Charles Schulz United Way Campaign – 1965

The Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schulz was very likely the most popular comic strip in America back in its heyday of the 1960s. Even though the strip wasn't even in the Lorain Journal, my siblings and I were well acquainted with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the gang through the TV specials, as well as the paperbacks featuring reprints of the strip dating back to its earliest days.

Even with their incredible popularity, the Peanuts characters back then weren't merchandised to death like they are now. They didn't turn up everywhere you looked, and it was kind of special when a photo promoting one of the TV specials appeared on the television page of the Journal. (I've posted a few of them, here and here.)

Since I was always on the lookout for any appearance of the Peanuts characters in the print media, I'll tell you about something that has haunted me for almost sixty years. I seemed to recall seeing one of the Peanuts gang – perhaps Charlie Brown – in a small ad in the back of an issue of Life magazine or something similar. The cartoon character was an angel, and I had no idea what he was representing. Did it have something to do with Trick or Treat for UNICEF? Did I imagine this?

Well, imagine my surprise when I recently recognized the angel character at the top of a Journal TV page for October 20, 1965.

Here's a closer look. Note the "Cartoon by Charles Schulz" credit line

So the angel was the mascot for a special United Way campaign that dates back to as early as 1963 and was still running as late as 1969.

The 'good guy' angel got a lot of use beyond printed ads, appearing on buttons, awards and displays.

There's another United Way 'angel' award on eBay that is attributed to Schulz. I'm not convinced that's the case. It might have predated his involvement with the charitable organization.

At any rate, I'm sure the United Way campaigns using the 'Good Guy" angel by Schulz were a big success.

And once again, the internet has helped me solve a mystery from my childhood (like it did with this one and this one).

Hugh Gallagher Movie Review: "Snoopy Come Home" – July 1972

It's Friday, so many of us are thinking about the various entertainment options for the weekend.

Fifty years ago this month, you had the option of seeing the latest Peanuts movie, Snoopy, Come Home, brought to you by the same production team that created the popular TV specials that ran on CBS for so many years.

The Journal's well-known movie reviewer, Hugh Gallagher, didn't think too much of the movie, however and pulls no punches in his review. When it comes to a movie featuring lovable Charlie Brown and Snoopy, it almost seems blasphemous for a movie critic to say in so many words: "It stinks."

In his review, Gallagher notes, "The movie is too long for the thin plot and most of the fill material is very boring. It would be hard for a child not to squirm around a lot during this film." He notes that the music, created by the same composing team that worked on Mary Poppins, is "banal and poorly performed." And Gallagher adds that "the action is sluggish and the "Peanuts" pearls of wisdom fall very flat sometimes."

Good grief! I wonder what the corporate suits in charge of the Peanuts moneymaking machine would have thought of those observations?

Anyway, we never saw any of the Peanuts movies in the theater. My siblings and I were out of the target audience range by then. (I was a year away from entering high school.) We weren't too interested in Walt Disney pictures either.

We were too busy watching John Wayne movies at Amherst Theatre.

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Peanuts has been a regular topic on this blog.

Millbrook Bread Ad Featuring Snoopy – May 17, 1972

Yesterday's post featured popular comic strip character Li'l Abner being used in a 1962 newspaper ad to sell Frankies wieners.

Ten years after that ad appeared in the Journal, Peanuts was now the most popular comic strip in the country. And just as Al Capp allowed his characters to be used in ads, cartoonist Charles Schulz had no problem using Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang to sell, sell, sell.

By 1972, the Peanuts specials had been on TV for seven years. Many of us that watched these original specials remember the Coca-Cola sponsorship that was worked into the opening and closing credits, as well as the animated commercials for Dolly Madison snack cakes and fruit pies.

Millbrook Bread was another longtime advertiser connected with the specials. Below is a Millbrook Bread ad featuring Snoopy that ran in the Journal back on May 17, 1972.

It's kind of funny that the ad just reproduced one of the bread wrappers as its main graphic.

Looking at the bread wrapper, I was fairly surprised to see that by 1972 Snoopy's design had already evolved into the short, squat version. I liked the mid-60s version much better (see below).

Courtesy Schulz Museum

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Charles Schulz and his popular creation have been the subject of many posts on this blog.

Snoopy at Midway Mall – October 20, 1970

My last surviving Peanuts book

Although Charles Schulz passed away twenty years ago, his Peanuts comic strip remains in the public eye, with a big budget computer-animated movie back in 2015 and many new retro-style products that hearken back to the strip’s original explosion in popularity in the 1960s.

My siblings and I remember it well. Since the comic strip was not in the Lorain Journal in the 1960s or 70s, our main exposure to Snoopy and Charlie Brown were the TV specials that ran on CBS. We eagerly awaited each one.

