Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. This is a little something special, a little something extra for you. Hope you're enjoying spooky season. We thought we would just revisit The Great Pumpkin episode. It's been remastered by our fantastic producer, Liz Sumner. We know that our audio wasn't always the best at the very beginning of this thing, but you know, hey, we tried our best.
So we thought we would give you another chance here at Halloween to go along with us through all the strips that were adapted into The Great Pumpkin Halloween special. Joshua Stauffer, our super listener from Lancaster, PA, put together a little PDF document that you can download from our website that you can follow along with, which is his comments on those strips. Yeah, it's fun. I have always loved The Great Pumpkin. I like Halloween. I enjoy this time of year.
Guys, you got anything to add to this before we go back to the classic?
So if you want to see It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown this year. It's behind a paywall. It's on the, is it Apple Plus, is that what it's called?
Yes.
And they have all sorts of new peanuts material as well, this newbie show and a bunch of other things. So it is available and Apple Plus is investing a lot in new peanuts material, so check them out.
Hey, Michael, is there any chance that you're gonna tell us about what horrible thing happened to you at Halloween that you promised you would never tell us?
I've already erased it from my memory banks. It's gone.
All right, so I guess not. So sit back and enjoy a remastering of The Great Pumpkin and Happy Halloween.
The podcast where three cartoonists take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts, by Charles M.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. We have a very special episode for you today. We're talking about The Great Pumpkin. It's that time of year, it's spooky season. The pumpkin lattes are flowing, the leaves are on the ground, and we're all in our very sincere pumpkin patches waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Hope you're doing well. Hope no ghouls and goblins got you. I'm Jimmy Gownley.
I'm your host for today and I'm also the cartoonist behind Amelia Rules, Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up Book, and The Dumbest Idea Ever. Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists. He's a playwright and composer, both for the band Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast. He co-created the first comic book price guide and was the original editor for Amelia Rules.
He's also the cartoonist behind Strange Attractors, Tangled River and A Gathering of Spells, Michael Cohen. And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics and the current creator of the Instagram comic strip, Sweetest Beasts, Harold Buchholz.
Hello.
Well guys, I'm so happy to be here with you today talking about a really iconic part of the Peanuts comic strip and the whole Peanuts brand identity, The Great Pumpkin. I personally was a big Halloween fan growing up. I don't know about you guys, what do you think? How was Halloween for you guys?
Severely traumatized as a kid and I've tried to ignore it ever since.
And you are not prepared to share your traumatizing story?
No. I'll tell you, if we have 1000 people writing in, asking for my story, I will reveal it.
We'll start, what are those petition websites so we can get one of those going?
Yeah, yeah, right, right. So I can come up with 500 fake names, Harold, can you?
Yeah, I think Joseph Stromboli is a good start.
All right, so you're traumatized by it. So you had no enjoyment even later, didn't just ignore it on Halloween?
Always, yes, hated it.
How about you, Harold?
I love the candy, I must admit. We didn't have a whole lot of it in the household except around Halloween time. So it was important to go do the rounds for Halloween. I think the last year I did it, I was 11 years old. And you're like on the cusp, you're like, should I go, should I not go? And I was a paper boy at the time, so I went as a paper boy. I was pretty lame.
So you went as yourself?
They didn't know that. I'm going around at six in the morning. They're not up to see me. So they didn't know if I borrowed the bag.
So you were first off a paper boy. That is the most grueling, unrewarding, why on earth would you be a paper boy?
I wanted to earn some money. It was to have some independence. I split it with my sister and boy, it was rough because we were in one of those sprawling suburban, hilly neighborhoods and boy, we made the mistake of putting the newspaper inside the screen door the first week for everybody. And it's like, then you had to do it. Yeah, so it took a long time. I think, yeah, we earned, it was some crazy small amount.
It was in the under a dollar range probably per person and we were out there for an hour or so. But I did enjoy, I did it for a year. It was a great experience. My dad had been a paper boy. So, it was in the family. He'd always told these crazy stories. So I thought I gotta be a paper boy. So I was kind of proud to be the paper boy in Halloween. But yeah, it was also extremely lazy.
Well, I loved Halloween. I still really like Halloween. I love it. It's a lot less pressure than the other holidays, right? You don't have to worry about anything. If you wanna celebrate, you can. If you don't wanna, there's really no penalty. So I'm a big Halloween fan and I really like The Great Pumpkin special. I think it's one of the handful of really good animated specials. I know Michael has never seen it, but Harold, do you like Great Pumpkin? Are you a fan?
It wasn't my favorite special, but it really was well done. There's no question about it. It's got a really nice atmosphere to it. And it does have some classic strips that I absolutely love. But this is the first time we ever have talked about animation really on the show. Do you want a little kind of background for the audience to understand like how we got to that place?
I would love nothing more. Absolutely.
So there's an amazing book out there. And a lot of what I'm gonna share here is from Charles Solomon's, The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation, Celebrating 50 Years of Television Specials. I think it came out around 10 years ago. I don't know if it's still in print, but it's really good.
And just to give a little bit of background, and what I find fascinating about, thinking of people who have the memories of the specials and have seen them, so many people have mostly experienced peanuts through these things, is that this gives us some insight into Charles Schulz as a collaborator, right? He's known so much for being the amazing artist who would not let anybody touch his strip. Everything was done by Charles Schulz. But in animation, you can't do that.
And I have a background as an animator. I did an award-winning special myself. And I know what 2D animation is like. I taught it at the college level. So when I hear some of the stories of trying to translate Charles Schulz's unique style to animation, I can totally relate. And I've animated Jimmy's stuff as well. And his style is very similar to peanuts. And it was not easy doing some of the animation poses because of similar things to what the animators were up against with Schulz's work.
Because Schulz draws the characters, he sees them, he finds an iconic pose and that's it. And as we know, they don't always match up, right? You know, one pose to another, it works. Everything is so beautiful, but it's not exactly the same thing as the thing that was in the other pose. Certainly Snoopy's like that. But here's some background on just how we got to that. At some point, I think it was the Ford Falcon. This is so funny. So this is the marketer's dream.
Ford is looking for a show to sponsor on television. And who's available but Tennessee Ernie Ford. So come on. You gotta do it. So they actually, I don't know if you guys have ever seen these things at all. I guess, Michael, you haven't, but they used to have some openings for the Tennessee Ernie Ford show that were peanuts. In fact, I think the very first thing that aired was this.
I didn't realize this, but it was, it tied into what ultimately became the commercials that would run outside the show for the Ford Falcon and other Ford brands. And those animations are really interesting to look at because they're the first crack at trying to translate peanuts to television or to the animation. And what's really interesting is them trying to make those moves between Charles Schulz's poses.
They're actually more fully animated in terms of like in between drawings than the specials. But you can check those out on YouTube if anybody wants to kind of take a look at the early, early, early proto peanuts animation. But here's what Schulz said about animation. He told Lee Mendelson, you know the great thing about being a cartoonist is you have 100% control of the comic strip. You are the writer, the producer, the director and stage manager all at once.
So it's scary to turn your characters over to other people in a completely different medium. But the very first person he was paired with was Bill Melendez for these Ford commercials. And so in 1963, about four years later, Mendelson's trying to do this documentary on Schulz. And he says, hey, what if we added a few minutes of animation into this documentary? And Schulz says, well, the guy I trust is Bill Melendez if he wanted to even do it.
