in Peanuts.
So anyway, Charlie Brown is explaining it to Rerun.
Put the marble in your fingers like this and then flip it with your thumb.

(59:15):
Rerun tries this and goes rats, doesn't work.
And then Rerun looks forlornly at the marble on the ground and says, why is everything in life so hard?

Michael (59:26):
I think this is a good direction to go for Rerun.

Harold (59:30):
What do you like about it?

Michael (59:32):
I like the fact that the total frustration with when you enter the world where everything, you know, just walking is a huge challenge.
And being frustrated about it, whereas most trips would portray kids at this age just, you know, running around enjoying life.
He seems kind of like his big brother, sort of pondering.

Harold (59:58):
Yeah, I like the personality that's coming out here in Rerun.
He's a sensitive soul.

Michael (01:00:05):
And when did people stop playing marbles?

Jimmy (01:00:07):
I still had marbles when I was little, really little, probably the late 70s.
But I was just a kid that liked old things like that.
I don't think I ever had a kid, well, no, I guess Marnie might have played marbles with me a few times, but it was not a thing by that point.

Harold (01:00:24):
I had a bag of marbles that I don't know where I got them from.
I never knew that, you know, you're supposed to put a ring of a circle around and then knock them out with the other marbles.
And then you get to keep the marbles of whoever's, you know, wins the match.
That was not in my experience.
I didn't know that's what you did with the marbles.

Michael (01:00:44):
Why don't they come back?

Harold (01:00:47):
Maybe they will.

Jimmy (01:00:48):
On an app?

Michael (01:00:49):
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:00:50):
Just want to play marbles on your phone.
You know, although Rerun is playing the easy version, the hard version is knuckles down, which means you have to put your hand on the ground while you're flipping the marble.
And it gives, yeah, that's for your hardcore marble kids.

Liz (01:01:07):
Wow.

Michael (01:01:09):
I'd like to play marbles.
Is anybody willing?

Jimmy (01:01:14):
Uh, can you do it through the mail like chess?

Michael (01:01:18):
Yeah.
Marble to zoom.

Jimmy (01:01:25):
All right, we'll work out and see how we could get the Unpacking Peanuts Marble tournament going.
March 25th, Charlie Brown is atop the pitching mound and he's being visited by Schroeder, his catcher, and Lucy, his right fielder.
And Lucy says, hey, pitcher, tell your catcher, I think he's kind of cute.
To which Schroeder says, tell your right fielder, I think she's insane.

(01:01:49):
And then Charlie Brown says, she says she thinks you're kind of cute.
And he says he thinks you're insane.
And Charlie Brown ends with, I'm not a pitcher, I'm a message center.
Just, that is the Schroeder I like.
Schroeder is not trying to be clever or he's just, I think you're insane.

(01:02:10):
I think that's fantastic.
It's very, very Schroeder.

Liz (01:02:14):
Have we seen Lucy loving Schroeder in the last 15 years?

Jimmy (01:02:20):
Not in a while.

Harold (01:02:21):
Yeah, not a lot.

Jimmy (01:02:24):
March 26th, it's a Sunday and Rerun shows up at Charlie Brown's house saying, Hi, it's me again.
And Charlie Brown says, What can I do for you, Rerun?
And Rerun says, Ask your dog if he wants to come out and play.
Tell him we'll run around in circles and roll on the ground and act silly.
And then afterwards, I'll give him a cookie.

(01:02:45):
He yells this to Charlie Brown, who's already gone back inside the house.
And sure enough, Snoopy takes Rerun up on the offer and they're dancing and they're rolling around and laughing and standing on their heads and laughing some more.
And then Rerun holds something out to Snoopy.
But you can't quite tell what it is.

(01:03:06):
And then we hard cut to Snoopy back inside Charlie Brown's house.
Snoopy's in the bean bag watching TV.
Charlie Brown says, What happened?
I thought you were having fun.
And then Snoopy says, The cookie had coconut on it.

Michael (01:03:20):
The dread coconut returns after like 40 years.

Jimmy (01:03:28):
He has been hating on coconut for decades.
That's amazing.

Liz (01:03:33):
Yeah.

Harold (01:03:34):
You know, I'm sure the National Coconut Council probably is like, what will it take?

Jimmy (01:03:38):
What did we do?

Harold (01:03:40):
What will it take for you to stop ragging on coconut?
I love this.
This is the version of Rerun and Snoopy that I got to experience at the very end of the run, where they are just simpatico, having a blast together.
And this is the first time I've seen it.
And I love that Schulz kind of, whether or not he intended to, built it up, where Rerun is not giving up.