We also had many of the Peanuts books that contained reprints of the strips, unaware that the comics that we were reading were ten or more years old. (That’s one of them at the top of this post.)

Anyway, as the early 1970s unfolded, Peanuts was in its heyday – and that was reflected in these Journal items from October 1970.

The first is this article from the October 18, 1970 Journal about Schulz and his creation. 

Note in the photo that he’s posing in front of a set of the Peanuts Hungerford dolls (I had a Charlie Brown one, which I wrote about here).

Here’s a color version of the photo in the article. Charlie Brown is really beat-up!

A day after the above article ran, this advertisement appeared in the October 19, 1970 Journal promoting the upcoming appearance of Snoopy, as well as his nemesis the Red Baron, at Midway Mall.

Schulz would surely have cringed at the off-model drawing of Snoopy in the ad.

Was the event something unique to Midway Mall, or was it a traveling show? I can’t seem to find anything online to answer that question – no photos, other ads, etc.

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I’ve done several posts about Peanuts, including this one about the “Great Pumpkin” TV special, this one about the Christmas special, and this post about cartoonist Al Capp (of “Lil’ Abner” fame) poking fun at Peanuts.

Peanuts "Great Pumpkin" Special on TV Page – October 26, 1967

I've mentioned several times how as a kid I used to look forward to the arrival of the Journal each day. Besides the two full pages of comics to enjoy, there was the TV section, which usually included promotional photos of upcoming programs.

Above is a page from the October 26, 1967 television pages from 50 years ago this month. Besides the photo of Bob Hope (another favorite of mine) and Lucille Ball, we have a photo of the Peanuts gang. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown had premiered the previous year, but was popular enough to warrant a photo in the Journal for its second showing.

I remember seeing the special for the first time, and being confused when Snoopy had his ‘dream sequence’ as a World War I flying ace. I still have drawings that I made after seeing the special, as I tried to draw the characters from memory.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown remains my favorite Charlie Brown special, although I haven’t sat down and watched it for decades. Unlike many of the other Peanuts specials, it has no sappily sentimental or maudlin message; it’s mostly just a nice reflection of how trick-or-treating used to be in the 1960s.

Sadly, though, when I’ve stumbled upon the special on TV these days, it is so chopped up that it’s unwatchable. (Coincidentally, it was on last night, and huge chunks of the original show were missing.)

By the way, I’m old and grizzled enough to remember seeing the advertisements for Coca-Cola and Dolly Madison snack cakes that used to be in the credits. Although these promos were edited out decades ago, someone has posted them to YouTube!

And here’s a clip of the beginning of the special, if you want to be a kid again for a few minutes.

Sealtest Ads Featuring Famous Cartoonists – 1947 and 1957

A few days ago I mentioned how the once mighty A&P chain of grocery stores went kaput.  Well, here’s another national brand that advertised a lot in the Lorain Journal back in the 1940s and 50s, but has similarly disappeared: Sealtest. 

Sealtest lives on as a brand of milk in Canada, but here in the Lower 48, it’s nowhere to be found. At one time, it was a popular brand of ice cream, running frequent ads in the Lorain paper.

The ad campaigns were pretty creative too. One featured the work of cartoonist George Lichty, who was well known for his Grin and Bear It comic feature. His loose, sketchy style of artwork is instantly recognizable.

Here’s one ad from the Lichty campaign, which ran in the Lorain Journal on January 15, 1947 – 70 years ago this month.

Toasted hazelnut sounds like a pretty exotic ice cream flavor to me, more like something from the 2000s than the 1940s.

And here’s another one from about a week later. It ran in the Journal on January 23rd. The motorist kind of reminds me of Broderick Crawford.

If you take a squint at the fine print at the bottom of the ads, you’ll see that Sealtest sponsored a radio show on WTAM called Sealtest Village Store, starring Jack Haley (also known as the Tin Man on the Wizard of Oz).

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Ten years later, Sealtest used another well-known cartoonist – Charles Schulz – for one of its ad campaigns, this time for its chocolate drink. (They couldn’t call it chocolate milk?)

Here’s an ad that ran in the Lorain Journal on July 11, 1957. It has a nice piece of custom artwork, unlike the stuff that is cobbled together now since Schulz’s passing. Strangely enough, the ever-present “Schulz” signature is missing.

There’s no doubt that the arguing ballplayers are Peanuts regulars Linus and Shermy, but who is the chubby, indifferent umpire? Did he get fat slurping Sealtest's ersatz chocolate drink?