And so he got in touch with Melendez and over the course of trying to sell this documentary, they all became kind of friends. And so when I think it was, yeah, it was Mendelson was at some discussion with an executive trying to sell his documentary. And they said, well, how about a Christmas special? And that was the very first thing they did, of course, was the Charlie Brown Christmas. And then they followed that up with Charlie Brown's All-Stars. And then it's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.
And they're working off of crazy low budgets. Bill Melendez said he, I can't remember if it was Hanna or Barbera he called. He'd never done a half hour show. And Melendez himself had started at Disney, but then he moved on to UPA after the great strike at Disney around World War II. And so Melendez knew how to translate like Thurber and these other like cartoonists who have these really unique cartoon styles that are very simple into animation because of his work at UPA.
So he was really kind of perfect for Schulz. And, but he had never done like he'd done commercials and maybe a short or something, but he didn't know what to charge for a TV special. He calls up Hanna Barbera and just says, hey, what should I charge and I can't remember it was Hanna Barbera. He said, I'm sorry, that's a proprietary information. And so Melendez just has to guess and he says, okay, $76,000. And so he goes and makes this thing.
He spends $15,000 or so more than what he had budgeted. He loses his shirt on the thing on the Christmas special. And then he got the call back from Hanna Barbera. The guy said, yeah, you lost your shirt on that, didn't you? Yeah, I said, don't. I was rubbing it in after not helping him at all.
I think it probably worked out okay in the long run.
Yeah, they said between the three of them, Mendelson and Schulz and Melendez, that they probably made about $5 million on that Christmas special. I guess there was a little bit of back end for them. But in any case, you know, The Great Pumpkin is the third of these shows. And unfortunately, still on the $76,000 budget, because I guess they had a deal for one special and up to five more all in the same.
So it's one of those things where Melendez got himself stuck in something, but he wasn't going to give up. So he's having to find ways to really economically animate peanuts, which worked incredibly well because Schulz kind of liked the idea of translating the strip, I think, in a really pure form, and I think they were very good at doing that. And so they had to be super creative. They had to be very limited in what they did. But in doing so, I think they're really true to the peanut strips.
And the way the guys would work, just so people have an idea of how Schulz was involved in this, the three of them, Mendelssohn, Melendez, and Schulz, would get together every so often, and Schulz would create what they said was like 15 to 17 minutes of script or elements, as they would say, because he probably would pull a bunch of old strips from his cache of things. And we could use this, this, and this, and then he's kind of stringing it together.
But he would give Melendez space to add animated elements. So there's some famous scenes where there's really no dialogue. It's not something that he would have done in comics. And this is something that Schulz said, I think the secret of any of these things is to know that you're medium and to stay with it. There are things you can do in a comic strip, which you can't do in any other medium. In animation, we can do things that the comic strip can't do.
And this is what kept Schulz interested in the process. He really was a collaborator in that. And the cool thing was everybody trusted everybody else. They didn't really get into each other's business too much. Although Schulz would come down to the studio sometimes, which I think apparently Melendez had like three homes side by side. And in Los Angeles, it was this kind of homey atmosphere where everyone was working for a number of years.
And Schulz would come, he might look over the shoulder of an animator, and Schulz could be very, very opinionated, right? He's not going to hold back sometimes. And so like he's literally standing behind this animator going, that's wrong, that's off, that's not on model. He would have his input everywhere. And Genie said, Genie Schulz, his second wife said, you know, Schulz would just call up and say, okay, Schulz would know everybody who animated his stuff, right?
He'd know, okay, that's this person, that's this person, that's this person he could tell. And he would sometimes call Bill and say, look, I don't want them on the show anymore, because he just didn't like the looks. So he's involved, right? And that's what's really fascinating to me is, it's such a collaborative process.
And I think given that he wasn't like in the studio every day, his presence is so felt and I think he was so respected that people were trying to be true to what he was going for. And so Schulz, they said he was a generous collaborator, but I do have to share this little story before we can head on into Great Pumpkin Land. There was a story that Lee Mendelson said. He said he was sitting there for the very first special they were going to work on the Christmas special.
And he said up until then, many, if not all animated shows for TV had laugh tracks. And as we were discussing how we would handle the special, I said very casually, I assume we'll have a laugh track. He was a statement, not a question is what Charles Solomon says. And Sparky just gets up and quietly walks out of the room. And then so Melendez and Mendelson look at each other and Bill says, well, I guess we won't have a laugh track.
And then Sparky comes back in the room and says we went on with the meeting as if the subject never came up. That's a good thing. So that's kind of the dynamic. Schulz is involved, but he's obviously incredibly reliant on other people to do that. He did come to really trust Bill Melendez over time. Well, I mean, just, I guess, from the very beginning from the Ford Falcon things.
And even for this Christmas special, Halloween special, Schulz insisted, he says, I keep telling people I don't write for children. I wouldn't know how to write for children. Writing for children is the hardest thing in the world. I wouldn't even attempt it. Right. So Schulz is approaching this as this is, at the very least, for everybody, right? Or maybe, I mean, more for adults and really not kids, if he's saying he wouldn't attempt to write for children.
So that's the context of not only the strip, but these specials, which everybody instantly pegged as children's material. It's animated and it's got kids in it. And that's the background of how those who have experienced The Great Pumpkin, how Schulz was in animation and was involved with the animation. And I'm sure we'll go into more of it once we get around to the Christmas special.
But hopefully, it gives a little bit of context that it's not like Schulz is just licensing this out and he doesn't want to see it, doesn't want to touch it. He's very involved, but in his own unique way.
I have a question. I don't know if you know the answer to. What the hell is a graphic blandisher?
They did talk about that. So this is really interesting.
If you guys don't know, yeah, it's at the end of the credits for Charlie Brown Christmas and this one, and probably a lot of the early ones. Instead of saying animators, they call them graphic blandishers. It's a graphic blandishment by...
That was a Schulz thing and nobody used that, right? Graphic blandishment. And I remember as a kid thinking, boy, that sounds really bland. What these people are doing, it just sounds really, what a boring job. But when I think of Schulz and I think of Schulz trying to present himself as, I am the creator of Peanuts, what he was doing was saying, the important stuff is mine, right?
And then the translation of it, the graphic blandishment, is done by a team of people who are all given credit, but we don't break down what they do. And at some point, I think it was Phil Roman who directed some of the stuff after the fact. I think he said to Bill Melendez, I don't think this is fair to the artists.
Ridiculous, actually.
And so Bill went back to Schulz and kind of explained that these people need a little more specific credit for what they're doing. And Schulz got it. And from then on, they gave the full credits to everybody and broke down, like this person did the backgrounds and this person did the animation in the in-betweens and all that, like you traditionally would do. But I think Schulz was probably very protective of the idea that this was his and the people who were interpreting it were not on his rung.
Now, I think it also may have been that he was trying to give it some dignity, you know, which animators maybe didn't have dignity and that was his way of doing it. But I kind of think he was he was trying to really, you know, put a tear apart.
