Sunday, I asked the question of why this comic book is in the AAUGH.com reference library:
The answer is that back in 1950, Schulz had cut a deal to syndicate a comic strip about three kids and a dog… and he planned to name the dog “Sniffy”. Then he was walking by a newsstand, and saw an issue of this series (possibly not this issue, but possibly; while we don’t have an exact date for the revelation, this September 1950 issue would’ve gone on sale in June, as Sniffy was a quarterly and comics at the time mainly listed the month that they were to go off sale, although some were actually dated months later.) Realizing there was already a cartoon dog named Sniffy, he switched to another name, and thus we got “Snoopy”, a name his mother was recommended for a name if they were to ever get another dog.
As for the contest, we got a number of answers, some right, some clear guesses (no, Schulz did not draw Sniffy, nor did his assistants Dale Hale and Jim Sasseville). Picking a winner is actually surprisingly easy, because using almost any “fair” criteria – first right answer, most detailed right answer, most creative answer – the prize goes to the same person, Naomi Johnston, who supplied both the right answer and the imaginative Actually, the way I heard it, Snoopy spends a lot of time reading comic books in his doghouse. He politely informed Soarky that Sniffy already had a comic strip. The Flying Ace needs to be bilingual throughout all his travels, and volunteered a Norwegian name, “Snoopy.”
She gets her choice from a list of About Comics publications.
