Was he? Maybe this is true inside the US but from outside the US, I've always viewed the character as a peculiarly American artefact – something I was aware of but never really read or watched. This seemed to be reinforced by most major Charlie Brown titles seemingly tied to other American customs like Halloween and baseball.

And that’s before you even touch the whole anti-segregation angle running through the story.

It's fascinating to see Lucy, Linus, Schroeder and Sally grow from tots or babies to the developed characters we know today.

We would somehow recognize Charlie Brown, but not by name. The other characters are basically unknown.

The reason is that Peanuts was not part of the mainstream comics books we were reading as children. Threre were two kind of them: proper books such as Astérix, and thick "anthologies" such as Pif which were a set of what Americans call "strips".

https://schulzmuseum.org/

I felt that in my bones.

I know, I'm being something of a Bah Humbug, but I legitimately cannot see the draw of this comic. It reminds me of Family Circus - no story, just vaguely cute things grannies would seemingly like to see?

I remember around 2nd grade or so Snoopy Joe Cool was a big deal and I had the t shirts and thermos and lunchbox.

There are of course the Peanuts TV specials, they didn’t have much impact on me personally other than to solidify a like of both Snoopy and his side kick, Woodstock.

For me as a kid, Snoopy and Stocky were the only interesting ones.

In fact the comics - especially the older ones are incredibly clever and funny and insightful and there’s long running threads and connections and strong characters.

Peanuts the tshirt/hat/poster/cup is crass.

Peanuts the comic is genius.

It exactly the same with Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The commercially exploited imagery is crass and dumb. The comics written by Karl Barks were genius and often really entertaining adventure stories.