You know what my thought is? And this is based on nothing. But I bet if you've talked to some people, you would get like a 25 minute discussion on why it's graphic blandishments. And then at the very end, they might say something about union rules that they're trying to get around something somehow. It seems so shady to me. They're not animators, they're blandishers. Look at the title.
Well, having worked on a union TV show, I can say that stuff definitely comes up. But I think this was before there were those protections within the animation union, which was going strong at that time. And Bill Melendez, like I said, he was part of the strike at Disney in the 40s. So if there was a guy who was really for giving everybody their due, I think that was Bill. But he did go along with Schulz on it initially.
I think the way they would put working with Schulz is he's a great collaborator. He'll talk with you. Melendez was the one guy he really would listen to as the kind of the director, really good animator, overseer, really good high spirits guy who could really get a lot out of the out of the cast and the voices and the animators. But Melendez knew if if Schulz dug in on something, you're just not going to get any further. That's it. But let's move on to something else.
Well, they managed to put together a bunch of great little television episodes. I mean, the Peanuts, the Christmas one, rather, is my is my favorite TV show of all time. Really, probably my favorite half hour episode. And I like this one a lot, too.
The book says that the general consensus is that even though people love the Christmas special, that this is the best one. And I could say maybe technically I could see what they're talking about. Certainly Charlie Brown Christmas stands out head and shoulders over the rest. Not just to put down the rest of the Peanuts stuff, but I think it stands out head and shoulders over the rest of television. So I'm not putting down Peanuts. There's just no way to overcome that.
And it's one of those magic things. Yeah, it's one of those magic things in all of this is that they somehow the little limitations and flaws that they were stuck with ended up just becoming a part of the whole that we all love. Yeah.
And there's this amazing creativity in this, because anybody who's experienced that Halloween special, you have to give it a try.
I have a surprise for our audience coming up and also, I guess, for you guys too. We talked about it a little bit. But before I get to that, Michael, having hated Halloween, what is your feeling about The Great Pumpkin strips in general? Does that also go into the general Halloween phobia?
I don't particularly like, not that I don't like them, I like everything Schulz did in this period. It's just the things, the annual things that came about. I can't think of any that I look forward to. I mean, I definitely like the spring training, getting ready for the baseball stuff.
Oh, no, it's not true. How about the leaves? You like the leaves.
I like the leaves. That's seasonal. That's not a holiday.
Well, but it's annual.
Yeah, it's annual. But the Valentine's Day, the Christmas stuff. No, it's not special for me. And yeah, I mean, there are some great Halloween bits, and we're going to be talking about one of them.
It is a weird part of that. I guess the baggage of super success is that eventually he is compelled to do these annual things because people do expect them. And I don't know that it's the most hardcore fans that expect those things. It reminds me a lot, and we talk about The Beatles a lot because it's one of my two or three interests, but you go see Paul McCartney, right?
And yeah, you want to hear Temporary Secretary, you want to hear I'll Follow the Sun or whatever it is, you know, some obscure cut. But he's not going to cut Hey Jude or Live and Let Die. He has to do those because for someone else, it's just their one time to see him. And I guess that's a great problem to have as a creator, to have too much stuff that people want. But yeah, I sort of feel it too.
Maybe because I want it to feel more personal to me, I do tend to look in more the nooks and crannies and corners of peanuts for the stuff that's my absolute favorite. How about you, Harold?
Yeah, well, this made me think of something else. Again, I can't recommend this Charles Solomon book enough. So many great things in there. But one of the things that they said was, they had already thought of the Charlie Browns All-Star. They started working on it before they even knew they were going to get to do another special, so that was kind of a given. That was the next one. But then CBS, this sounds so much like an executive from a network.
So CBS asked for $76,000, a holiday blockbuster. That's what they wanted next. Isn't that creative? Oh, they just had a Hollywood holiday blockbuster with the Christmas special, and so that's what the guy wants to order next, is a holiday blockbuster for $76,000.
One to order.
But the interesting thing is that they quoted, it says, Sparky said without hesitation, hey, The Great Pumpkin, we've got one. So that's how he looked at The Great Pumpkin, is that he had created something that really could be fantastic as an animation and that of all the things that he had done up until the mid-60s, that he felt that that really was an idea that could be expanded on and grown. I never knew what to do with, I guess, The Great Pumpkin.
It's really a genuinely complex subject that Schulz is, he's somewhat enigmatic about in terms of how he treats the characters. In fact, I think we read a few strips from a year past where it got a little odd, where Linus looks like he's getting kind of mercenary about The Great Pumpkin. And that didn't seem like Linus because he's all about sincerity, but then maybe that's because Linus is the most common character and complex character in Western literature.
So, you know, I think I was always interested and kind of fascinated by the strips, but I think I ultimately, I mean, it's about being let down, right? And you know, it's just like kicking the football. You know, this is Linus kicking the football.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It is, everybody has this in Peanuts. Everybody has their Great Pumpkin, whether it's kicking the football, whether it's waiting for Schroeder to notice you, whether it's the little red-haired girl. Everybody is waiting for this magic thing to happen that will make everything great, and it never comes.
Yeah, and it is kind of epic. I mean, it feels epic. Like, this could happen, right? Every year, Linus is going to give it another go, and there is something epic about it. But there was also a sense of disappointment at the end, you know, that you don't get out of the Christmas special, but you certainly, this is how you have to end it with a great pumpkin. And that, you know, I enjoyed watching them, but I never really felt satisfied at the end of, say, the special or reading the strips.
I mean, you just move on, and it was a disappointment, and you knew this was going to lead to disappointment. And sometimes you get surprised in a four-panel strip that someone's led to disappointment. But to have three weeks or two weeks that's leading to disappointment is a little bit different, or a Sunday with the kicking the football. But this was one where he would build a storyline around it, and there would always be disappointment at the end.
And that goes back to his influence on things with Crazy Cat, right? Which the art is, it's the same every time. How do you make it different within the parameters of that? You know, he has to find the pumpkin patch. It has to be sincere. The great pumpkin can't show up. Ideally, he could drag somebody else into it. That would be fun.
Yeah, I think he's a little kid reading them. I was thinking, well, maybe something will happen, you know?
Right. Well, yeah. And that's brilliant, too. If he could make you think that for a second. I always think, you know, Andy Kaufman made people wonder whether he was serious about professional wrestling. They grown adults who would never. If you can do that, that's pretty amazing. And there are times in these strips that I do get caught up in.
The other thing I think is amazing about it is, you know, Halloween is something that's part of, in America, at least, you know, just the general national consciousness and more and more even than it was then. And to be able to take something of yours and add it to this huge national tapestry that basically everybody knows, that's astounding. I don't know how you do it.
I'll tell you, the things that I really did enjoy for the Halloween is the trick-or-treating segments. That was always something that I, for some reason, had a lot of fun with. You know, them going around and them dressing up with the terrible costume where Linus is afraid he's going to get knifed by somebody because he's going to their door. You don't do that 364 days out of the year. You're threatening a trick on somebody if they don't give you something.
You know, to Linus, you can kind of see that that just doesn't add up. And I can relate to that as a little kid, you know, if someone knifes me because I'd never gone to that door before. You're not supposed to knock on the doors of strangers. You know, your parents weren't going with you. Did your parents go with you or did you just...
Or when I was little, my parents went with me. When I was older, we went by myself.
