There aren’t quite as many Peanuts comic strips focused on food as one might expect. Little kids do tend to live their lives in the windows between meals and snacks, and Snoopy is as obsessed with his suppertime as any other dog, but food humor was a relatively low priority in Charles Schulz’s punchline rotation. Compared to baseball, philosophy, Snoopy’s alternate personas, or Charlie Brown’s truly existential levels of depression, food as a topic in Peanuts was kept on a low boil.
Even so, there are a few go-to gags in Peanuts focused on various characters’ culinary preferences. Snoopy in particular has a diet that would be troubling for a human, let alone a dog, with a marked preference for root beer and chocolate chip cookies. Peppermint Patty likes donuts, both Lucy and Woodstock are big fans of grape jelly, and on one memorable occasion in 1952, Charlie Brown lost a fight with a stick of butter.
Just the same, there are a handful of solid food-themed jokes across Peanuts’ 49-year history. Here are five of our picks for some of the best edible (joke) arrangements in Peanuts.
October 13, 1950
In the first couple of years of Peanuts’ run, Snoopy was depicted as an ordinary, if expressive, dog. He didn’t get his now-trademark interior monologue until March 1952, didn’t start walking upright until 1956, and didn’t start going on his Walter Mitty imaginary journeys until 1965.
In one of his earliest appearances, Snoopy is simply a dog who’s watching someone eat. Shermy, one of Peanuts’ earliest “lost characters,” is trying to have a meal without Snoopy’s interference, and eventually resorts to eating on the floor. It’s a familiar dance for any dog owner, as any dropped crumb or lapse of attention will lead to your pet eating off your plate.
February 12–13, 1960
In a wintertime story, Snoopy is trapped inside his doghouse with a giant icicle hanging overhead, worried that it’ll fall on him if he moves. Finally, Charlie Brown calls the Humane Society for advice on what to do, then orders a pizza.
Snoopy smells his favorite food and instantly races out of his doghouse, getting out right before the icicle destroys it. Much like the rest of us, Snoopy’s love of pizza is stronger than his fear of death. It’s difficult not to recall this strip any time you grab a much-needed slice.
April 15, 1978
In a rare example of a gross-out food gag in Peanuts, Charlie Brown changes up Snoopy’s supper. “It’s a combination of French onion soup, French fries, French toast, French dressing, and French vanilla ice cream,” Charlie Brown says proudly. Then he tries to feed it to a dog. Sometimes I wonder about you, Chuck.
Confronted with this atrocity, Snoopy does something unusual in response: he loses his appetite.
September 18, 1986
“You’re going to be proud of me, Marcie,” Peppermint Patty says. “Guess what I have in my lunch… an apple!” Unfortunately, it’s buried under all the donuts.
It’s a simple gag, but it’s got a chuckle in it for anyone who’s ever struggled to eat healthily. There’s an additional layer to the joke if you’re familiar with deep Peanuts lore. Peppermint Patty is a latchkey kid, so she probably packed this lunch herself.
April 14, 1991
Snoopy’s buddy Woodstock is another element of the character that showed up surprisingly late. While Snoopy’s affinity for birds goes back as far as 1951, his actual bird sidekick didn’t show up until March 1966 and wasn’t given a name until 1970. Schulz reportedly named him after the 1969 Woodstock Music and Art Fair, or more specifically, after the bird in Arnold Skolnick’s Woodstock logo.
Woodstock became a common sight in Peanuts comics and animated specials after 1970, but you don’t see his posse quite as often. Woodstock has a crew of his own bird pals who show up from time to time, most of whom are almost identical to Woodstock himself. The exceptions are Harriet, who sometimes has a red hair bow, and Raymond, who’s colored purple rather than yellow.
The Peanuts comic for April 14, 1991 marks a couple of unusual events. Woodstock’s crew isn’t a common sight to begin with, but this is one of the few times in which they communicate in anything other than their trademark “chickenscratch” dialogue.
Specifically, their chatter is interfering with Snoopy’s golf game. When he finally demands to know what’s so important, Harriet starts listing recipe ingredients. She’s passing on her recipe for frosting. The recipe isn’t complete, so you can’t make some bird cupcakes for your next social gathering, but it’s one of the weirder Sunday strips in Peanuts’ final decade.