(01:04:02):
He keeps showing up at the house and saying, hey, I want to do this with your dog.
I want to do this with your dog.
And Snoopy keeps turning it down.
This time is, I think, the first time that that invitation is actually accepted.
And it's just so fun to watch them have the fun before the coconut incident.

Jimmy (01:04:20):
Before the coconut incident.
Look how tiny Snoopy looks in the second panel on the third tier.
I mean, he just looks tiny, tiny, I think.

Harold (01:04:31):
No?
The little tiny arms, I think, do it, right?

Michael (01:04:35):
Looks like a shmoo.

Jimmy (01:04:37):
Yeah, shmoo again.

Harold (01:04:38):
Here we go again.

Jimmy (01:04:40):
Shultz is bringing back the shmoo.
April 11th, we see a Charlie Brown playing marbles and he's doing it really successfully.
Panel one, plink, he knocks one out of the circle, plink in panel two, plink, plink, plink and then in the last panel, we see the kid he was playing against, the ring has been cleared of marbles and the kid says, who are you, kid?

(01:05:04):
Where do you learn to shoot like that?
Charlie Brown says, cool thumb Brown, just a stranger passing through.

Harold (01:05:13):
Wasn't Lucy the marble king back in the day?
Am I remembering it wrong?
Luck, luck, luck, fool luck.
No, it's Patty.
Patty.
Patty was the-

Jimmy (01:05:20):
Boy, can that girl ever play marbles.

Michael (01:05:22):
Yeah, right.
Yeah, I really like his homage to the American Western in the sequences.
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:05:31):
Now, he had this whole idea, and I assume they did finish it.
My apologies to all the super brand fans out there who know all the specials.
But I think he had this idea as a special, that there was some kid taking on everyone's marbles, and Charlie Brown was like the lone gunslinger who comes in, and defeats the boy.

(01:05:55):
But I don't know if they ever made that or not.
But I know he wanted to make it.

Harold (01:05:59):
I mean, if I were Bill Melendez, I'd be like, give me that one, give me that one.
I want to do that one.
I mean, talk about where Charlie Brown is 45 years into this trip.
He not only is the hero looking after little Rerun, who's not his little brother, he's just the neighborhood kid that is a friend of Charlie Brown's.

(01:06:20):
And Charlie Brown does not like that this other kid is essentially, I think the setup was that this sharpshooter marble kid has come into another neighborhood where nobody knows he's the king of marbles.
And he plays with Rerun and then tells him after the fact that the game was, you lose all your marbles if you lose the game.

(01:06:44):
And so Charlie Brown thinks that that's unjust and he's calling him out for it.

Jimmy (01:06:49):
And he is right, you gotta, if you're playing for keeps, you gotta know that up front.

Harold (01:06:53):
Yeah.
And I mean, of all of the strips that I've seen with Charlie Brown being a hero, this is the cleanest slate Charlie Brown has ever gotten.
He actually is the hero at the end.
He doesn't become the goad.
It doesn't backfire on him.
He doesn't turn like he was hallucinating.
He actually does this for rerun.

Jimmy (01:07:12):
Yeah.

Harold (01:07:13):
And he's the hero.

Michael (01:07:14):
Yeah.

Harold (01:07:14):
I don't think I've seen that before in this strip like this.

Jimmy (01:07:16):
No, because it always gets undercut.

Harold (01:07:18):
And I'm kind of cheering for Charlie Brown because he is a different Charlie Brown in 1995 than he has been in the whole strip.
Schulz gives him this honor.
Maybe he doesn't officially get to kick the football.
We don't know, but he does win a game of marbles to rerun his marbles back.
And I think that's pretty cool.

Jimmy (01:07:37):
I do too.
I agree.

Michael (01:07:39):
There's a reference to Coolhand Luke, a 20-year-old movie at this point.

Jimmy (01:07:47):
Although Coolhand Luke was in the zeitgeist in the 90s because Guns N Roses sampled it in one of their big hits.

Harold (01:07:55):
Yeah, and Clint Eastwood is still a big thing in 1995.

Jimmy (01:07:58):
Yeah, absolutely.
Actually, the whole Western thing was slightly more relevant in the 90s than it was in the 80s, I would think.

Harold (01:08:05):
Yeah, like Unforgiven is not too far off of when this came out and he wins the Oscar and we just lost Gene Hackman, I think, who won the Oscar for his performance in that film.
So yeah, the Eastwood reference is ancient, just like all of mine on this.