Yeah, but at some point, yeah, you're on your own doing things you never would do any other time of year, which was kind of this cool, forbidden nature.
Well, and it's funny you think about it. It probably would have been eight years old and you're just wandering around the streets at night. Yeah, very, very, very fun. I loved Halloween. I'm a big fan of it, so I'm excited to talk about this. But I have a surprise for you guys. Well, for all our listeners, we have started a hotline, a Peanuts hotline. We'll need to have a name for the Peanuts hotline. I don't have one yet. I just did this on Twitter, so it was just a little preview.
We didn't do a wide launch yet, but I put out there, do you have any questions about Peanuts or The Great Pumpkin for this episode? Give us a call and we'll try to answer them. And we got a couple. So I thought maybe I'd play some of these calls and then we can answer them. How does that sound?
All right.
Now, the first one, though, is not about Great Pumpkin. However, it is our first call, so I wanted to make sure that we played it and it is peanuts related. And here we go. Let's go to the phones.
Hi there. This is Troy Wilson of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Long time listener, first time caller. And my question is, if peanut was not called peanut, what would you call it? What would you rename it? If someone came to you and said, you are the ones that have to rename it. And you can't say little folks. Thank you. And thanks for the podcast. Love it.
That was my answer.
That's a good question. What do you think?
Well, I'm pretty sure Schulz would have gone with the good old Charlie Brown.
Yeah, that's a great title.
Even though he's not in every strip, but that doesn't seem to matter.
What about you, Harold?
That gang, oh mine.
That gang.
Or to really cheat, little folks.
What about, well, what about just kids? Because it's just kids. There's no adults. And a dog. It really is tough to come up with a title for something, because we know how wide ranging it becomes.
Well, that's why the generic name seems to work so well, right?
Yeah, it really does. And it just becomes the thing that it is, even though you make no association with why it's called that or why is it named after a legume. I mean, it's strange. But I guess we, I guess they knew kind of what, oh, actually, you know what? I have a thought about this. Do you think this is, it is possible that Larry Rutman or whoever at the syndicate was sitting around going, we are going to need to sell a space saver strip.
I want something that is in four panels that you can move. However, it's going to be smaller than all the other things. And we'll call it peanuts because of the peanuts gallery or because it's small. Had no, and that's, they were going to do that and then just hire someone to fill that void. Schulz comes in with these strips that fit it perfectly, but it was a fait accompli, it was always going to be called peanuts.
That's a good thought.
I mean, there's no way of knowing, I guess, at this point, but that's my, that's the theory I'm floating.
Now, I was, I think we're going to have to, why don't you Google it, you vlog head, but I was just wondering, did Howdy Doody come along before or after peanuts?
That's a great question.
Oh, it came up before, December 27th, 1947. So, I mean, if you're a guy at a syndicate and you're trying to sell things, yeah, totally. If he had kids himself, Howdy Doody, that just seems to be where that came from.
And I believe David Michaelis makes a reference to that in his book. I'm not sure if he, I don't have it in front of me or around me, but I'm not sure if he had insight into that or if he was just speculating as well.
That was in the part of the language at that point. Yeah. Where now they, you know, people will call their little kids pumpkin.
Right.
And you see in these old movies, they call little kids, hey, Peanuts.
Right.
But that's a really good question because it really, it's a huge challenge to think about renaming this thing. I mean, it just sounds like you step back and go, whoa. Yeah. I even think that I would be given that responsibility what I couldn't do it justice. It means so many things.
Something with the word neighborhood might make sense because it was focused on neighborhood.
Right.
Yeah. The neighborhood is not a bad one.
Kids in the neighborhood. I'm going to go with Just Kids, even though I don't think it's a very good one. But I can't come up with anything better.
That's a good one. Just Kids, that's a good one. Yeah.
All right. Well, thank you so much, Troy. That was our first call and I was so excited to get it. Here's another one.
Hey, I'm Unpacking Peanuts. I want to talk about Charlie Brown getting a rock. As a kid, I thought getting rocks in his hoodie bag was the funniest thing in the world. Now, I'm trying to figure out what Charles Schulz was trying to say about adults. Did they give this kid rocks? The whole thing makes me scratch my head.
That is a mysterious caller from California. Did not leave a name. What do you think about that? I don't think it's flattering for adults, for sure.
Because his head looks like a rock?
Well, he's dressed in his ghost costume and he's covered. He has extra holes in the ghost costume. I think the parents are judging him and are like, that kid gets a rock. I also wonder, do they have them ready? Or do they have to quick go get a rock to throw? It's so bad.
Well, this comes back to the idea that you said Charles Schulz is a character in the strip. It's almost like we're never going to meet this person that dropped the rock. So is it Schulz giving him the rock?
Well, that's what I was going to say, but I decided not to, because I thought Michael might strangle me from Italy. But yeah, I do sort of feel like that.
He can't find me. I'm Virginia right now.
No, we can find you anywhere.
But that's, I think, of all of the Halloween strips that I got a rock is, I think, my favorite part. And yeah, I just feel for Charlie Brown. It's such a wonderful, he's always been juxtaposing the Christmas Santa Claus thing with Halloween, with The Great Pumpkin. You can clearly see that even from the very first strips and the idea that you get a lump of coal in your stocking if you're bad and you get a rock in your trick-or-treat bag if someone doesn't like you.
And Charlie Brown is always saying nobody likes you. Now, maybe he was given a geode, but he was just misinterpreting the generosity.
Do you want to know why I'm not a political cartoonist?
What's that?
Because for years, in the early years of Amelia during the Iraq War, I was convinced I could find some version where the kids would go as presidents for Halloween and be like, I got a booming economy, I got the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then it would be George W. Bush, I got a rock. I could never really make it work.
I'm glad you got some mileage out of it right here.
Yeah, that's true. I got to use it here 20 years later. Okay, so that's our second call. We have a third call. This is, well, I'll play it and then we'll talk a little bit about him on the other side. Here we go.
Hi there. This is Joshua Stauffer. I heard you guys were recording a special episode for The Great Pumpkin this week, so I have whipped up something very special for you. In your email right now is a list of all the Peanuts comic strips that were adapted in the Halloween special. I've also included some fun facts about that special and some of my own thoughts and opinions about it. I hope you enjoy this email that I sent you, and I'm looking forward to hearing from you this Halloween.
And as always, be of good cheer.
Yes, be of good cheer.
Yeah, so that was Josh Stauffer, a long-time listener of the podcast, and he really did come through. He sent us a PDF, and it has every single strip that was adapted into The Great Pumpkin.
Into the special. That's amazing.
Yeah, into the special. I'm hoping that he'll let us put the PDF out for you guys, you listeners out there, and you can find out which ones are turned into animated sequences. So what I'd like to do now is just take a quick break, and then we'll come back, we'll go through some of the strips that were adapted into animated sequences, and we'll see you on the other side.
Hi, everyone. I just want to take a moment to remind you that all three hosts are cartoonists themselves, and their work is available for sale. You can find links to purchase books by Jimmy, Harold, and Michael on our website. You can also support the show on Patreon, or buy us a mud pie. Check out the store link on unpackingpeanuts.com.
