Top Ten #396

1) Peanuts: Our season finale (But stay tuned for Battys!) looks at It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown; a 1983 animated special with some really funny stuff. We enjoyed talking about the specials as a whole, though, since we feel the non-holiday installments don't get the attention they deserve. I am glad that most have a stable if not permanent home on Apple Plus after years of neglect on broadcast and cable.

2) Good ol' Charlie Brown: Watching so many of those specials, I was appalled by Charlie's behavior in a some of them, but overall I still think he's the man.

 

3) Miami Vice: The iconic series is back on Tubi for free streaming, no thanks to that nasty Calderon.

4) Yogi's Gang: Out of the list of seemingly hundreds of cartoons announced as coming to Tubi, about a dozen actually appeared, and most of those are from this century. It's good to see this 1973 ecology-focused series there, though.

5) National Proofreading Day: I am going to keep this blurb short to avoid making an error. You know who must have had good proofreaders? TV Guide. I don't remember seeing a lot of boo-boos there.

6) Easter Seals Telethon: The 15th annual event aired 40 years ago this weekend. Pat Boone and Donna Mills appeared.

8) Classified Love: 40 years ago, CBS aired this television movie featuring Michael McKean, Dinah Manoff, and Stephanie Faracy as three friends trying to find romance through the classified ads.

9) Facts of Life: Antenna TV has a marathon of the sitcom today. It would be funny if the showed nothing but Edna's Edibles episodes.

10) R.I.P. Bob Rosenfarb: The writer and producer worked on shows such as Heathcliff, Head of the Class, and St. Elsewhere. There's some variety!

Also, goodbye to the streaming service Brown Sugar. I remember when it launched. I hoped it would add shows like Julia and Tenafly, but I think Get Christie Love was one of the only TV series it carried.

Peanuts action figures are great!

My wonderful wife Laurie gifted me some more cool stuff for Valentine's Day, and I think Peanuts week here at the podcast is a good time to share this Super 7 toy. I am not sure if the front is charming or creepy, but I love it either way. It's nice to have Charlie in the lesser-acclaimed blue shirt, too.

I already have a figure from It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown; Super 7 issued a Mr. Sack a few years ago. I wouldn't mind getting a tree-eating Charlie Brown, though, with the maniacal expression on his mug after his big chomp.

Credit to The Entertainment Nut for this pic, and please check out the site for a fine summary of the original storyline from the strip. The Nut confirms that this shot above is an extra for the special and not taken from the source material!

YouTube Spotlight: McDonald's drinking glasses

This week, our season finale of the podcast (But stay tuned for the Battys!) looks at It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown; and our YouTube playlist this week is filled with Peanuts. One of the more intriguing clips is this ad for a McDonald's promotional premium (see below).

I can't be alone in thinking that we lost more than just cool glasses when fast food chains stopped giving out stuff like this with value meals (and a 99-cent surcharge or whatever). Nowadays you are lucky to get a small plastic cup with a Happy Meal.

Glasses, whether they feature characters from Peanuts, Garfield, or Star Wars, are cool. They can be reused. They look nice in a cabinet or on a shelf. Also, they have heft! Taking one of those home with the food made it all a little harder to carry, perhaps, but they gave a sense of more. It felt like value! I don't need to tell you that fast food doesn't seem like nearly the same kind of value these days.

But really I just miss getting the cool drinking glasses.

Show Notes and Video Playlist: Episode 13-15: It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown

*Thank you for joining us for another fun season of the podcast! This week we look at the 1983 Peanuts special, It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown! The special is available on Apple Plus.

*The official Peanuts podcast Mike mentions is here. Later in the episode, I mention It's a Podcast, Charlie Brown.

*The motocross special is You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown; and the ice skating special is She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown. The one centered on Lucy and Schroeder is Play It Again, Charlie Brown.

The election one is You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown. Snoopy joins the circus in Life Is a Circus, Charlie Brown.

*I just got an e-book version of The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation: Celebrating Fifty Years of Television Specials by Charles Solomon. it looks like it focuses on the art, but it does devote space to most of the specials. I say "most" because it does not have a blurb about It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown!

*This Is America, Charlie Brown is an 8-episode series that CBS broadcast in Fall 1988 to Spring 1989.

*Here is the Frank Wing cartoon referenced in the original Peanuts strip and in the special, courtesy of a Reddit user.

*The "What, Me Worry?" gag is in our video playlist this week (See below).

*The Environmental Protection Agency began in 1970.

*Please enjoy this episode's video playlist, with lots of promos, commercials, and more with the Peanuts gang! Click below to go right to it, or you can always visit our official YouTube page for all of our past episodes and similar lists for each one of them! Get happy!

Episode 13-15: It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown

We round out season 13 by taking a look at the Peanuts non-holiday TV specials. Most folks have fond memories of the holiday specials, but do they remember ones about camp, decathalons, school, motocross, and more? We give special attention to It's an Adventure, Charlie Brown, an hour-long special made up of shorter pieces adapted from the comics, including "The Kite-eating Tree" and the classic "Sack." Don't be a blockhead and pass up on this episode.

Read full show notes and more at https://www.battleofthenetworkshows.com/

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#podcast #tv #retrotv #seventies #eighties #peanuts #charliebrown #snoopy

 

Check out this episode!

Tomorrow on Battle of the Network Shows...

 

YouTube Spotlight: Paddy the Pelican

I had a little fun with Mike's harrowing story of a pelican attack on this week's podcast. At the end of the YT playlist this week is Paddy the Pelican in "Piggy Bank Robbery." You may wonder, what the heck is Paddy the Pelican?

The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican is an animated (and I use the term loosely) series that launched on ABC in 1950 and apparently got some airplay on Chicago stations in 1954 (Maybe other markets as well?). Paddy shows up on many "worst cartoon" lists, and you have to see it to really get it.