'Toon Reviews 8: Peanuts 1970s Specials Part 12 + Final Thoughts

You’re the Greatest Charlie Brown

Just to be clear, there have been a good number of post-Vince Guaraldi Peanuts specials that are very good despite some less-than-pleasing entries like the last two specials we covered, and the last Peanuts special released in this decade is one of the good ones.  It’s another sports-themed special which breaks the mold by having Charlie Brown compete in the different sport of track and field as opposed to the usual baseball or football.  Specifically, he’s signed up for the only available event in the Junior Olympics, the decathlon, where he has to compete in 10 different events.  The best part about this scenario is that even though training for the decathlon is a lot of work, Charlie Brown is determined to do what he has to for the sake of the team.  It’s this trait that brings a lot of appeal as we watch his growth as a track star.  At first, during the training scenes, he doesn’t seem to have the makings of a big decathlon winner, struggling to give a decent performance in exercises and event performances.  In fact, he seems so unlikely to win that they actually have to bring in a backup athlete in case Charlie Brown really can’t do it, and that backup is Marcie.  Admittedly, the idea of Marcie being entered in the decathlon doesn’t seem like a good fit.  Marcie has been established to not have a good grasp on sports and is more of an academic type, yet this special seems to forget that and have her not only be eligible for a backup, but also do a good job in the actual decathlon.  It brings up the point that if Marcie’s so good at decathlon work, why wasn’t she chosen from the start?  For that matter, why is it never considered that Peppermint Patty should compete as opposed to just being Charlie Brown’s coach?  These are considerable holes in the plot, but not enough to ruin what’s good about the special.  Speaking of which, while Charlie Brown starts off without much victory potential, as he continues competing, he gets a better hand at the events and slowly rises to the top, which is especially great to see given his status as a perpetual loser.  It means a whole lot more since he goes on to outshine competitors like Snoopy posing as the Masked Marvel again and an opposing athlete called Freddie Fabulous, who’s a shallow one-dimensional bully who thankfully isn’t focused on that much.  Now, since this is Charlie Brown we’re talking about, he does go on to blow the whole decathlon where he’s just one event win away from being number one, and he runs off the racetrack with his eyes closed.  Honestly, this fail is pretty funny for how out-of-the-box it is.  What’s more, unlike “It’s Your First Kiss,” where the loss there was never his fault to begin with, it doesn’t result in Charlie Brown getting chastised, with everyone knowing that he did his best, so the good stuff in the special remains good.  That’s not even counting the many cute interactions between him and Marcie all throughout the special.  If there’s one thing that makes this special as good as it is, it’s the satisfying arc and treatment that Charlie Brown gets.  It doesn’t stand out as well as the all-time great specials and some plot points aren’t well thought out, but it’s still one of the hits in what is essentially a hit-or-miss era, and a good end to the line of specials produced during the 1970s.

Recommended

The Ranking

1. There’s No Time for Love Charlie Brown
2. It’s the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown
3. You’re Not Elected Charlie Brown
4. You’re a Good Sport Charlie Brown
5. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
6. Be My Valentine Charlie Brown
7. Play it Again Charlie Brown
8. You’re the Greatest Charlie Brown
9. It’s a Mystery Charlie Brown
10. It’s Arbor Day Charlie Brown
11. What a Nightmare Charlie Brown
12. It's Your First Kiss Charlie Brown
    