We're back. Did you miss us? We are now going to go through those strips and pulled by Josh, who we really appreciate for doing all that extra work. So I'm going to read them, like always, and then we'll talk about them. So here we go. October 31st, 1956. Two kids are dressed up as ghosts. It's clearly Halloween night. One of the ghosts says to the other, Is that you, Lucy? The second ghost answers, Uh-huh. Linus will be along in a minute.
The two ghosts look off into the distance at Linus approaching, although we don't see him. He's still off panel. Lucy says he was having a little trouble with his costume. In the last panel, we see now three ghosts. Linus has walked up and he has his sheet thrown over him just like the other two, except his has many holes for the eyes, not just two. And Lucy says he's not very good yet with his scissors.
A scissors.
That's weird.
Is that for comic effect or is that what you said back then?
No, I think that's for comic effect like the, like putting an unnecessary the in front of something. An indefinite article is also extra funny. That's weird.
This is another example of Linus being the most complex character in Western literature because he could build like anything. These card houses as big as a castle and dragons out of a pile of sand. So him not being good enough to cut a hole in two holes with scissors.
Maybe he was too close to a blanket and he was getting nervous.
Well, now when this is adapted in the animated special, it's the gag is repeated, but it's given to Charlie Brown. He's the one who can't use the scissors correctly. So I don't know if it's something that he just if he would have had more time, you know, this is a daily strip 1956. If he had more time, he would have given it thought about it and given it to Charlie Brown. Or if he was really just like Linus is the youngest at this point. So that's why he gets this gag.
But then by 1966, it wouldn't make any sense for Linus at all to not be good at it.
Yeah, it should have been Shermie.
Well, maybe Shermie is the other one. He could be the ghost talking to Lucy. He's never.
How do we know that's Lucy? She's just a little shorter.
She agrees because he says, is that you, Lucy?
Yeah, I know. But do we know it's really Lucy? Yeah.
Look at she's wearing her saddle shoes.
I guess so.
Moving on. November 15th, 1957. Charlie Brown is standing by a big pile of leaves. In the second panel, Linus comes flying off from panel left and lands directly in them, a big smile on his face. In the third panel, he looks down in the leaves and he looks slightly upset. He says to Charlie Brown, well, I just learned something, Charlie Brown. Then he holds up what was a lollipop and it is covered in leaves. And he says to Charlie Brown, never jump into a pile of leaves holding a wet sucker.
You know, this could have been something that actually happened. I mean, there's nothing fantastic about this. He could have seen his kids doing this. And this is exactly what happened.
Oh, absolutely. A little kid comes up crying as 15 leaves stuck to their lollipop.
You can see probably they come in from outdoors and the parents look down and say, Oh, what a lovely craft you made at school today.
Now, do you think he should have shown the lollipop before? No.
That's the genius of it.
What do you think, Michael? That's the genius of it.
Yeah. All right.
I'm going to agree to disagree.
Oh, really? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, you can't just leave it like that. So you would rather see Linus with the sucker? Like, how would you have done this strip differently?
Yeah. I would have just had him leaping into the... Well, you know, I would have done it differently, but it would have been worse. As I'm describing it now, it would have been worse. So there's no point in me even finishing it.
But if you showed it in the first panel, then it has to get... You know it has to get full of leaves by the fourth panel.
You introduced the gun in the first act?
Chekhov's lollipop. October 25th, 1961. Violet. Now, we have done this one. We've done a couple of these, but not all of them. But I thought we would re-approach them just knowing now that they're slightly elevated in the peanut's oeuvre because they've been adapted. So this is Violet and she's yelling at Linus. She says, you're crazy. You're just plain stupid crazy. You talk like someone who's just fallen out of a tree. You're stark, raving stupid. She's gone and Linus looks upset.
And he says, I should have known better. Then he walks away saying, there are three things I have learned never to discuss with people, religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin. This is Michael. You loved this line, stark, raving stupid.
No, that's what I'd call the strip.
Stark, raving stupid. That's the whole strip.
That is my favorite line in peanuts. But I'm going to open up the discussion here. I think the Great Pumpkin is religion.
Well, you know, there is no way you can look at Schulz, who is so immersed in his own faith. And someone who's always looking for something funny, even things which are not funny, there is something kind of funny, I think, about we're waiting for the Savior. We're waiting for the Savior. He came. Oh, what are you doing now? Oh, we're waiting for him to come back. What is wrong with you? And I do think there is some part of him that would have to find that kind of funny.
Yeah, I mean, it's about the Great Pumpkin is about faith.
Absolutely.
Right.
And yeah. And so it's, I mean, it is a bit of a take on Santa Claus. It's almost a parody of the Santa Claus thing. But it's also, it's like a deity.
Oh, a lioness takes this beyond seriously. This means a lot. What I also would wonder, though, is where, where do you think it comes from within lioness? Like, I mean, all right, we get that the within this, you know, external to the strip, it's a parody of Santa Claus. We talked about that before. He just changed one thing, made a Halloween and it opens up all this other stuff.
But within the strip, within the world of the strip, where do you imagine a lioness concocted this or heard about this?
I'm sure Harold has some interesting theories on this. But there's one thing that does bug me. Is there a great pumpkin in this Peanuts universe? Because in one of the early strips, he reads that it appeared in somebody's pumpkin.
In New Jersey, yeah.
Now, granted, there's all kinds of magical things happening in peanuts. He doesn't ever clarify whether the great pumpkin actually is real and it just never shows up for life.
I was wondering if Linus, he's trying to be a fanatic. So I was wondering if he was creating his own world of The Great Pumpkin, which included the New Jersey story.
Well, Charlie Brown comes over and brings the paper and says, hey, we've just read in the paper.
Oh, really?
Maybe Charlie Brown's putting him on. Yeah, because I also thought I was reading some Calvin Hobbes recently and there's a really funny Calvin Hobbes strip where Calvin's dad is telling him science facts and he's telling them basically like Lucy. But unlike Lucy, Calvin's dad is just pulling his leg. And that's the bit of the joke. I wonder if that's something that could have happened with Linus. Like someone started this as like a little bit with them. Oh, yeah.
But I guess that doesn't make sense if he does appear in New Jersey.
Yeah, yeah. The only thing that makes sense is that if he had previously read like the year before that the Great Pumpkin appeared somewhere, read it in a newspaper and then started believing in it. Because it comes in pretty fully formed.
Yeah, it does.
It's not like it develops.
Yeah.
These are the mysteries of the universe.
It is so complex and it's so rich. And given, yeah, that Schulz was as religious as he was, you know, I think he's... And you know, you think about he's at this time, he's teaching or at least leading a Bible study. And you can tell that Schulz is the kind of guy who's always questioning things. He's always turning them over in his mind. And you see that so much through Peanuts here. He's not the kind of guy who's necessarily going to just swallow something, lock, stock and barrel.
But he also has the... You see the fanatic in him that he was the guy that collected every comic book. He was the library. He's all of these things and all of these characters, which is what's so incredible. And yeah, I don't think Schulz... If you ask Schulz what The Great Pumpkin Strips were about, I think he did talk about it a little bit. But I think it was along the lines of the fanaticism that could come out of stuff that is so reliant on belief. You can believe anything. It might be true.
