Knee-jerk review: "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown"

1. This animated special premiered all the way back in 1966.  That makes it 60 years old.  We regret to inform you that it's not aging well.  Slow, kind of flat.  (Also: there's a whole bit about Schroder playing songs from World War I that 2026 audiences will never get.)
2. It helps to realize that Charles Schulz' Peanuts comic strip was never intended to be funny.  It's power comes from offering cutesy, heart-warming musings on life.  There are no traditional punchline gags.
3. Then again, "I got a rock" is pretty funny.
4. Mixed messages: Sally is clearly smitten with Linus but moments later threatens physical violence if he tries to hold her hand.
5. The Snoopy Red Baron sequence may be artful and creative, but it goes on way too long.
6. In this world, there is no more biting insult than calling someone a "blockhead."
7. Lucy is a pretty awful kid, but she finds some measure of redemption at the end of the show by guiding poor clueless Linus to bed.
8. Falling for the yanking-away-the-football trick is 100% on Charlie Brown, y'all. 
9. The 14-year-old Fry upon seeing Pig Pen: "Why is he so dirty?"  Why indeed?
10. This was a staple on CBS every fall during our elementary school years and almost always sponsored in full by Dolly Madison, a company that was Pepsi to Hostess' Coca-Cola.  Raise your hand if you remember the Zinger Zapper.

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