This Week In “I Bet That’s Not Licensed”

There’s been a sudden spate of print-on-demand Peanuts titles that are setting off my “doesn’t look licensed” radar.

Let’s see: There’s this coloring book:

It it’s out-of-ratio cover doesn’t trigger your suspicion, there’s the fact that its descriptor actually calls it “(Unofficial Snoopy Book)”, as if that makes it a-okay! (The back cover has an ad for a similar Star Wars coloring book.)

And then we get to the notebooks!

And then there are these “Snoopy” books that can likely get away without a license, because it’s not-that-Snoopy.

New releases
A pop-up shows up

Here Comes Charlie Brown!: A Peanuts Pop-up, Gene Kannenberg, Jr.’s adaptation of the very first Peanuts strip, is not the first Peanuts book to reprint only a single strip. There was at least one board book that did much the same thing. However, that board book was, at heart, a …

Classic finds
English Phrases to Comfort Your Heart

The next book in my Amazon Japan shipment falls into the adorable category of “Peanuts used to explain American culture”. English Phrases to Comfort Your Heart with Snoopy by Nobu Yamada falls into that category. It also falls into the category of “books which are meant to be destroyed”, as each …

New releases
Look! A mook!

Mooks – that is, items with magazine-like content but sold more like a book – are popular in Japan. Many of them come bundled with extra items, and there have been a fair number with Peanuts items. Most often these are bags – a handbag or a tote of some …