Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Good Grief

With the great project of Fantagraphics reprinting all the Peanuts strips, I thought I would pull out some of my Peanuts items. My favorite Peanuts item is the Fort Worth Press newspaper carriers bag. I have a friend who had one hanging in his garage for years and I always coveted it. So when one showed up in an auction I could not resist buying it.

A couple years earlier, I had bought a couple of newsstand signs with Linus on them. I love the great image of Linus holding the flower and he was the character I always related to as a kid.

Next up are a series of signs for Dolly Madison and some wrappers from various Peanuts baked products. Schultz did not license out the characters a whole lot so finding vintage Peanuts product items is not an easy task. I am still looking for that cello Razzys package with Lucy on it. Someday....

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Classic stuff and hard to come by too. The Peanuts characters are the best. Thanks for sharing and Happy 4th!

melissac. said...

Anything cool with Peppermint Patty? She's my favorite! Half the reason I still visit Knott's at all is the ease with which one can find cool Peanuts merchendise (the other half being the small remnants of the Knott family legacy in terms of the Ghost Town in the park). And nothing brightens my day so much as Chuck.

Matterhorn1959 said...

Dan the newspaper carrier bag is awesome. I understand why you would covet it.

Dan Goodsell said...

They did a pie wrapper with Peppermint Patty - Peach flavor but I dont have it

Major Pepperidge said...

As a kid I used to love "Peanuts" more than just about anything, and remember riding my bike down to the 7-11 to buy the latest paperback collection of Charlie Brown "funnies". Like Dan, I also identified with Linus. Remember when he had to wear glasses?!

Waffle Whiffer [Brandon] said...

I can almost taste those fruit pies! I forgot all about Peanuts characters representing Dolly Madison, but it's all coming back to me now. Thanks for sharing these!

Tom Gill said...

Excellent memories! I remember Butternut Bread in the Chicago area used the Peanuts charactors on their bread wrappers. They also had Peanuts stickers inside - I know I've got some put away somewhere.

Thanks

Mike Lynch said...

Killer stuff, Dan. Thanks for this blog, which I recently discovered. And I recently blogged about you blog on my blog: http://blog.myspace.com/mikelynchcartoons

Dan Goodsell said...

thanks Mike - I will check it out. Also I think Butternut/Webers/MIllbrook and other regional bread companys ran concurrent Peanuts promotions. I think this was also true of some of the Disney bread promotions from about the same time.

Scooter said...

is that Frieda with naturally curly Blonde hair on the Weber wrapper?

my favorite is Patty on the Fun Buns (& that Linus is very nice too). i like her & Violet best of all the characters both for their look and because they got phased out... and Patty got the worst of it since not only did she slowly disappear but her name even got co-opted by another character. i wonder if she's carrying a tray of mud pies on buns?

Mike Lynch said...

Dan, do you remember those Peanuts drawing templates? This was a toy where you got a stack of these clear green hard plastic sheets with line openings on them. You would place them in this frame, which locked them in. Uder the green stencile, you would place a piece of paper and you could pencil in these openings -- using a portion of a stencil to draw a Charlie Brown head and then you would get another stencil for his torso, etc.

I can't recall what it was called, and this is an unclear descrip. at bese. I would have had this in the early 1970s and I remember really enjoying it.

Any thoughts?

Dan Goodsell said...

I did not have the toy but I think I have seen it in a catalog - maybe made by Mattel becasue they also made a Hot Wheels drawing set....

Mike Lynch said...

Thanks, Dan.

Anonymous said...

That was called "Peanuts Picturemaker" and it was by Mattel. What a great toy! I still have mine in good condition. As a boy, I would spend hours creating my own Peanuts cartoon strips. I will have to pull that thing out.

And, as someone else indicated, Peppermint Patty was on the Peach Dolly Madison Fried Pie. I was a Zinger fan myself. Still love them even though they are by Hostess, now.

And Linus, he and I were cut from the same mold, I think.

Thanks for the memories.
Paul

Anonymous said...

Nobody enjoyed eating Peppermint Patty more than Marcie. She got the sensation of being an Amazon warrior, slashing a path through the tangled underbrush to the sweltering treasure cave. Thwip! Thwip! Peppermint Patty. Feel the sensation.

madmig said...

I once got a red Linus ring embossed with silver or gold lines from a WEBER'S bread package. I loved it. I accidentally dropped it on the floor and it mysteriously disappeared- like it never existed. I looked for weeks and I have never even seen a hint since then that it ever existed. This was around 1972.
I would love to land one of those!!!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I remember the Peanuts Picturemaker too. But there was also a rotary stencil which you would place over your drawing paper and thumbtack to a piece of cardboard. The stencil had index numbers around the outside as well as trace lines on the inside. You would make a mark at the top, trace the corresponding line, rotate the stencil to the next index and trace the next corresponding line. When you made it all the way around the circle there was a Peanuts character waiting for you underneath. Does anyone remember these or what they were called?

Anonymous said...

I do not know what they are called but I just bought some of the stencils at a garage sale!!
Any ideas on the name would be appreciated.
THanks

docnad said...

I've just written a fairly long post about Schulz's artwork for Butternut Bread and I've cited your collection, which is an invaluable resource. I've been able to match the Linus image on your Millbrook Fun Buns to the original artwork! The post is here: http://attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com/2011/07/butternut-bread.html
If you can recall how any of the other artwork was used, I'd love to hear about it!