Growing up in the '70s and '80s, you couldn't help but watch any of a number of Peanuts specials on television over the years. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the gang were created by Charles M. Schulz in 1950 and ran until the day after Schulz passed away in 2000. In the 1960s, Schulz, CBS, and a number of talented animators, young voice actors, and creative people began airing the first of the animated TV specials, beginning with A Charlie Brown Christmas in 1965.
By 2006, with the last new Charlie Brown television specials, a number of generations of young actors had done the voices for the various characters we'd come to know and love over the years, but the animation style, stories, and simplicity of the Charlie Brown universe never really wavered. Each year we are reintroduced to these iconic cartoons such as A Charlie Brown Christmas, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown and can pass them down to the next generation to know and cherish.
Perhaps these animated specials are outdated now, but they represent some of the purity and innocence that Schulz held his characters to throughout their 50-year run. Current cartoons may be brighter and flashier and created with new computerized techniques, but it's good to remind ourselves now and then of the simplicity of what may now be a bygone age. Even now, my own daughters, ages four and eight, look forward to the Peanuts holiday specials every year.
Somehow, in the 1990s when I was away in college, I managed to miss Snoopy's Reunion when it aired on CBS. However, I'm happy to say it's now on DVD and can be shared more often than the few times a year the Peanuts grace the TV.
Snoopy's Reunion introduces us to a time in Charlie Brown's eternally young life when he didn't yet have Snoopy, but wanted a dog. For the first time we see the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm where Snoopy and his brothers and sisters were born. Snoopy's mom, Missy, gave birth to a litter of eight puppies - Snoopy, Spike, Andy, Olaf, Marbles, Belle, Molly, and Rover. Over the space of a few minutes in the story, we see all of them go to good homes, including Snoopy.
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