Final Thoughts

The 1970s features part of both the best era of the Peanuts specials and the weaker era.  The best specials of the decade are among the absolute best for a start.  They successfully continue Peanuts’ trend of making simple events of life feel like big challenges to get through which is especially apparent through the kids seen going through them.  By covering different topics such as staying true to your tastes , running for president, finding love, or tackling new sports, each special stands out in a different way.  This is really a great way of showing how life is full of different moments and different things to explore and that it’s not uncommon to feel like a kid through it all.  Aiding in this feel is how many specials give a fair amount of time dedicated to certain characters.  Most of them have several characters in a lot of memorable moments that add to the tone of the respective story and they hardly ever feel out of place.  Some of the characters brought to animation for the first time in this decade even help bring out other sides of certain characters they’re teamed with.  The ones that come to mind in this case are Woodstock, whose tendency to struggle through life as a little bird bring out a friendlier side to Snoopy, and Marcie whose need for guidance in certain activities brings out a fun dynamic between her and Peppermint Patty who’s at her most helpful and open to listen around her.  The animation style from Bill Melendez continues to fit the simple childlike feel with its simply drawn characters and background objects and solid colors.  Plus, it seems to have evolved from the previous decade with the movements flowing smoother and everything being drawn in a less rigid way.  Basically, the animation has improved with the new decade, but still stays true to its unique feel which really demonstrates the respect for these iconic specials.  Of course, the biggest highlight of the specials is the music of Vince Guaraldi with each composition coming off as memorable and securing him as one of the best TV animation musicians.  The standout music work to me is best found in “You’re Not Elected,” “There’s No Time for Love,” “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” and “Be My Valentine.”  This isn’t even counting the working of classical pieces of famous composers like Beethoven or Bach in specials like “Play it Again,” and “It’s the Easter Beagle.”  Just as before, the great music styles bring every aspect of the specials together and sells their appeal better than anything else.  This is at least true for the specials produced while Vince was alive…

This leads me to talk about the specials released in the second half of the decade.  The specials of the first half of the decade were consistently great showing off everything great about the 1960s specials and capturing the feel of Peanuts perfectly.  However, the great consistency slowly came to a stop as the 1970s went on.  From my observation, it seemed to stop with the unbelievable and slightly unfocused writing of “It’s Arbor Day” and the specials seemed to turn for the worse from there.  We got Charlie Brown’s mistreatment going way too far with him being blamed for something that wasn’t his fault in “It’s Your First Kiss,” a scenario featuring a character who didn’t fit with “What a Nightmare,” and as good as “You’re the Greatest” is, it doesn’t stand out as well as what came before it.  As for the music, with Vince Guaraldi gone, the music used for these specials, while good in its own right, didn’t feel as good a fit for the specials with the big bombastic band music not exactly being the best match for the material’s simple tone.  Basically, this is where the specials started varying in quality with many weak entries, and the strong ones we do get rarely coming off as highly recommended continuing into the decades to come.  It’s disappointing that the quality would become so hit-or-miss given the care and respect the specials started out with.  It’s debatable if I’ll cover the specials of the following decades since it’s hard to find them all and there’s other seasons of other shows I’d rather cover, but I’d be open to the idea someday since what’s to come is still mostly good and certainly far from the worst things ever.

As for the Peanuts specials of the 1970s, even if one part of the decade is way stronger than the other, we still have a great set of specials to explore here for Peanuts fans and animation fans alike.  If you’re one, the other, or both, be sure to consider finding them on DVD.

First Half:

Highly Recommended

Second Half:

Recommended

With that, we've reached the end at our look at the Peanuts 1970's specials.  The next set of reviews will be on the first season of the popular Disney XD series, Star vs. The Forces of Evil. Until then:

Stay Animated Folks!

