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?
