Funko POP! Animation: Peanuts – Olaf

Company: Funko

Series: Animation

Year: 2015

THE BACKGROUND

Snoopy and Charlie Brown are the faces of the Peanuts franchise, but it actually has quite an extensive supporting cast. Probably not one big enough to rival The Simpsons, but if you watched the recent Peanuts Movie (or Charlie Brown and Snoopy Movie as it was known in Australia) you would have recognised a lot of familiar faces from the comic strip.

And one of those faces was the subject of today’s review – Olaf, Snoopy’s decidedly chunkier brother. Yep, Snoopy has a brother. Several, in fact, though Olaf is one of the few who’s made prominent appearances in the strip.

THE POP

Olaf debuted back in 1989 as the disappointed winner of the “Ugly Dog” contest, and went on to make multiple appearances in both the strip and the animated specials over the following years. In spite of his supposedly ugly appearance, he’s actually quite endearingly cute – though he could probably do with losing a few kilos. You can read the whole thing starting from here. In typical Peanuts fashion, it’s quite funny, but is also very depressing in parts – particularly when we see Olaf’s reactions to his “win”.       

I’m not really clear why he was the first character outside of the main range to be included. I would have thought one of the human characters, like Peppermint Patty, would have been a more obvious inclusion. Olaf does appear in the recent film, but it’s very brief – and the more obvious choice for one of Snoopy’s brothers would have been Spike, who’s much more prominent in the comics. I’m pleased with their choice, but it is an unusual one.

In terms of execution, Olaf looks like a fat Snoopy, wearing a brown hunting cap and with a pink tongue slightly protruding from his mouth. His eyes are also painted half-closed, reinforcing the overall hefty feel. It’s a simple design, but it works. Like his brother, Olaf is frequently drawn in a position that would be ¾ profile in real life – you can’t replicate that exactly in plastic, but I think it’s just slightly truer to the character than Snoopy ended up being. Well done, Funko!  

Paint is cleanly executed, but check yours in person before buying. I've seen some with fuzz around the nose and eyes -- and the hat is actually cast in white, then painted brown, so making sure the hat is properly covered is quite important.   

AVAILABILITY

Olaf was a Target exclusive in the US, so I wasn’t sure if he’d actually make it over here – he was reselling for silly money not long after his release last year. But he’s now made his way to Australia as a regular release via Popcultcha. I’ve also seen him in Kinokuniya in Sydney, though not anywhere else.

OVERALL

For Peanuts fans, this is a must-have POP. Olaf hasn’t had a lot of merch over the years, and it’s always good to see more. If this one sells well, hopefully we’ll also eventually get Spike!  More casual fans can probably give him a miss – but he is pretty endearing in person. 

POP! Peanuts – Snoopy

Year: 2015
Company: Funko

Series: POP! Peanuts

I had a lot of obsessions as a kid, but Snoopy is probably the first that I really remember. I was probably about 5 or 6 when Weet-Bix had a promotion that gave away Snoopy trading cards inside their boxes. I had a bunch, and somehow as a result of a connected promotion ended up with a plush Snoopy shortly afterwards -- maybe there was some kind of mail-in promo? From then on, I was hooked, reading the comics whenever I could. The TV specials I could take or leave; they were their own universe, a little too far removed from what I wanted out of an animated Snoopy. 

I also accumulated no small pile of Snoopy merchandise, largely through the now-defunct novelty chain store Granny May’s, as well as the generosity of a family friend who visited Knott’s Berry Farm in the early 1990s. But like most of my childhood obsessions, the interest eventually drifted away as I got older. Charles Schulz’s passing in 2000 was a sad day for me. It may sound silly or even petty, but I think his death almost soured me on returning to the series later in life. Post-Schulz, there would be no new Snoopy comics – not that I was willing to recognise as authentic, anyway.   

I read Peanuts quite differently as an adult. It’s still funny and entertaining, but in a different way. Now I can recognise the sadness that lurks behind a lot of the humour – absent parents, unrequited love, bullying and depression, just to name a few. All of us have experienced at least one of those things; perhaps not as children, but certainly by the time we reach adulthood. In hindsight, Snoopy and Woodstock are pretty much the only characters who have a good time!

But I have digressed wildly, as I often do; now to the task at hand. At last count, there were more than 4090732502840 different Snoopy collectables on the market, and that’s only counting the ones still in production. So what distinguishes Funko's take from all the others that are out there?

Well, for one, this series has more than just Snoopy and Woodstock. Though it was probably out there, merchandise that featured other characters besides these too was virtually non-existent when I was a child. It’s improved a bit in recent years, but it’s still a rarity to see other members of the Peanuts gang. Charlie Brown suits the format, given that he has virtually always been known for having an enormous and round head; the others have translated to varying degrees of quality, with Lucy looking the worst. One can only imagine her violently reacting to the designer and belting him with her fist for doing such a “blockheaded” job.
  

Snoopy and Woodstock were always going to look a little different to their comic counterparts, rendered in Funko style or not. Though Snoopy has a distinct profile, he spends a lot of time drawn in something thatwould be ¾ profile if it was real life; however, it just doesn’t physically translate from 2D to 3D. This figure is a good compromise; Funko's stylised nature turns him into something akin to how he looked in the 1960s, when he hadn't quite developed into his best-known form, but is still quite recognisable.