'Toon Reviews 8: Peanuts 1970 Specials Part 8

You’re a Good Sport Charlie Brown

This sports-themed special gives us a lot to offer, and when you put everything together, you honestly get a pretty great performance from the Peanuts characters.  You don’t even have to be a sports fan to enjoy it.  For one thing, the sports the special focuses on are new outlets for Peanuts to explore.  Usually, when it comes to sports, the ones that get the focus are baseball or football.  Here, we have two sports that are pretty out of the ordinary.  In the beginning of the special, we’re treated to a lengthy sequence involving tennis.  It includes memorable moments of fun with Snoopy battling a tennis ball pitching machine, Linus and Sally lamenting about how you can’t play tennis alone when they find the courts full, and Snoopy doing a tennis tournament with an unseen player, getting overly mad when he loses, and discovering that he lost to little Woodstock.  However, it’s his performance that leads us into the second prominent sport of the special, motocross.  You see, Snoopy’s status as an athlete gets the attention of Peppermint Patty who’s off recruiting kids to compete in a motocross race, and that race ultimately dominates the focus of the rest of the special.  The racers who get the most coverage are Peppermint Patty, who's majorly over-confident that she’ll be the winner, Snoopy posing as the Masked Marvel who shows willingness to do just about anything to win, including using the tennis ball pitching machine when he loses his bike, and Charlie Brown, whose performance practically makes this special.  We all know that the prominent aspect of Charlie Brown is that nothing can ever go right for him, so it’s easy to predict that him competing in this motocross race will end in disaster.  At first, the special never ceases to go out of its way to majorly put the odds against Charlie Brown winning.  He only has enough money to buy a ratty old motor bike, he wipes out with the Masked Marvel causing him to lose his helmet, forcing him to wear a pumpkin in its place, and has a lot more ground to cover than the other racers.  However, despite everything that happens, Charlie Brown just keeps on running the race and gets through all the other obstacles it comes with.  This strategy is especially effective when all the other racers, including Peppermint Patty, run into obstacles that force them to drop out.  Snoopy does put up a good fight, including going so far as to shoot tennis balls at the very kid who puts food in his bowl, but even with that Charlie Brown never stops putting up a good race.  Everything that happens leads to a big finish when the winner of the race turns out to be Charlie Brown.  I’m not joking.  Even after everything that stood in his way, and even with his bad reputation, it’s Charlie Brown who’s the big winner.  I, for one, feel that it’s just amazing that someone as unlucky as Charlie Brown is given a well-deserved victory since it goes on to show that even though it’s more likely to fail than succeed most of the time, things can still work out on occasion.  This message is especially apparent when the special ends with Charlie Brown going on to another sport confident as a result of his motocross win, even though an instance of the classic clothes-stripping baseball pitch gag foreshadows the usual failure.  Well, at least we have a reminder that even Charlie Brown isn’t a “total” failure.  There’s a lot of fun sports-related gags and nice excitement from the motocross race, and the fact that this is a rare instance where Charlie Brown wins something make this special one worth seeing.

Highly Recommended

If you think I’m getting a little too nice with the Peanuts specials this decade, I just want to let you know that this is the last time you’ll be seeing this particular rating in this post.

The Ranking

1. There’s No Time for Love Charlie Brown
2. It’s the Easter Beagle Charlie Brown
3. You’re Not Elected Charlie Brown
4. You’re a Good Sport Charlie Brown
5. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving
6. Be My Valentine Charlie Brown
7. Play it Again Charlie Brown
8. It’s a Mystery Charlie Brown

Be sure to stay tuned for the review of the next special, which is easily the most obscure of all Peanuts holiday specials and the last one to feature original music from Vince Guaraldi, "It's Arbor Day Charlie Brown."

If you would like to check out other Peanuts special reviews on this blog, click here for the guide made especially for them.

'Toon Reviews 3: Peanuts 1960s Specials Part 6 + Final Thoughts

It Was A Short Summer Charlie Brown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the last Peanuts TV special released during the 1960s, and while it’s overall very good, this is one I personally get the least amount of entertainment out of, regarding the 60s anyway.  The story is told through flashbacks that Charlie Brown and his friends look back on as they write a 500-word essay about what they did over their summer vacation for school.  Through the flashbacks, we see the Peanuts gang get up to so many escapades at camp, which is another common trope from the comic strips making its animated debut.  It should probably be noted that the reason Charlie Brown and the boys end up going to camp is because Lucy went behind their backs and signed them all up and convinced their parents that they wanted to go.  I find myself amused by the scene for the boys’ reactions, especially Charlie Brown alluding being signed up for camp to getting drafted, as well as disturbed that Lucy has the kind of power to rob so many kids of their summer and rope them into something they really don’t want to do.  This has got to be one of her nastiest moves.  Anyway, this scene is a good way to foreshadow what most of the special consists of while the Peanuts gang is at camp.  Much of what we’re exposed to are scenes of the boys and the girls competing against each other in various camp activities, and the girls having great fun with them and coming out on top, while the boys just can’t seem to find victory at anything they do and just feel miserable especially when the girls constantly rub their victories in the boys’ faces.  At first, it’s easy to get some mild enjoyment out of this setup, but to me moments like this seem to go on too long and just make me pity the boys and their failures instead of enjoying myself.  Also, considering the time this special first came out, I like that it shows that girls are capable of being strong and victorious, but it doesn’t completely work since in making the girls look strong, they had to make the boys look weak.  The goal is kind of botched if you’re just going to put another group of people in the role society had constantly put women into at the time.  Easily the most entertaining parts of the camp scenes involve Snoopy living it up at camp amidst the boys’ misery since any scene of a male character enjoying himself can liven up this story at this rate.  Now, because of Snoopy actually having a good attitude at camp he ends up being the most athletically capable member of the boys’ team.  As a result, he becomes the centerpiece of the climax of the special where he takes on the character of a figure known as the Masked Marvel and challenges Lucy to a wrist-wrestling contest.  This climax is easily the strongest point of the special with so much intensity packed into the background music as well as the animation which really entices you to root for Snoopy to win the boys a much-needed victory against the girls.  Speaking of the animation, it really goes out of the box and wild as we see the effects the wrist-wrestling has on Snoopy and Lucy with a lot of detail going into their strained faces and sweat.  Then, the whole scene caps off in a typical Snoopy fashion where he wins the match with a kiss while all Lucy can do is pitifully attempt to call it a foul.  Yes, this part of the special is packed with so much greatness that you can easily see why Charles Schultz himself considered it his favorite piece of Peanuts animation.  As great as the payoff was, it’s not really enough to shake off the somewhat depressing tone of the story, especially since after that, we cut to the present where we learn that Charlie Brown failed to meet the 500-word requirement for the paper and laments that it was a short summer, and that “it’s going to be a long winter.”  This tone does work since I feel like kids can really identify with the overall story when they experience summer vacation, realize it goes by so fast, and end up back in school before they know it.  Because of that, I can say this special is worth a look, and you can get a good amount of enjoyment out of it, just not as much as other Peanuts specials, during or after this decade.

