Nostalgia for things that were already old when you saw them

[adams house cat]

Boney was played by James Laurenson as I recall.

EEG I would love to watch "The Avengers" again. Love that show.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

I was/am really into Peanuts. A lot of the strips I liked as a kid were decades old when I read them.

I was really into Peanuts as a teenager (as was wingco, who was my closest school friend at the time). By the time I left school I think I had collected the then entire set of UK paperback books of Peanuts cartoons, around 55 to 60 of them then if I remember rightly. Along with Hollywood films and US television series it was one of my windows into US culture.

EEG I would love to watch "The Avengers" again. Love that show.

Well, I felt that so strongly that I bought the boxed DVD sets of seasons 3 (Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale), 4 (Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in b/w) and 5 (Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in colour). Delighted to see that my eldest daughter likes them, which makes up a bit for the fact that my wife doesn't. Season 3 is hard work as both the sound and the picture quality of the restoration are poor (no criticism of the restorers' work intended, I expect it is a very difficult job).

[Lang Spoon]

I freakin love Peanuts, though I doubt I got half the jokes. Always had a thing for Lucy types since that didn’t have a thing for me as well.

[Hot Pepsi]

That’s good to hear. I didn’t realize Peanuts had any kind of following outside North America.

A lot of the jokes weren’t jokes. They were more like zen koans.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

No-one in Britain has a "dog house" like snoopy's. Well no-one I've ever met.

[Benjm]

It's pretty normal kennel, allowing for artistic licence, isn't it?

Our childhood dog had one. It's not really an essential purchase unless the dog is likely to spend time outside by itself at night or in bad weather. They have pitched roofs so it would be quite difficult for a three dimensional dog to lie on one the way Snoopy does on his. Ours probably saw more use as a supersized clawing/chewing toy than as a house.

I wonder whether the ratios of actual Peanuts readers to owners of Snoopy & co merchandise were the same on either side of the pond?

[Patrick Thistle]

Mrs Thistle is an avid Peanuts fan. One of the highlights of our first American road trip was visiting the Charles Schulz museum in Santa Rosa. The only reason we didn't bankrupt ourselves in the gift shop is because I told her she could only have two cases on the plane home and I wasn't carrying anything.

[tee rex]

I suppose it wasn't too hard for British audiences to enjoy things that were already old when the pace of technological change was slower, and the shows were imported from the future i.e. the USA. Tom and Jerry's house might have been drawn in the 50's but it still would have been a showroom des res in 70's UK.

Do kids today feel the same? A local channel has permanent re-runs of 1990's Friends, Simpsons etc, and they look ridiculously ancient. The episode where Mrs Krabappel answers personal ads in a newspaper, and writes letters to Bart ... what's that all about, Grandad?

As for Peanuts, it was compulsory for every first-year student room to have a poster on the wall when I was at college in the 1980's.

[Hot Pepsi]

Yeah. Dogs don’t often have outdoor houses like that here either. And if they do, they don’t sleep on top like that. That was just artistic license.

It’s obviously terrible - and increasingly illegal - to keep a dog *chained* outside most of the time or in bad weather. That’s neglect and cruelty. And some “working dogs” are forced to live most of their life confined in a small cage. That’s awful.

But some dogs like to just hang out outside to watch the world go by. If the yard has a fence, they can just hang out outside, rest in their little house when they want to, and come inside when the weather is especially bad and/or at night.

Snoopy was like that. And he came inside to watch tv and even slept in the bed when it was cold.

I also recall a strip where it was revealed that his house had a basement. He said accidentally dropped a case of root beer down the steps. So his house was magically spacious inside.

[Hot Pepsi]

“
I wonder whether the ratios of actual Peanuts readers to owners of Snoopy & co merchandise were the same on either side of the pond?”

Probably about 1:3. It was published in just about every newspaper and the books were popular, but I think there was a period when the TV specials were how most people encountered Peanuts, rather than the strip, and even now, there are a *lot* of Snoopy t-shirts out there and that took on a life of its own. His Joe Cool persona was an especially popular image on shirts, as I recall.

[ad hoc]

A lot of people round here have kennels for their dogs. They don't necessarily look as perfect as snoopy's did, but they do exist. And dogs regularly hang out on the roofs of them as far as I can tell (only retreating inside in inclement weather)

[HeavyDracula]

There’s a Schultz exhibition on at Somerset House atm.

