Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/10/03/california-announces-snoopy-license-plates.html
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If my sister ever decides to move to a new state, this might put CA on her list. She loves the Peanuts. Every Christmas, they put a 5 foot high Snoopy sleeping on his house with X-mas lights on their lawn!
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I’m one of those people who think Snoopy ruined the Peanuts comic strip. Joe Cool sold out
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The Charles Schultz County Airport aka Snoopy International is prominent. The campus of Guide Dogs For The Blind that Schultz funded is lower-key. The Snoopy statue at Santa Rosa’s quaint Railroad Square draws tons of tourists for selfies. I have little good to say about the Peanuts theme park at Knott’s Berry Farm near Disneyland. But sure, Snoopy license plates are a natural for this cartoon state.
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I will never understand the modern-day affinity for Peanuts.
There haven’t been new comics in what, a generation or two? And even when they were fresh, I don’t recall them being particularly … anything.
Not really funny, not really edgy, not really engaging. Just kind of — there. In fact, that might be the only actual quality I can ascribe to the strip: its ability to stick around. I guess that’s something?
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Nostalgia. For people my age (mid-50’s) the Peanuts comics were a daily staple. I had and read and re-read and re-re-read the collections of comics, waited for the Sunday funnies, a lot of us learned to read with them. We grew up with them, we waited for the holiday TV specials. They are ingrained deeply into us as a cherished part of our youth. To be honest - this is the first special CA plate that I’ve seen that I might actually spring the 50 bucks for - because it makes me happy. Nothing wrong with happy.
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Peanuts was to a generation what Calvin & Hobbes was to a generation. Imaginative, kid-centered, friendly, and relatable. For its time, Peanuts covered a lot of ground. It was inclusive, addressed issues that kids worried about, and dispensed nuggets of wisdom without shoving them down your throat.
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There was a period where the Peanuts strips were interesting. Sorta dark and bleak, though very navel gazey. And at the time there was nothing in major newspaper strips anything like it. You don’t really get something like Calvin and Hobbs without it, and it was weirdly influential on the underground Comix thing. Particularly the autobiographical and slice of life shit.
That was a very long time ago though. Multiple generations of Americans have grown up only with the cute kids who tell you about Jesus once a year version of Peanuts. And for 20 years the strip has been in reprints. So it’s raw Boomer nostalgia for the most part. Maybe cut with some nostalgia for the holiday specials which were a constant feature for gen xers and older millennials. Local broadcast stations would run that shit multiple times in summer when I was a kid. Usually following Saturday cartoon blocks.
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That’s like saying Opus ruined Bloom County.
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This is old news. California has had Snoopy plates for years. The video on the linked Snoopy Plate page was posted in 2015.
I have friends who’ve had the dancing Snoopy plate on one of their cars for years.
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Well, with Charles Schulz being dead these last 20 years, I can understand a bit of delay in him adding to his collection.
That’s because you’re a person, not a corporation who owns the Intellectual Property that is Peanuts™. And I’m guessing you’re a bit younger than I am.
Like many overly commercialized things, the versions of Peanuts that came around in the 1980s and 1990s were utterly devoid of novel content – Schulz had pumped that well dry decades earlier, but like most of us who do what we loved, he enjoyed drawing, and kept doing what he wanted to do. I don’t think he had much of anything to do with the marketing being done with his characters, I remember he always distanced himself from the TV shows. If pressed to pick a low point, I think Camp Snoopy at the Mall of America would be the nadir of Peanuts; built by a license holding corporation trying to cash in on the nostalgia my generation had for the strip at the same time we were raising our own children.
If you go back to the 1960s, however, Peanuts was absolutely cutting edge. Charlie Brown was depressed, as many of us kids were. He dealt with meanies and bullies, and kids without hygiene, and the popular crowd who never let him in. His “Best Friend” (everyone told him a dog was Man’s Best Friend, so Snoopy must have been, right?) was a total flake who lived in his own fantasy life and didn’t care about him except once a day, when it came time to beg for supper – an irony that even came up in the strip from time to time.
During this time our parents were telling us this was the best time of our lives; our churches and schools were full of optimism and bright and cheerful teachers; we were taught songs of peace and love and harmony. Yet inside we were as sad and lonely as kids had ever been. Charlie Brown was more honest and relatable to us pre-teens than anyone else in our world.
Topping it off were our moms and dads saying “look at the funny dog that thinks it’s a pilot!” as if we were too young to understand any deeper meaning. That gave us kids a joyful subversive spin on adults - the layer of adult veneer they presented became visible.
So yeah, we boomers who grew up with him have a special fondness for him. We also happen to be a generation with disposable income and a crop of grandchildren to spend it on. Do you expect the license holders to leave us to our memories in peace?
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Even though Im Gen X, I had a Snoopy stocking holder when I was a kid that I loved, and the Peanuts have always held a special place in my heart, probably because of the specials.
That theme music was EVERYTHING.
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Me too. My sister is totally Lucy and I’m totally Linus.
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Charlie Brown and his neurotic issues have always resonated with me, aside from the football gag.
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I miss my Peanuts lunchbox.
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