Jimmy (01:08:26):
April 16th, Charlie Brown is reading a little book to Snoopy who is lying on his stomach, just in the strangest possible way of listening.
And Charlie Brown says, Chapter two, which way should he run?
This is Charlie Brown continuing to read.
The forest was dark, darker than anything he had ever seen.
At this point, Snoopy is like peaking in over Charlie Brown's shoulder, putting his snout right in the book.

(01:08:52):
Then Charlie Brown is continuing to read saying, then he heard a strange noise.
Now Snoopy is lying right on Charlie Brown's lap.
Suddenly, Charlie Brown continues, now Snoopy is scooching in from the other side.
Then the next panel, Snoopy is actually atop of Charlie Brown's head, saying, suddenly what?
Then Charlie Brown continues reading with Snoopy on his head saying, suddenly the person reading the book couldn't see what he was reading.

(01:09:17):
He's back on the floor just leaning up against Charlie Brown.
He says, sorry, I was worried about what was going to happen to the bunny.

Michael (01:09:25):
It's the bunny oneys.

Jimmy (01:09:27):
It's got to be the bunny oneys, right?

Harold (01:09:29):
Yeah.
Why hasn't this book come out?
Come on.
I love the strip.
This is a Harold strip for sure.
The drawings of Snoopy being so interested are amazing.
I love the fact that he cares about the little bunny in the story so much.

(01:09:51):
He's all over, all over Charlie Brown.

Liz (01:09:53):
But this story doesn't put him to sleep.

Harold (01:09:55):
Right.

Jimmy (01:09:55):
Yeah.
No.
He's invested in it.
That's because you know this is a sweet story presentation because he's riveted to it.

Harold (01:10:04):
Well, again, we're giving Charlie Brown some props for being something good.
He's a good book reader.

Jimmy (01:10:09):
Good reader, yeah.

Michael (01:10:10):
Yeah.

Harold (01:10:11):
Charlie Brown is coming into his own this year like I've never seen before and I love it.

Jimmy (01:10:16):
This strip reminds me, I don't know if you guys ever watched that show, The Good Place with Kristen Bell.

Liz (01:10:20):
Oh, I love that show.

Michael (01:10:22):
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:10:22):
It's great.
I highly recommend it.
Do you remember the episode where she gets an iguana or something as her spirit animal?
And in real life, the iguana just starts crawling all over the actress and up on top of her head and they just keep shooting it, totally deadpan.
No one references the fact that there's this giant lizard crawling all over her.
It's so funny and this reminds me of that and this is also so funny.

(01:10:47):
I love the drawing of Snoopy on Charlie Brown's head.

Harold (01:10:50):
That's great.
That is adorable.
That's one of the cutest Snoopy drawings of all time, which I didn't expect to be saying in 1995.

Jimmy (01:10:58):
Yeah.
Again, now the tremor, I wouldn't even notice it.

Harold (01:11:03):
Right?

Jimmy (01:11:03):
It's a wild thing.
Well, guys, I think that's going to do it for this episode, but we'll be back next week with more from 1995.
If you want to keep this conversation going in the meantime, my gosh, there's a couple of different ways you can do it.
The first thing you want to do is go on over to unpackingpeanuts.com, sign up for the great Peanuts reread.

(01:11:25):
That will give you that one email a month that lets you know exactly what we're going to be covering and when we're going to be covering it.
And of course, you can also just follow us on good old social media.
We're at Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky and YouTube and at Unpacked Peanuts on Instagram and Thres.
We would love to chat with you there.

(01:11:46):
Or you can call our hotline or text our hotline, which is 717-219-4162.
Remember, I worry when I don't hear from you.
And that's me Jimmy worrying when you don't hear.

Michael (01:11:58):
Yeah, I don't care.

Jimmy (01:11:59):
Michael doesn't care.
We want to be clear about that.
All right, guys.
Well, thanks for spending Tuesday with me and my pals again.
This is always so much fun.
We will see you next week.
Until then, for Michael, Harold and Liz, this is Jimmy saying, be of good cheer.

Michael (01:12:22):
Yes.
Be of good cheer.

Liz (01:12:24):
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, Harold Buchholz, and Liz Sumner.
Produced and edited by Liz Sumner.
Music by Michael Cohen.
Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
For more from the show, follow Unpack Peanuts on Instagram and threads.
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube.

(01:12:47):
For more about Jimmy, Michael, and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.

Jimmy (01:12:54):
Groovy.