He's smaller than a regular POP -- it's scale-appropriate, but irritating considering that he was released around the same time as POPs hit $18AUD. But presumably because of this reduced size, we get Woodstock as a miniature pack-in!

Woodstock’s hair is similarly difficult to translate into 3D; it’s rendered as a bit of a fuzzy mess in cartoon form, so most of the attempts that I’ve seen are…not great. This is something you can't really help; what looks good on paper doesn't always look good in physical form, which is why comic characters tend to get a bit of an overhaul when they move into live action.

Woodstock’s feet are a little warped; he just doesn’t quite stand up properly. After discovering this I had a look at some other examples in the same store a few days later; the ones I looked at seemed to have the same issue. A bit of blu-tack or something is probably advisable if you’re planning to keep him on display. But on the upside, his head moves! Yes, contrary to my suspicions that he would be totally unarticulated, you actually can make him look around in a few different directions. It’s not a lot, but it’s a nice little touch.  

The Peanuts world has quite a rich supporting cast, and there are almost infinite variations of Snoopy that could be created in POP form. As of writing I’ve already seen Olaf, Snoopy’s rotund brother, as a Target exclusive in America – here’s hoping there’s more on the way. Snoopy and Woodstock are not perfect, but for a former Peanuts tragic like myself, they're worth owning.

Snoopy -- Hot Wheels

I don’t often think about it these days, but Snoopy and the rest of the Peanuts gang were some of my great loves of childhood. I owned a huge amount of merchandise – t-shirts, books, stuffed toys. I was even bought an exceptionally nice Snoopy watch from America around the age of 8. His arms were the hands of the clock, and it was far too expensive a watch for a kid to wear during day-to-day life – so much so that I think I only wore it two or three times before the battery eventually conked out, years later. It was one of the great treasures of my childhood.  

When I've read Peanuts in more recent years, it tends to make me sad, more than anything else. This is at least in part to do with Charles Schulz’s passing in 2000. It was a big moment for me; I have not had many relatives or friends die, and this though a beloved member of the family was now gone. 2000 was not a good year for many reasons, and in hindsight this was pretty close to the top of the list of those reasons.  

But there’s more to it than that. I remember reading Charles Schulz saying that he had never intended Peanuts to be for children; it was for adults who remembered what childhood was like. I dismissed this when I was a child myself. Surely he could see the joy that Charlie Brown and the gang brought to millions of children all around the world? I’m sure he did. But filled as it is with surprisingly adult themes – religion, unrequited love, absent parents, inadequacy, disappointment, just to name a few of them – the strip has taken on a new poignancy for me as I too have grown older. There was very little "closure" in Peanuts, and I think nowadays it pushes some buttons that I didn’t even know I had. Schulz was a deep thinker -- this strip from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal may not have been too far off the mark.  

But we have digressed – we were here today look at a car based on Snoopy. Hot Wheels, in fact. I don’t really “do” toy cars anymore, unless it’s a Transformer, a Batmobile or otherwise DC-related. But when I came across this guy, I felt a stir of the old fondness and decided that I’d plonk down $2.25 (AUD) to own it. How does he come across?

Well, I wouldn’t have opened him had it not been for the fact that his packaging was already a little torn. It’s pretty standard stuff Hot Wheels – a CG-rendering of the “car” with Snoopy sitting atop the doghouse. It’s kind of a shame they didn’t deviate a little more from the traditional packaging style; I think a proper Peanuts illustration would have been a much better option. Maybe they’re testing the waters for a deluxe series in future? I could get behind that.

The doghouse portion of the car is a little weird, but what we’ve/I’ve come to expect from Hot Wheels. A red doghouse that looks like it’s straight out of the strip sits atop a thin green chassis, presumably representing grass. Some of the red paint of mine was chipped in the packet, so keep an eye out for that.

We now move into more stereotypical Hot Wheels territory with a massively oversized hotrod engine with funnels that are surely too big to be practical. Massive rear wheels, and small front wheels. I don’t know enough about cars to offer more thoughts than that, save to say that I don’t think this would be road legal if it were a real car. 

   

Onto Snoopy himself! Cast in softer plastic, and attached to the doghouse roof by a small post, he is the main drawcard of the toy for me. Even in the box I could see this was going to be questionable though; he’s got paint apps for his eyes, ears and nose but none for his mouth or collar. He looks a little half-finished, and this is worsened by the mould flash that’s left on the crown of his head. He also sits a couple of mm above the roof of the doghouse, rather than flush, so that’s a mark against it too.  

Speaking of paint apps, Snoopy’s ears tend to be a problem for merchandisers. Ostensibly, Snoopy is a beagle, but his markings don’t match up all that well with a real Beagle. Schulz tended to draw Snoopy with partially coloured ears, even across his different appearances over the decades. Merch manufacturers tend to give him solid black ears (which is technically wrong) or partially colour the ears black and leave the rest white, which usually looks worse in 3 dimensions. This one tries to split the difference and colours the exterior of his ears black while leaving the interiors white. It’s not great, and I think they should have just made them all-black.  

This car is a great concept, but lacking in execution. While the doghouse portion is well-executed, Snoopy himself is definitely lacking. I’d much prefer to see Peanuts deluxe releases, with nicer card art and “real” cars, to make for a nice desk display. Perhaps with the movie on its way next year, we’ll get that.