"Charlie Brown Christmas" Ad – December 9, 1965

When I was a kid in the 1960s, the surest sign of the holiday season was the appearance of the animated Christmas specials on TV.

At first, there was just Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol (which I wore about here); then later in the 1960s, my brothers and I would eagerly await the broadcasting of the Big Three: Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer (which played on NBC), How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas (which were both on CBS the same night, one right after the other).

One of the things I looked for in the Journal right around the time the specials were shown were publicity photos on the TV page. At left is the photo that promoted the very first showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas, which celebrated its 50th anniversary this year. The photo ran in the Lorain Journal on December 9, 1965.

To read some 1965 TV reviews of that first showing – including one written by a reviewer who didn’t like it – be sure to visit Tralfaz.blogspot.com. The Tralfaz post also has the same photo of the Peanuts gang (but in that one Charlie Brown has both of his ears).

Maybe it’s because I’m a crusty old man of 56, but I’m finally burned out on A Charlie Brown Christmas and the others. I’ve simply seen them too many times. Plus, they’re all chopped up, time-compressed and interrupted by endless commercials when they’re shown on TV these days.

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Like me, you might find it interesting to check out those TV listings below the Peanuts photo. It’s funny seeing how few choices you had back then. Although modern TV audiences would be horrified, it was plenty for us – and a lot simpler.

Li’l Abner Takes on Peanuts – October 1968

Courtesy DenisKitchen.com

I’ve mentioned Li’l Abner, the classic comic strip created by Al Capp on this blog a few times (here and here). It was my favorite comic strip in the late 1960s, and I really looked forward to reading it every night back then in the Journal.

My other favorite strip was Peanuts. Unfortunately, the Journal didn’t carry it in the 1960s, so my exposure to Charlie Brown and Snoopy was limited to the TV specials and the paperbacks that reprinted the strips.

Anyway, Li’l Abner poked fun at popular culture, and eventually Al Capp got around to lampooning Peanuts – 47 years ago this month, resulting in a highly publicized fracas with Charles Shultz.

In Al Capp’s satire, the strip (as well as the character based on Charlie Brown) was called Pee Wee. Like Peanuts, Pee Wee’s humor was based on very adult and intellectual things coming out of the mouths of little kids.

Here’s the plot. Hilariously, it’s revealed that the only reason that Bedly Damp, the cartoonist (drawn to look like Charles Schulz) was able to make his kid characters talk like that was because a psychiatrist lived next door and was always talking to Damp while he drew the strip. When the psychiatrist moves away, the strip loses its intellectual influence, which is a disaster. The syndicate (worried about their highly profitable business based on the success of the strip) then consequently fires Bedly Damp, and hires the psychiatrist to write it! Seeking someone with no artistic talent (a dig at Charles Schulz’s simple style) to draw it, they end up hiring Li’l Abner, who can barely draw at all.

Pee Wee himself is drawn as a goofy-looking, buck-toothed kid with a belly. His dog Croopy fantasizes being “Captain Eddie Rickenbarker, the flying ace,” but instead of “flying” on top of his dog house as Snoopy does in Peanuts, he merely flaps his ears to get airborne.

Here are the strips, which ran on successive Sundays in October 1968. (They appear here courtesy of kmunson-mac.blogspot.com.) Click on each for a larger, slightly more readable version.

Alas, the series ended right there, as Al Capp pulled the plug on the storyline because of Charles Schulz’s unhappiness with the whole thing.

Here is the short article (below) that appeared on the front page of the Journal on October 17, 1968 explaining it all.

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Cartoonists at War Over Parody of Peanuts
By Jack Smith
The Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES – Cartoonist Al Capp, whose Li’l Abner strip has lampooned American heroes from Dick Tracy to Lyndon Johnson, said yesterday he has dropped a sequence that parodies the wildly popular Peanuts.

“It is blasphemy, isn’t it?” Capp laughed in disclosing that Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts strip, had protested the parody which first appeared in last Sunday’s comic pages.

“I told him I was flattered by the attention,” Schulz said, “but I didn’t think it was very funny.”

Capp, in a telephone interview, said two more Sunday strips in his Peanuts parody had already been distributed through his syndicate but he has drawn no more.

CAPP SAID he had received a letter from Shultz expressing displeasure over the Li’l Abner takeoff on the Peanuts gang.

In the first parody Capp suggests that Schulz’ Peanuts children talk the way they do because Schulz lives next door to a psychiatrist who always talks to him as he works.

The Li’l Abner spoof also caricatured the Peanuts success in other fields – books, clothing, theater, advertising tie-ins – with a fictional “Pee Wee Unlimited.”

“I DIDN’T THINK it was very clever,” Schulz said. “I don’t mind parody if it’s clever. I thought it was rather dull and heavyhanded.”