It might not be true. And here Linus has this incredibly elaborate thing that he believes. But we have reason to believe maybe it's not true. But yeah, it is weird that that newspaper, that really does throw a whole new light on the subject. If there are at least other people who think they've seen The Great Pumpkin, it doesn't mean that he still exists, right? Or it is part of some Santa Claus-y thing.
Yes, Virginia, there's a Santa Claus where the adults have in the peanuts world the same thing that they do for Santa Claus as they do for The Great Pumpkin. It could be so many different things.
Jimmy, you would know this. Are there people who actually believe in Punxsutawney Phil?
Do we believe in Punxsutawney Phil?
You people in Pennsylvania?
Yeah, you're kind. You people who worship the groundhog. First off, that's like four and a half hours away from me. I've never been to Punxsutawney in my life. Yeah. Secondly. Well, I mean, what do you mean by, I mean, there is a real groundhog they keep doped up in a cage. Do I believe he can predict spring? I don't think anyone really believes that.
But this thing started somehow.
Yeah.
And did it start full formed?
I don't know. I'm not. I'm not an expert on groundhogs.
I get the strange suspicion it was somebody who owned a department store. I don't know why.
What, Punxsutawney Phil?
Yeah. Some guy owning a department store is like, you know what we need to do? Get the people to come out on a cold winter day.
Let's go to groundhogs. The janitor is like, I finally caught that groundhog. Should I let him go? No, no. I have an idea.
Wait. I'm just about to be brilliant.
Is there any chance it comes out of Walt Kelly?
The groundhog? No, it doesn't come out of Walt Kelly.
I mean, he always used names like Punxsutawney.
Yeah. But no, I'm sure. I believe the ancient Aztecs started Punxsutawney film.
Is this really, really fascinating?
We're getting off topic.
So you want a little canon? I can give you a little canon because I was a blockhead.
Oh, tell me what is it?
So it says, this is according to the Oracle at Wikipedia, as it is claimed that this one groundhog has lived to make weather prognostication since 1886, according to lore, there's only one fill. So supposedly dating back to 1886, there's some really weird stuff that they have built around it. So it says according to the Groundhog Club, Jim being from Pennsylvania, are you a member of the?
I would never belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member. Oh, I just came up with that.
It says, Phil, after the prediction, speaks to the club president in the language of Groundhoggies, which supposedly only the current president can understand, and then his prediction is translated and revealed to all. Well, we've heard that stuff before.
It doesn't have the shadow bit in there.
Wow. It says it's rooted in a Celtic and Germanic tradition. So this does go back away that actually may have had a religious significance. So there you go.
Well, this has been another episode of Gab and About Groundhogs. Thanks for tuning in. October 30th, 1961. Linus is sitting out in the pumpkin patch and he's saying to himself, each year the great pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. Linus continues, he's got to pick this one, he's got to. I don't see how pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. He continues to look around and he says, you can look all around and there's not a sign of hypocrisy.
Then with arms stretched out wide, he says, nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.
It's pretty sincere to me.
This is where he's going all in on the story as a story, because it's just generally amusing, the four panels, but it's not a joke.
Really.
In the sense that there's no punch line.
Which of his best jokes are not a joke?
But this isn't even a non-joke joke, right? This is kind of him just setting up against the sincerity thing.
The thought that you can actually see sincerity.
This trip is so much a part of my life and growing up as a kid. I can't go back and reread this with fresh eyes to know if that was a punch line at some point to somebody.
What is it about this that resonated with you in your life?
I just think nobody in my life or in literature was like Linus. I loved that he was looking for sincerity. I mean, that is an idea that I think as a reader, as a kid and even as an adult, I'm like, wow, that's what this person is seeking is sincerity.
You know, often in comics or in literature, someone's seeking power or money or sex or, you know, and then you've got a line of seeking sincerity and is as misled as he may be, there is in this aspect to him that's like, oh, wow, there's even the concept that Schulz would think this up. There's somebody who that's what they're seeking for. I think that was planted in my little young brain at the early part of my life, that that was a possibility, that that's something that you might seek after.
And, you know, I think there's maybe some fruit to that.
Speaking of fruit, I love the way he draws the pumpkin patch. Although I know it's technically. But what is it? Wait, is a pumpkin a fruit? It's on a vine. Yeah, that's a fruit. You can Google it.
Sure.
Google it. Well, whatever this gourd is, he draws it nice. Really looking good.
Don't think it's a fruit.
November 1st, 1962, Sally and Linus are out in the pumpkin patch in its morning. Sally is very upset. She yells, Halloween is over. I've missed it. Now she's yelling at Linus, you blockhead, you've kept me up all night waiting for the great pumpkin. And he never came. I didn't get a chance to go out for tricks or treats. It was all your fault. Then Sally raises her fists and shouts to the heavens, I'll sue. I love this strip. This is my favorite. This is pure Sally. I love Sally.
I think this really defines her, this sequence here. Absolutely.
So how would you describe Sally based on this strip?
Well, from what we know about her up to this point, she's only been in the strip for a year, is she's in love with Linus. So of course she's going to believe him. And this is her first encounter of her faith in him being violated.
Right. Right. And it also, Sally has this weird thing where she has the innocent, sweet, trusting little girl aspect, but she also, like I'll sue. She also is very canny and understanding about like the mechanisms of power in the adult world.
Yeah.
And you'll see that going forward, when she's taking on teachers or whatever it is, she's a future lawyer for sure. I can see that.
Yeah. There is that strip where she's asking basically for a deferment from school and having Charlie Brown write that letter to the principal. And she's dictating, she says, please excuse Sally from school. She is needed at home. And Charlie Brown's like, what if everyone shirked their responsibility and didn't do what they were supposed to? Where would society be? And then Sally just looks at him blankly, he says, I don't know what you're talking about. I'm too sweet and innocent.
Yeah, or when she gets a C on her coat hanger sculpture and does her big, should not my teacher also share in my C.
That's a great, oh my gosh, that's a classic.
It's a, she's a wonderful character. And yeah, we're really seeing her in her full Sally mode. And it's going to continue here on November 2nd. Sally and Linus are now out of the pumpkin patch, but Sally's no less upset. She's yelling, I was robbed. Now Charlie Brown comes up and Sally starts griping to him as Linus is very upset listening to this. And she says, I spent the whole night waiting for The Great Pumpkin when I could have been out for tricks or treats.
Then in the next panel, Charlie Brown talks to Linus and Linus says, you've heard about Fury and a woman scorned, haven't you? Charlie Brown says, yes, I guess I have. Linus says to Charlie Brown, well, that's nothing compared to the fury of a woman who has been cheated out of tricks or treats. We see Sally in the foreground scowling.
There's no better word than scowling.
I think it's funny, he calls her a woman and she's like two years old.
Also, fantastic use of unnecessary quotation marks. I'm a big fan of unnecessary, I always have to argue with editors about this. They're like, this doesn't need quotes. I'm like, exactly, this does not need quotes. That's what makes it awesome. Great pumpkin and quotes and of course, tricks or treats. We've discussed this before, but it's a trick or treat. So I think that's another example. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say, call it tricks or treats.
I think that's an example of peanuts language that just makes it-
Do you know anyone from Minnesota?
You know what we could do? We could Google it, your blockhead.
Or we could just ask our Minnesota listeners if they've ever heard.
