Dolores is a female character who was introduced in 1979 for a series of filmstrips designed for use in elementary schools. The filmstrips were produced by a company called Charlie Brown's Career Education Venture under contract to the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Until her eventual reappearance in the game Snoopy's Town Tale in 2018, these educational filmstrips were the only Peanuts-related media in which Dolores ever appeared for nearly four decades.
History[]
Dolores is described as a recent immigrant, with Peppermint Patty explaining in "Think of the Future Charlie Brown" that she recently moved from Mexico City. In "It's Your Hobby, Charlie Brown", Dolores mentions she has only known Snoopy for a few weeks. She can speak Spanish and even teaches Snoopy how to say "How are you?" in Spanish, although the usefulness of this is questionable considering Snoopy's lack of human speech. In one filmstrip, she teaches the other students to sing in Spanish for a performance at a local hospital.[1]
Similar to Franklin, Dolores appears to have been created to bring more diversity into the world of Peanuts, specifically a character with whom Latino students watching the filmstrips could identify. It is not clear if this was a contractual requirement or a decision made by the creative team. Whatever the case, both Franklin and Dolores prominently feature in the filmstrips, despite Franklin's then relatively minor role in the strip and Dolores never appearing in any of the comic strips, TV specials, or films. In the audio for the filmstrips, Dolores is voiced by Leticia Ortiz, who is credited in the 1980 book Happy Birthday, Charlie Brown!
In August 2018, nearly forty years after the creation of the character, Dolores was finally featured in another media besides the filmstrips when she was added as a new character in the mobile game Snoopy's Town Tale. Unlike in the filmstrips, in the game Dolores is described as being from South America. She runs a safari with her family.
She appears in the 2025 TV special Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical in a largely silent role as one of Sally's bunkmates at camp. Her design in the special is based on that from the filmstrips.
Appearance[]
Dolores has freckles on her cheeks, short black hair with two long and prominent curls on the back of her head and is frequently shown to wear purple clothing. Her skin is darker than that of most of the other Peanuts characters, although the exact intended shade in the filmstrips is hard to determine.[2]
Gallery[]
See also[]
- José Peterson, a boy with Latin heritage
Footnotes[]
- ↑ The AAUGH Blog Podcast: "O1. Dolores, the forgotten Latina Peanuts character"
- ↑ Some scans, including the ones on this page, are taken from filmstrips that may have deteriorated due to being improperly stored over several decades, and the images on 35 mm filmstrips tend to be fairly dark because they are meant to be shown through a bright light source. [1]