Introduction

Your trusted blogger wearing a Snoopy t-shirt, with "my Snoopy", AKA Joejoe

Hello and welcome to my new blogging endeavor!  Maybe you've seen my "work" at Holiday Film Reviews, or my comic book blogs. 

I am a huge fan of Charlie Brown and the other Peanuts characters.  My bookshelves are full of Peanuts books, I have several articles of clothing that feature the characters (see the photo at the top of this post), coffee mugs, etc. I literally cannot remember a time when I wasn't aware of Peanuts.

I'm not sure when I first saw these characters.  Maybe it was a children's book, or a childhood knicknack.

I had this picture on my wall when I was a little kid.

  But the Peanuts product that impacted me the most was the animated television specials.

I don't remember the first special I saw, but I was hooked immediately.  Charlie Brown was an underdog most of us can identify with. Snoopy was hilarious, Lucy was a great antagonist, Linus simultaneously wise beyond his years and crazily naive.  And the soundtrack music by Vince Guaraldi was (and still is) some of the coolest music I've ever heard.

When most people think of these Charlie Brown specials, they probably think of Chuck's droopy little Christmas Tree.  Or Linus and Sally spending a fruitless night in a pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive.

What about the rest of the year?  What do Charlie Brown & Co. do when there isn't a holiday in site?   How many people remember the time when the Peanuts gang went to a supermarket and mistook it for a museum?  Or when Charlie Brown & Snoopy competed in the Junior Olympics Decathlon?  How about the special where Charlie Brown turned invisible and finally got to kick Lucy's football?

This blog will feature reviews of the non-holiday Charlie Brown specials.  I wanted to write about something Peanuts related, this seemed to be something that hadn't been done to death.  By my count, there are 31 Peanuts television specials that have nothing to do with holidays.  Not to mention 4 theatrically released movies and an 8-episode educational mini-series called This Is America, Charlie Brown.  There's also The Charlie Brown & Snoopy Show (recently released on dvd), which ran on Saturday mornings for 2 seasons.  So there's plenty of Charlie Brown to watch year round!

I plan to publish a new review at least once a month.  I'll focus on specials/films that are readily available to watch, either on dvd/blu ray or streaming.

My ratings scale:

Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was nicknamed "Sparky".  So instead of giving stars in my reviews, I'll use "Sparkys" as my rating scale, using this self-portrait of Schulz:

For example, a great, classic special will get 4 Sparkys:

A slightly lesser special would get 3.5:

.5

And  so on.

The "Sparkys" ratings scale was the idea of RigbyMel, my co-blogger at Holiday Film Reviews.  So I want to send out a big "Thank You" in her direction!

I also want to thank Scott and Derrick at the invaluable website Five Cents Please for posting tons of valuable information about the Peanuts specials.  I'm sure I'll be borrowing info from them for quite a few reviews.

This blog is dedicated to:
Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts and writer of all the Charlie Brown specials.
Lee Mendelson, co-producer of the movies and specials.
Bill Melendez, the other co-producer who also directed most of the specials and provided the voice of Snoopy.
Vince Guaraldi, composer of all the classic music of the Charlie Brown specials.
All the actors who voiced the Peanuts characters.

Check back tomorrow for my first review!