Yeah, we do have a few Minnesota listeners. Tricks or treats go, once both versions of the phrase were in use according to the Wall Street Journal. Interesting. All right, or maybe not interesting, but that's the reality of it. Oh, by the way, I haven't mentioned this, but if you wanna follow these strips, you could go to gocomics.com and type these dates in.
Also, if you're having trouble with gocomics.com, which some of our listeners have had trouble navigating it, Liz has put together a little tutorial video. And where is that, Liz? Where can they find that?
On the website, on the news menu item.
There you go, on the website, under the news menu item, you can find a little tutorial Liz made for how to navigate gocomics.com.
Thanks, Liz.
And that's probably the best way to do this since we're skipping around a bit. Hey, by the way, I just wanted to say that Wall Street Journal article that I just quoted for Trick or Treat was inspired by the writer's nine-year-old son and asking about it in the context of peanuts.
Wow, see, that stuff's important to readers of peanuts.
Ben Zimmer, his nine-year-old son, wanted to know why it was because they said tricks or treats. November 3rd, now we're back with Sally and just Linus. Linus is raising his eyes to the heaven because he's still being harangued. Sally continues yelling at him. What a fool I was. I could have had candy and apples and gum and cookies and money and all sorts of things, but no, I had to listen to you. What a fool I was.
Tricks or Treats comes only once a year, and I miss it by sitting in a pumpkin patch with a blockhead. Then she delivers her coup de gras. You owe me restitution. I think he does.
Of course, when I read this, I kind of went, what's that mean?
Well, you mean when you read that now?
No, I read that. It must have been, what year was this? 62?
62 or something?
Yeah, so I was 12.
62.
I don't think I knew the word.
Yeah. I'm really interested to that first panel. This doesn't happen a lot in comics when someone is saying something with bold lettering, they're speaking loudly. But Schulz chooses to draw Sally with a large closed mouth. Why do you think he chooses to do that?
Because it's the right expression. This is something I will argue with people about to my dying day. The standard is if a person is talking, you should have their mouth open. Some people go as far as to say, have them making one of the vowel sounds in the sentences that you're doing. That's pointless. I don't think there's any sense to that at all.
It's interesting. You could even argue for the vowel sound here because there is no closed mouth. There's no closed syllable here for a mouth. I think you're absolutely right. I think it's what you need to see at the beginning of this. You want to see. It's like what she was thinking. That is the thing. If you have a closed mouth syllable, then I've argued this to myself sometimes.
I wish I could have a closed mouth because it's the right thing to do, and I usually give in and open the mouth up or do something because people tend to say, well, yeah, that's not right. If they're talking, their mouth should be open. But it is true if you have a B or an M, whatever, your mouth is going to be closed part of the time you're talking.
Well, not only that, one panel is not necessarily like a snapshot.
Right.
One panel could be a second, it could be a minute. There's no rules for that. The animation is different. I mean, she'd have to be moving her mouth.
But in animation, this could be the emotion she's feeling the second before she starts talking.
Yeah, I think that's what's going on. And I think that's it is the right thing to do. You know, I look at the strip, I think, yes, he made the right choice.
It's so strange because the whole comic strip form and comic book form, whatever it is, is made up of these tiny, seemingly insignificant choices. But they all have to be right to keep peanuts at this ultra high level. Yeah. If you change the expression in a lesser comic strip and the meaning and stuff was conveyed with the words and the face matched the words, it would be fine. But there's something just a little bit extra because it's a better drawing. It's not merely a functional drawing.
It's the emotion. And like Michael was saying, he is able to manipulate time in one panel, which is a brilliant thing to be able to do.
You know, I would love to have seen Charles Schulz take a whole day's worth of strips from his local newspaper and draw them his way and see how he did it differently with like Beale Bailey or with Mary Worth or whatever. And just to see his choices and how they differ from the typical artist.
Pete Bagg, who's the creator of the comic book Hate, was years ago saying that that would be a great exercise for people to do would be to cover comics by their favorite cartoonists. Just like a band would cover, you know, and just do it. Not trying to mimic their style, but this is what it is. You're going to cover it. You have to bring your own thing to it. It would be an interesting. Unfortunately, like everything with cartoon, cartooning takes forever.
So by the, you know, no one's going to do much of it.
I think Mad Magazine could have done something like that. Or maybe they did. Like, what if Wally Wood drew Peanuts?
Yeah, we did get to see the parody versions of where he did. You know, they did do Peanuts and it is fascinating to see different cartoonists' attempts at recreating a peanut strip. I do have another piece of trivia that came out of that book by Charles Solomon about peanuts animation. I thought this was incredibly interesting. Phil Roman became a director. He did over 10 of the 50 animated specials and I think he directed two of the features.
I think he was the guy that kind of took over after Bill Melendez kind of stepped away from that really super hands-on aspect of the animation. So Phil Roman was like the second director who just did a ton of the peanuts animations. Phil Roman took the art instruction school's course and Charles Schulz was his instructor.
Oh, that's amazing.
Isn't that cool? That's very, very cool. So he had already been learning lettering under Charles Schulz.
That's amazing. October 28th, 1963. Linus is sitting out in the pumpkin patch. Charlie Brown approaches him and says, Don't tell me you're sitting here waiting for The Great Pumpkin again. Charlie Brown continues, How can you believe in something that just isn't true? He's never going to show up. He doesn't exist.
Linus stands up and confronts Charlie Brown, wagging a finger in his face and saying, When you stop believing in that fellow with the red suit and white beard who goes, Ho, ho, ho, I'll stop believing in The Great Pumpkin. Then they go back to sitting in the pumpkin patch. Linus super annoyed. Charlie Brown looking upset, saying we are obviously separated by denominational differences. Although Linus goes in for Santa Claus too. Right? So it's not like Linus is a Great Pumpkin absolutist.
He dabbles.
Okay, we need evidence of that.
So this is true as of 1963?
So guess what? That's why the Great Pumpkin doesn't show up. Because what's that? Hypocrisy.
Sincere hypocrisy.
This is where he blew it.
Yeah. My wife, Diane Cook, she has always been like, why are we doing the Santa thing? The Santa thing is messing with kids' minds. There's this interesting trust level that kids have with their parents. Let's say for religious reasons, let's say, hey, we believe in God and we also know there's Santa. You say they're both on the same level with a kid, except one gets you actual presents on 24th or 25th of Christmas. Then at some point, and everyone has a different experience.
I don't know if you guys ever believed in Santa Claus, if that was ever a thing, or if you have the memory of when that shifted.
For anyone who's out there listening now, I still believe in Santa Claus.
Yes, Virginia. Don't worry about it. It's such an interesting concept that as a child, there's so much make believe that you have in your life. But this is like the time when the adults come down as a group, and there's this collective idea to say, hey, there is this being who does these things. It's like the tooth fairy. This is actually happening. And then at some point, you find out it's not real. And for some people, it's like, oh, I get it. That was fun. You did it for fun.
And there are other people that are absolutely destroyed by it, depending on how they find out about it. And it's an interesting concept because kids take this stuff really seriously. And there are debates on the... When you get to that certain age, there are these debates that kids have on the playground, right? And some of them have gotten the word that there is no Santa Claus at some age. And then you have another group of kids...
I feel uncomfortable about all of this because I completely don't want any kid to hear this.