[3 Colours Red]

I always thought that The Perishers was an attempt to create a British Peanuts - a bunch of children, a dog that's smarter than all of them, no visible adults, a lot of philosophical musing (though it doesn't get as existential as Schulz did).

It has two major problems though:

1 - It doesn't have the lightness of touch or the whimsy of Peanuts i.e. it's not funny or enjoyable to read.

2 - If you look at the character designs and settings then start to overthink it, it gets really bloody depressing. Where are the parents? Do they have homes to go to?

[Jah Womble]

Peanuts was and remains, great. By which, I mean the strip cartoons and books - none of the attempts to transfer the subtlety of Schulz's humour to animated form has ever really cut it for me.

[Gangster Octopus]

I too was an avid collector of Peanuts books.

The best thing about The Perishers was the Eyeballs In The Sky episodes that turned up during their Summer holidays each year.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Well, I felt that so strongly that I bought the boxed DVD sets of seasons 3 (Honor Blackman as Cathy Gale), 4 (Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in b/w) and 5 (Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in colour). Delighted to see that my eldest daughter likes them, which makes up a bit for the fact that my wife doesn't. Season 3 is hard work as both the sound and the picture quality of the restoration are poor (no criticism of the restorers' work intended, I expect it is a very difficult job).

My main exposure to The Avengers was watching it daily on American cable tv (A&E Network I think) when visiting my brother one summer. It was mostly Linda Thorson episodes and there's a fair chance this thread will result in me hunting down the later seasons on DVD for nostalgia squared purposes.

[johnr]

I always thought that The Perishers was an attempt to create a British Peanuts - a bunch of children, a dog that's smarter than all of them, no visible adults, a lot of philosophical musing (though it doesn't get as existential as Schulz did).

It has two major problems though:

1 - It doesn't have the lightness of touch or the whimsy of Peanuts i.e. it's not funny or enjoyable to read.

2 - If you look at the character designs and settings then start to overthink it, it gets really bloody depressing. Where are the parents? Do they have homes to go to?

My dad died the other year.

Last night I was going through some of his stuff, which included his own dad's army badge (he was killed at El Alamein) and associated letters. In amongst it all was a cutout of the last ever Perishers strip in the Daily Mirror. That's how much he loved them, I now realise.

[Eggchaser]

Definitely Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry, with inappropriately voiced Mammy Two Shoes.

The Marx Brothers films, A Day at The Races was our favourite.

[WOM]

In amongst it all was a cutout of the last ever....

Things like that are always very touching to find. My dad wasn’t the touchy-feeliest guy, but on his otherwise-unadorned desk at work was a small plastic card with a picture of a monarch butterfly and ‘Just passing through’ printed under it. Possibly a reminder? Who knows. Always made me pause a bit, though.

[RobM]

Peanuts is brilliant but the BBC's decision to show Laurel and Hardy again in the 70's edges it for me. Still love them and love the time they can take me back to.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

One of the great things about watching so much vintage stuff (30s, 40s, 50s) on telly in my 70s childhood/teen years was that often I watched it with my parents, and it kind of brought me closer to their world because that's what they grew up with and experienced as contemporary in their formative years.

[Benjm]

I too was an avid collector of Peanuts books.

I gave what was left of my haul of Coronet paperbacks to a niece a few years ago. This thread is sorely tempting me to hit eBay.

[San Bernardhinault]

I was never a fan of Peanuts - it was so culturally alien (the weird football thing, "the doctor is in", and so on) and it wasn't funny. It was made worse by the occasional time I saw moving picture Peanuts which always seemed terrible.

What is mentioned on this thread that gets me are those 30s (?) serials that were meant to be weekly in cinemas and seemed to be on BBC2 every afternoon - Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers in particular. I'm sad that kids today don't get to enjoy them, although they were 4 decades old when I watched them, so it would be like modern kids watching 70s Buck Rogers or Battlestar Galactica.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Ah, 1970s Buck Rogers...

[3 Colours Red]

I think we've done well to make it to almost two whole pages without mentioning anything produced by Gerry Anderson... and I'm not talking about Space Precinct.