“I guess there really are some subjects that one doesn’t laugh about," Capp said.

Capp praised Schulz as humorist and an artist, and indicated he was dropping the Peanuts parody only because Schulz was a fellow cartoonist.

Schulz expressed doubt that Capp abandoned the Peanuts parody only out of respect for his feelings.

“IF THE TRUTH were known,” Schulz said, “he probably couldn’t get anything funny out of it and went on to something else.”

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I don’t know if I agree with Schulz or not, as I thought the Pee Wee storyline was pretty hilarious when I was a kid, reading it in the Sunday Plain Dealer.

Nevertheless, if you’d like to read an excellent behind-the-scenes analysis of this historic comic strip confrontation, click here to visit Kim Munson’s blog and read “Al Capp & Charles Schulz: Clash of the Titans."

1954 Sears Wish Book Ad

Remember the Sears Wish Book?

That's the subject of today's ad, which in the Lorain Journal on November 4, 1954. It's interesting seeing that the cover was a charming illustration, instead of the photos that we Baby Boomers were used to seeing on the catalog cover in the 1960s.

Here's a color photo of the 1954 Sears catalog depicted in the ad.

Courtesy Ebay

Picking out things that we wanted in the Sears Christmas catalog was an annual ritual in the Brady household during the 1960s. It never occurred to me to question why Santa Claus preferred us to do it that way.

Here's another Wish Book cover, this time from 1968 – one that I'm sure we looked at.

It's funny thinking back about thumbing through the Wish Books. There was such an amazing array of stuff that you could spend hours just soaking it all in.

Courtesy
airplanesandrockets.com

There were always several pages devoted to the Peanuts gang (such as the 1969 page at left), with plenty of books containing reprints of the comic strips. Remember, Peanuts wasn't carried in the Journal in the 1960s, so our only exposure to Snoopy and Charlie Brown besides those paperbacks were the couple of TV specials that were broadcast once a year. (Come to think of it, one of the early specials – Charlie Brown's All-Stars – is never repeated at all.)

One year, my brothers and I all received Sears pajamas for Christmas with Snoopy on them. My Mom has a particularly sappy Christmas shot of the three of us wearing them (which I won't reproduce here – sorry).

The Sears catalog had a lot of exclusive things. I remember that for years Sears had the rights to produce Winnie-the-Pooh products (of which I had many, being a fan of the Disney cartoon). But the book was also filled with all sorts of strange toys that we'd never heard of. I remember seeing a photo of  Jimmy Nelson's Danny O'Day ventriloquist doll and wondering who he was.

Sadly, Sears no longer produces the Wish Book, having ceased in 1993 (click here to read an article about the book's passing.)

If you'd like to relive the memory of flipping through the pages of a Wish Book, though, visit this website. (Someone has gone to the trouble of scanning entire Sears catalogs through the years, so get a glass of milk and some cookies and do some wishin' just like in the old days.)

Finally, click here to visit a page on the Sears Archives website to learn about the history of the Wish Book.

A Popeye and Peanuts Christmas – 1959

Here's wishing all of my readers and fellow local history buffs a most Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! After all the activity here for the last few weeks, I'll be taking a much-needed break from blogging between now and New Year's Eve.

In the meantime, here are a couple of memories from Christmas 1959 direct from the Brady photo album.

Above is a shot of my older brother and sister (sorry Ed, you weren't born yet) and me on Christmas Day 1959. I'm holding a Popeye toy while my Charlie Brown Hungerford doll stands guard. (By George, I'm beginning to understand my preoccupation with cartoons and comics – it started when I was less than a year old!)

Below is my older brother and his Popeye Punch-Me bag. I remember playing with that thing in our basement, (although I was reluctant to punch a character that I liked).

By 1959, the theatrical Popeye cartoons had been shown on television for a year or two, and thus the spinach-eating sailor had enjoyed a resurgence in popularity. I'm sure that's why we received Popeye toys that Christmas.

That particular style of Popeye punching bag toy is hard to find. I did locate one shot of it online (below). 

As for my Popeye toy, it seems to be even harder to locate a photo of it on the internet. I did find a 1950s Popeye squeeze toy on Ebay that seems to match up color-wise (the yellow pipe, can of green spinach and blue pants) with what I yam holding. It looks like Popeye has a five o'clock shadow.

The Charlie Brown Hungerford doll (below) is much easier to find. It seems to show up on Ebay frequently, as well as the Hungerford dolls of the other Peanuts characters.

The Peanuts dolls came in two sizes, one just slightly smaller than the other, and it is difficult to assemble a full set.

Courtesy WorthPoint