First, let me note that the Great Pumpkin Carols book which I talked about a while back is now available for preorder. And while I’m doing that, I’ll remind you both that when you preorder, Amazon will give you the lowest price they list the book for between now and when it’s released (often a bit of a savings)… and I’ll also remind you that The AAUGH Blog makes a little bit of income every time you click through on one of these links and order something. Yes, there is some underlying capitalism on this-here blog.

But that seems far too short, so let me do a brief write-up on something that I’d hoped to build a bigger, meaty more post about, but really, the vital stuff can be carried quite simply. It goes back to 1987, in West Virginia, in a Hare Krishna commune. Now, those of you who have encountered Hare Kirshna folk fundraising or recruiting at the airport or wherever may think of these as gentle, goofy, misled souls… but at the time, the New Vrindaban commune was faced with accusations such as child abuse and drug trafficking. It was a murder investigation that sent the FBI to the commune, and there they found something horrible and horrifying: three truckloads worth of bootleg merch, much of it Peanuts merch. Yes, if you wanted a sticker with Snoopy and Woodstock and the words “Eat, Drink, and Be Irish”, then the Hare Krishnas were willing to sell it to you… or, in their view, completely legally give it to you if you gave them a financial gift. (Kids, your lawyers will tell you not to try this trick at home.) Not all of the merch was Peanuts; much of it was equally-unlicensed merch for professional and college sports teams.  The Hare Krishnas were making buttons and stickers themselves, but the product also included imported caps. The commune had built up a multi-million dollar gift-getting business with this stuff, offering it outside sporting events and other places where they could find a crowd.

They faced the legal wrath of both the Peanuts folks and Major League Baseball. Schulz himself was said to be particularly angry about the depiction of Snoopy drinking beer of the non-root variety.

I don’t have the full details of what went down with the civil suits, but in 1991,  commune leader Swami Bhaktipada got a 30 year sentence for mail fraud and for racketeering, including for conspiring in the murder an ex-member who had been speaking ill of the group. That conviction was appealed, and in 1993 the swami got a ruling that he would have to be retried. In 1996, three days into a new trial, he cut a deal for a 20 year sentence. That was later reduced to twelve years, and he was released after eight. He died in India in 2011.

Don’t mess with Peanuts.

Source: Many of the facts for this article were found in this 1987 United Press International article. (This was from before UPI was purchased by an organization found by Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church.)

Share the news!