Bill Melendez's Peanuts Cartoons

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In the recent comic strips thread a heart-warming amount of Peanuts love was expressed, but how do people feel about the Bill Melendez cartoons drawn from the series? I grew up with these as much as the books of the comic strips, and I still remember them fondly. I love the fact that they used real kids to do the voices, and the muted-trumpet noise that represented the adults = CLASSIC.

I bought the xmas special recebtly, and it's still very charming and unusual. And I just found my VHS of 'A Boy Named Charlie Brown' - Charlie almost wins the national spelling bee - and its great, from the song 'Failure Face' ("You never do anything right / You never put anything in its place / No wonder everyone calls you / Failure Face!") to Snoopy playing the jews harp on the bus, to a moving and hallucinatory sequence that plays out while Schroeder plays a Beethoven piece. I also remember loving 'Bon Voyage Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back!)' and 'Snoopy Come Home'...

They don't beat the strips, of course, but they're not bad at all...

― stevie (stevie), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 19:34 (twenty-one years ago)

I still love them all. There's been a lot of repeats of the Christmas special recently and I've had to watch it every time it is on.

― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 19:36 (twenty-one years ago)

we had a ilx chat about this a week or two ago. we agreed that the movies were fucked up. things ALWAYS went back. Snoopy leaves charlie brown, the french farm house burns, etc.

― El Santo Claus (Kingfish), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 19:46 (twenty-one years ago)

the sound is really key; i can hear the jews harp thing as soon as you mention it, the teacher voice also, the charlie brown 'agh' (think postfootball-pull) is pretty singular too.

― brian nemtusak (sanlazaro), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 19:53 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm still trying to master that freaky chin-to-shoulder, palms-facing-the-ground dance that all the children excelled in.

Did Spike ever make a TV appearance?

― andy, Tuesday, 16 December 2003 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

I watched the christmas special last week and it was awesome. BUT, they coupled it with some bad 80's Christmas special that was completely fucking awful, complete with what looked like computerized animation! What the hell? It was a shallow, pointless retread of standard Peanuts tropes. Boo!

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 20:35 (twenty-one years ago)

The Christmas and Holloween specials are key for me, too: my inner kid HAS to watch every time they show up on Cartoon Network

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:11 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah, i love all of em, at least up till the eighties, when the whole thing went completely haywire - "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown," "It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown" (committed the unspeakable blasphemy of SHOWING the little red-haired girl) (who turned out to look just like jonbenet ramsey), and worst of all, "It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown," a jaw-droppingly naff takeoff of "Flashdance" (i'm not making this up).

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:43 (twenty-one years ago)

"Snoopy Come Home" = most tragic "kids" feature ever? there's a very moving scene where Charlie Brown and Peppermint Patty are at a carnival, PP (in her awkwardly flirty way) asks CB what he thinks love is, and he responds with this very moving story about his dad and an old girlfriend and a private joke they shared, and PP, not getting the point of it at all, just mutters, "sometimes i wonder about you, Chuck!" i doubt most of the kids in the audience got the point of it either.

i was thinking about it the other day and it occurred to me that "Peanuts" probably wouldn't get sold today, it's so weird and melancholy.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 23:51 (twenty-one years ago)

I think it was just called "Flashbeagle!", not "It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown". Although there's something wonderfully dreary and documentary-like about "It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown", as if Flashbeagle was a terrible holiday even more obscure than Arbor Day.

I'm also pretty sure "It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown" is from the 70s, since I had the "novelization" of it when I was very young.

― Casuistry (Chris P), Wednesday, 17 December 2003 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

"What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?" was the one where they visited Normandy, I think. Plenty of shots of fields of crosses, too.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6304090919.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

eerie.

― El Santo Claus (Kingfish), Wednesday, 17 December 2003 15:20 (twenty-one years ago)

"Snoopy Come Home" = most tragic "kids" feature ever?

Did you ever see the one where the donkey's mother died ('little drummer boy'?]. Pretty traumatic.

― Homer Formby, Thursday, 18 December 2003 09:29 (twenty-one years ago)

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