Well, I'm not saying what's true when we're the other, right? I'm just saying that there comes this point where the kids are... Some have the sense that I've been enlightened that this isn't the true. And you have other kids who are saying, of course it's true, mom and dad told me. And it has all these repercussions in their lives. And there's issues of trust and issues of faith and issues of being... You're standing up for your family's honor in a way.
If this is what you've been taught and there are all these forces that are going against it. So I think it's a really complex concept and it's one that has a lot of repercussions for a lot of people. Anyway.
I'm pro Santa Claus. Go Santa.
He's a good guy. He's a right jolly old elf.
October 4th, 1964. Charlie Brown and Lucy are standing outside and Lucy says, I'll hold the ball and you kick it. Charlie Brown says, Oh, brother. He then continues, I don't mind your dishonesty half as much as I mind your opinion of me. You must think I'm really stupid. Lucy says to Charlie Brown, as she's setting up the football, I know you don't trust me, Charlie Brown. You think that I'm going to pull this football away when you come running up to kick it.
Then she says, Well, here's a signed document testifying that I promise not to do it. She holds out the signed document. Charlie Brown takes it and says, It is signed. It's a signed document. I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can't go wrong. This year, I'm really going to kick that football. And of course, Charlie Brown is sent flying when Lucy does pull the football away. He lands on his back.
Then in the last panel with Charlie Brown lying on his back and Lucy having caught the paper, which is now fluttered into her hand, she says to him, peculiar thing about this document, it was never notarized. Well, speaking of things people believe that are utterly false, that a contract has meaning. And the person who wrote up the contract and hands it to you has all the power and they will take it away from you if they want. So that's the lesson in that way.
These football things, I tend to just read the last panel. Like I don't have patience for the setup.
Well, this was the first time I'd heard of notarized. That was a new word to me when I first read this. I got the gist of it, I think.
November 18th, 1964, one of Michael's favorites, Snoopy is standing outside as a leaf gently floats to the ground. In panel two, Snoopy puffs on the leaf, sending it flying into the air a little higher. In panel three, he continues, poof, poof, poof, to blow on the leaf, sending it skittering along in the air until it finally lands in a small pile of leaves, causing Snoopy to be very pleased with himself.
Yeah, these aren't my favorite. I did make a big deal out of the leaf things just because there were so many of them. And how could he do so many variations on basically the simple theme? I mean, they're nice and they're kind of sweet, but they're definitely not the best peanut stuff.
I was looking at this strip just visually, and this may just be me. And you'd probably say it is. But when I look at the first panel, I look at that's kind of classic looking Snoopy. And then the next three panels look like somebody else tried to draw Snoopy. And he almost got...
You just never had a dog blowing before.
I guess so.
It's a pretty weird thing to draw. I would say... I didn't notice that, but I would say now that you call my attention to it, panel three looks a little odd.
Yeah, especially compared to Camp Panel 2, which is very similar.
Plus the little cheek lines. If those are cheek... they don't look like cheeks though.
Yeah, maybe they should be facing the other way.
Yeah, it's hard to...
Indicating like a bulge.
They should be closer to the eyes.
Well, we had a Boston Terrier who would somehow puff her little mush mouth up when she was not too pleased about something. But yeah, to have a dog with cheeks, I guess, there's not a precedent for it. How do you draw it? That's what people are going to say. Yeah, that's fine. Like you said...
Well, this is the Big Bad Wolf. Big Bad Wolf is as close as we could get.
Yeah, there you go.
This is about as minimal a comic strip as there could be, right? This is going back to like Rain, Rain, Rain in year one. Very, very simple, very small.
Yeah, but even like a little smile on the fourth panel. I mean, I buy it that Schulz drew it, but it doesn't seem quite Schulz. It's just like, I don't know, just feels a little different.
I mean, I did not notice any of this having read it. But now that you pointed out to me, does it look like he drew Snoopy with no smile? Normally, he would draw a smile as part almost of the snout, as it was thought of in that moment. And then in this one, he didn't. And it's like, oh, now it just doesn't look right. And he added that smile in, but it's not quite at the right place.
As a matter of fact, it extends, if you zoom in really close, it actually extends a little bit below the right, where it connects with the neck.
And I think if he had drawn it originally, I mean, that's an interesting theory. I think the nose would be higher, given where that smile is, because it looks like, you know, it's pointed downward, but the smile kind of doesn't line up. But anyway, it's still great.
It's still Charles Schulz.
That just struck me when I was reading this for the first time.
Very, very cute in general, though, no matter what. I am a huge fan of watching Charles Schulz just develop these strange themes that no one in the world had thought of and just draw them beautifully, especially the pumpkin patches. I love the way he draws pumpkin patches. So the reason we read these last two strips is, of course, because they were also adapted into the Great Pumpkin animated special.
And as Josh Stauffer pointed out in the document he sent us, this is the first time in history that one of the football gags was actually animated. So that October 4, 1964 gag that we just did was the first football gag that ever got animated. And I think quite a few have over the years now. And that's the same for the November 18, 1964 strip that was also adapted into the animated special.
One thing that Melendez and Mendelson do great in the animated specials, I think, is little sequences with Snoopy being animated. The Great Pumpkin one has a huge sequence of the World War I flying ace, most of which are adapted from the comics. I didn't include any of those here because we haven't gotten to the World War I flying ace at all yet, so I thought we would save that for later.
But one thing worth mentioning is that in the strips, we hear Snoopy's ongoing dialogue about what's happening, and Schulz did not want that to exist in animation. He didn't want to give Snoopy a voice speaking, so they had to be very visual with that. And Bill Littlejohn is the animator who most of these famous sequences that people remember of Snoopy moving. That's Bill Littlejohn animating just an incredible dynamic. And he said he was a dream of all the...
Peanuts characters are a real challenge, but Snoopy was a dream to animate, he said. And I can see that. He can stretch and squash, and he has arms and legs that aren't stuck to the tiny little body. So there's a lot you can do with Snoopy.
Oh, he has blandished the heck out of it, for sure. He graphically blandished that, like no one's business. He nailed it. So guys, that's The Great Pumpkin. Do we have anything else to say about our favorite gourd?
I guess not.
It's complex stuff.
What does it represent?
It's complex stuff. Schulz is a complex guy.
What does the gourd represent?
The gourd represents all our hopes and dreams. My hopes and dream is that you will come back next week and you will listen to us again because it's my favorite day of the whole week. I get to spend with my favorite people talking peanuts. And then I know you guys are out there listening and that makes it so exciting and so special for me and for the rest of us. As always, we would love to hear from you.
You can do that by checking us out on social media at Unpack Peanuts and Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook. Or you could just send us an email, unpackingpeanuts at gmail.com. We would love to hear from you. And remember, if I don't hear from you, I worry. Until then, from Michael and Harold, this is Jimmy. Be of good cheer.
Yes, be of good cheer.
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen and Harold Buchholz. Produced and edited by Liz Sumner. Music by Michael Cohen. Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark. For more from the show, follow Unpacked Peanuts on Instagram and Twitter. Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook and YouTube. For more about Jimmy, Michael and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com. Have a wonderful day and thanks for listening.
Hope you find a sincere pumpkin patch.
Thanks for watching.