Recommended

 

 

Ranking

1)      A Charlie Brown Christmas

2)      It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

3)      He’s Your Dog Charlie Brown

4)      You’re in Love Charlie Brown

5)      Charlie Brown’s All-Stars

6)      It Was A Short Summer Charlie Brown

Final Thoughts

The Peanuts specials are some of the most famous animated series of all time, and their debuting decade features some truly great performances and really show off how capable Schultz’s characters are of the animation medium.  The stories are simple, but the way they are executed allow them to come off as universally appealing filled with great humor from how the characters perceive the childhood events they go through, strong and honest messages, and a certain edge to the atmosphere by showing off how mean the world can be, even if it sometimes goes too far.  Plus, following the prevalent failure, Charlie Brown, through these specials allows the audience to see themselves in the situations that aren’t far off from what they go through in life.  I think it’s pretty common for a lot of people to find difficulty in certain things like finding out the meaning of Christmas, or winning a ball game, or trying to talk to a girl, or surviving summer camp.  In getting through these challenges, there are just so many obstacles that stand in your way, but many of these specials show that through trying and never giving up, you end up with something that makes it all worth it.  The point is made so strong in this decade, I can definitely say that this was when the Peanuts specials were in their prime.  While your favorite specials from the decade may end up being everyone else’s favorite specials from the decade, those being the two holiday specials, the other four are really nothing to push aside, with some of them worthy of being in the same league as the big two.  What makes the decade really stand out are just how strong the little things of the specials are.  The characters featured have a lot of memorable moments revolving around their identifiable traits, the simple animation of Bill Melendez immerses you into the childlike world with the simple backgrounds, solid colors, and the limited movement, which honestly when put together looks like a work of art, and most of all, the jazz music of Vince Guaraldi is in top-form.  The music just seems to bring everything from the writing, to the animation together, creating an atmosphere unique to this series of specials which keeps you invested in what’s going on, even if it’s not much.  Some of the most effective jazz pieces that do this include “Baseball Theme,” “Skating,” “Great Pumpkin Waltz,” the title themes from “You’re in Love,” “He’s Your Dog,” and “It Was A Short Summer,” and of course the anthem of the Peanuts specials “Linus and Lucy.”  This decade really demonstrates how Vince’s music added a lot to the Peanuts specials, and that his passing in 1976 was quite a cost, but that’s for a future post.  For the decade as a whole though, there’s just so much to appreciate that makes the specials stand out better here than in any other period.

Whether you’re a big Peanuts fan, or a mild one who only knows the series for its holiday specials, all the specials from the 1960s are worth a spot in your animation collection.  Buy them on DVD separately or together in the 1960s Collection Box Set ASAP.

 

Highly Recommended

 

 

That's all the reviews for the Peanuts specials of the 1960s.  Next time we'll be covering the first season of the recent Nickelodeon hit, The Loud House.  Until then:

Stay Animated Folks!