More on the Franklin radio drama

Franklin

Having now listened to that BBC 4 Radio drama about the introduction of Franklin into Peanuts, I can say that it is quite well made. I cannot, of course, speak to its accuracy in the depictions of specific conversations, but I believe it is worth the listen. But I know some of you would be disappointed if an AAUGH Blog review didn’t find some pointless point to nitpick, so here goes: in a scene where Schulz and his contact at the syndicate is talking about the week of strips that Schulz had just sent in that included Franklin, reference is made to the content of the Sunday strip, which was indeed the Sunday strip that ran on the Sunday that started that week…. and thus wouldn’t have been sent in as part of the same packet, as Sunday strips were prepared with a longer lead time than daily strips. (I do not know whether at the time Sundays and dailies were even sent in the same packets.)

Perhaps a more obvious nitpick goes to the website listing for the drama, which repeatedly uses “Schultz” instead of “Schulz”… but on the contact page, they mentioned that the BBC is running on a short staff due to the pandemic, and asking that inquiries be kept to essential ones, so I suppose that I’ll let a misspelling slide.

Franklin
Skin tone

One of the questions I got when I showed the Charlie Brown Career Education Filmstrips at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con was “why did they make Franklin so dark? He’s hard to see! My answer was…. they didn’t. When I digitized the filmstrips that I showed, I used a slide …

Comic-Con
Franklin stuff at Comic-Con

So once again they’re going to have a Peanuts pop-up “experience” (read: interesting display, with some items for sale) that is near but outside the convention, which means it will be open to folks who were not able to get into the con itself. This year, it’s themed “All Things …

Franklin
Franklin Forever!

Coming to mailboxes near you, sometime (date still to be determined) later this year, is a new set of Peanuts US postage stamps, with “forever” pricing. The plate, which celebrates the Schulz centennial features two copies apiece of ten different stamps, with 11 different characters depicted in all. And hey, …