A DAY IN THE LIFE OF ESTERBROOK- CHARLES M. SCHULZ
A DAY IN THE LIFE Of ESTERBROOK- Charles M. Schulz and his Esterbrook nibs created the Iconic “PEANUTS” Comic Strip.
Legendary cartoonist Charles M. Schulz used an Esterbrook Radio 914 nib exclusively to draw Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the rest of the famous “Peanuts” cast of characters. In 1950 the “Peanuts” comic strip began appearing in seven newspapers with the characters Charlie Brown, Shermy, Patty, and Snoopy. Within a year the strip appeared in thirty-five papers, and by 1956 it was in over a hundred. The Peanuts cartoons were centered on the simple and touching figures of a boy, Charlie Brown, and his dog, Snoopy and their family and school friends.
Adults were never seen, only hinted at, and the action involved ordinary, everyday happenings.
Charlie Brown had a round head with half-circles for ears and nose, dots for eyes, and a line for a mouth. Things always seemed to go wrong for him, and he was often puzzled by the problems that life and his peers dealt out to him: the crabbiness of Lucy; the unanswerable questions of Linus, a young intellectual with a security blanket; the self-absorption of Schroeder the musician; the teasing of his schoolmates; and the behavior of Snoopy, the floppy-eared dog with the wild imagination, who sees himself as a fighter pilot trying to shoot down the Red Baron (based on a famous German pilot during World War I) when he is not running a “Beagle Scout” troop consisting of the bird, Woodstock, and his friends.
Peanuts appeared in over twenty-three hundred newspapers around which made Charles Schulz an International Icon. . The cartoon branched out into television, and in 1965 the classic special A Charlie Brown Christmas won Peabody and Emmy awards. Many more television specials and Emmys were to follow. An off-Broadway stage production, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, was created in 1967 and ran for four years (it was also revived in 1999). Many volumes of Schulz’s work were published in at least nineteen languages, and the success of Peanuts inspired clothes, stationery, toys, games, and other merchandise.
His affinity for Esterbrook nibs was well known . When the original Esterbrook Pen Company announced it would be closing, Mr. Schulz purchased all of the remaining inventory of his preferred Esterbrook Radio 914 nibs so he could be sure he was able to continue using them for drawing his beloved “Peanuts” comic strip.
Schulz announced in December 1999 that he would retire in the year 2000, the day after the final Peanuts strip. Schulz died on February 12, 2000, one day before his farewell strip was to be in newspapers.
On August 15th 2002 , the Charles M. Schulz Museum opened its doors in Santa Rosa California. Millions of Peanuts fans have visited to learn more about the life and legacy of this American Icon and the Peanuts cast of characters. . A second museum opened in Tokyo Japan called the Snoopy Museum. The Charles M. Schulz legacy continues today with a new generation discovering Charlie Brown, Snoopy through new forms of media.