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Reunion

Snoopy and his siblings.

Snoopy Siblings (37)

A scene from Snoopy's reunion which shows Snoopy and his siblings as puppies with their mother.

Snoopy's siblings are minor animal characters in the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz.

On June 6, 1959, following the birth of Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally, Snoopy remarks that he has no brothers or sisters, and is an "only dog." This was later contradicted in the strip from May 5, 1965 in which Snoopy wonders what happened to his various brothers and sisters and Snoopy was later said to have been one of a litter of eight puppies.

One by one five out of Snoopy's seven siblings started to appear in the comic strip.

Snoopy Siblings (45)

Snoopy's siblings in the TV special Snoopy's Reunion

  • Spike - First appeared August 13, 1975. He lives in a desert outside Needles, California. Spike was the first one of Snoopy's sibling to appear, and appears in the strip the most frequently out of all of Snoopy's siblings.
  • Belle - First appeared June 28, 1976. She is Snoopy's sister and has an unnamed teenage son.
  • Marbles - First appeared September 28, 1982. He is the smart one in the family.
  • Olaf- First appeared January 24, 1989. He is the family misfit and was originally referred to as "Ugly Olaf".
  • Andy - First appeared February 14, 1994. He is a shaggy dog and always appears with Olaf.

Most of the family seem to be in on Snoopy's World War I Flying Ace fantasy. Spike is often shown in the trenches as an infantry grunt and Belle appears as a Red Cross nurse for both brothers.

In the strip from June 18, 1989 Snoopy's father is shown receiving a Father's Day card. He comments that "all eight of them signed it". At the time this strip ran, only five of his offspring (Snoopy, Spike, Belle, Marbles, and Olaf) had appeared in the strip. The 1991 TV special Snoopy's Reunion saw the introduction of three more siblings: Andy, Molly and Rover. Schulz did not consider material from the specials to be canonical (in a loose sense of the term) to the strip, and Molly and Rover are generally not considered to be Snoopy's canonical siblings due to never having appeared in the strip. However, Andy eventually made his comic strip debut in 1994, suggesting Schulz himself may have considered the three's appearances in Snoopy's Reunion as the introduction to Snoopy's "real" siblings. Nonetheless, Molly and Rover have not made appearances in any Peanuts media since Schulz's death, likely due to this uncertainty.

Schulz came to regret introducing Snoopy's siblings into the strip, voicing in a 1987 interview that it affected the strange relationship Snoopy had with the kids. He elaborated in 1989 that it took away Snoopy's uniqueness as the only anthropomorphic animal. The only one of Snoopy's siblings he truly liked at the time was Spike, so long as Spike stayed in the desert.[1][2] Schulz appears to have changed his mind, or at least became fond of Andy and Olaf as a pair, as the two appeared frequently in the following decade.

References[]

  1. Groth, Conrad, ed. (2020). What Cartooning Really Is: The Major Interviews with Charles M. Schulz. Fantagraphics Books. p. 98
  2. Pauer, Frank (2000). "A Conversation with Charles Schulz". In Inge, M. Thomas (ed.). Charles M. Schulz: Conversations. University Press of Mississippi. p. 148.
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