October 14, 2006: It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown has kind of made a comeback. Not that it ever went away, but it seems to be back on track for yearly airings on network television, and each season delivers more new Great Pumpkin-related decorations and whatnot. I think its icons and imagery will live strong forever, but the longevity of the cartoon special itself might be another story.
It's no longer a given that kids will grow up making a Great Pumpkin viewing an annual tradition, partly because spending every free moment in front of the television is no longer the one and only cool thing children can do that doesn't require movement. My nephew, a fifth-grader, is online at the moment, and a few minutes ago, I did a little investigating.
Matt XE: Do you like the Charlie Brown Halloween cartoon? Waitin4Wii: it ok Matt XE: Have you seen it a few times, or do you watch it every year? Waitin4Wii: no Waitin4Wii: GTG
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown might be a ship that sails a bit slower each year, but it's still sailing, and with so many decades of seafaring under its belt, that alone warrants giving the special its own line of fruit snacks.
I don't want you to get too excited about the new Great Pumpkin Fruit Snacks, because they stop being awesome once you get past the point of admiring the box and start eating them. More on that when I'm up to it. With thirty-six trick-or-treat-sized bags inside, the box itself is pretty huge. Huge enough for me to do a double-take when I first spotted the box, erroneously believing that I'd stumbled onto a new brand of Great Pumpkin oatmeal. Had that happened, the article's tonality would've been far more uppity. Lots of caps locked words and shit.
Not a lot of research went into these, evidenced by the Peanuts gang wearing all the wrong costumes. Half of them should be ghosts, Lucy should be a witch, and Sally and Linus should be naked and having sex under the center pumpkin graphic. Was this an attempt to modernize the unmodernizable? Is Chuck Jack Sparrow? Is Lucy Harry Potter? Is Linus...uh, that guy from Deadwood?
The problem is, Peanuts already had a "normal" line of fruit snacks, so instead of actually getting tiny, red, strawberry-flavored Charlie Brown ghost snacks and tiny, green, lime-flavored Lucy witch snacks, you get 'em all "regular." Two Snoopys, a Woodstock, a Linus with blanket, a Charlie Brown with a baseball glove and a Lucy who looks more like that mysterious dancing boy from the Christmas play. In other words, they've just repackaged the existing, non-Halloweeny Peanuts fruit snacks in a different box.
I'd call that a ripoff, but on one of the box's side panels, there are pictures of the actual fruit snack characters consumers will find inside. So, if a person's eagle-eyed enough, he or she could totally not waste five bucks on everyday fruit snacks and reallocate their funds towards Universal Monsters fruit snacks, which are only sold during October and actually are Halloweeny. On the other hand, just having a box that alludes to Great Pumpkin Fruit Snacks is worth five bucks to me.
The bags are made of a metallic foil, and it's here we learn that metallic foil doesn't photograph well. The baggies are adorned with several pictures of Woodstock and just as many text bursts reading "TRICK OR TWEET." I don't know, Woodstock never seemed like the type to rely on "tweet" puns. Maybe it's just that the fruit snack company couldn't justify making all the text bursts read "|||||| || |||||." Not that they'd know that Woodstock talks like that, because these are the same guys that dressed Linus up like the guy from Deadwood.
The back of the box offers seven Great Pumpkin Halloween cutouts, but I'm hardpressed to explain what one is supposed to do with them once they're cut out. It's almost as if they were originally intended to be cutout ornaments, but changed in the smallest way at the last second because someone finally remembered that Halloween doesn't have Christmas trees.
This isn't to say that the cutouts are without merit. I realize that there aren't many people who will, like me, actually save the box of Great Pumpkin Fruit Snacks forever as a memento. The rest of the world should not be without their souvenirs just because they're unwilling to save a big empty box of fruit snacks, and these cardboard cutouts make much more space-friendly tokens of remembrance.
The question remains: Will kids who receive these when they go trick-or-treating appreciate the gesture? Does Charlie Brown still have the pull necessary to keep a house unegged on Halloween night? I dare you to find out. Go buy a box. If Great Pumpkin Fruit Snacks are successful enough, maybe next year they'll actually look like Great Pumpkin Fruit Snacks.
For me, they're good. I talk like...caveman. Frankly, every year it's the same with me and Halloween. I seem to find all the good stuff in September, and spend October wondering why I blew my load a month early. I know that these fruit snacks have been out for a while because people keep e-mailing in to tell me that I'm an asshole for not reviewing them, but I only found them last night. I love finding cool new Halloween stuff when it's actually near Halloween. Makes me feel like there's still a reason to keep my Christmas yearnings in check.
