Christmas trees.
Egg nog.
Festive lights.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho, and mistletoe and presents to pretty girls.
Christmas carols.
Stockings hung by the chimney with care.
And the 1961 Ford Falcon?
Well, no. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on the television.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of perhaps the best-loved Christmas special ever: A Charlie Brown Christmas, which aired on the CBS network on December 9, 1965. I was but a wee lad at the time so I have no memory of that first broadcast; I certainly watched it later on, probably every year while I was growing up, and most years since, but whether I saw it that very first night or have any memory of it is beyond my recollection. I'd guess my parents most likely turned it on that first night, as I had two siblings that likely would have enjoyed it.
Now, much has been said and written about the Peanuts Christmas special, and today (Monday, November 30) ABC Television will air the digitally restored version of the program along with an hour-long special beforehand documenting the making of the original, appropriately named It's Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown!.
In all this 50th Anniversary hoopla, one might be tempted to think that this was the Peanuts gang's first foray into network television. Well, you'd be almost right. While this was Charles Schulz's first feature program on television, Charlie Brown and Co. had appeared earlier in the form of TV commercials. For Ford.
So step below the fold and we'll examine these early television incarnations of the Peanuts gang and see what they had to offer the prospective car buyer of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Charles Schultz was fairly well protective of his creation, but that didn't mean he was at all reticent about licensing his characters for commercial purposes. Almost from the start, the Peanuts characters have been licensed out as both products in and of themselves and for use in advertisements. The earliest sponsor was Kodak (for you young folks, Kodak used to make 'cameras' that used 'film') for whom Schultz produced a booklet for their Brownie camera line featuring Charlie Brown and the gang. Plastic Peanuts figurines -- again, 'action figures' for you young'uns -- began to appear in 1958, and Hallmark has been featuring the characters in their line of greeting cards 
Using popular personalities to endorse products wasn't exactly a new thing. Celebrity endorsements have been traced at least back to the 1700s when Josiah Wedgwood used royal figures to endorse his porcelain products, and even Mark Twain was hawking cigars in the 1800s. When television became the primary mass media channel, celebrities got in on the act as well, promoted everything from corn flakes to cigarettes. Though primarily used for smaller consumer products, especially cigarettes, soap, soda, and other consumables, celebrity endorsements also carried on into larger products such as the automobile.
Of course, these were real life flesh-and-blood celebrities. Cartoon characters had also been used to "endorse" products. A lot of the time, the characters were specifically created for the product (e.g., Tony the Tiger), but existing characters were also employed. Hostess Twinkies and Fruit Pies, for example, were advertised by a number of superheroes. But Charlie Brown?
Yup. Starting in 1959, The Ford Show starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, used Charlie Brown and friends to introduce the show. Here are a couple of the introductions. This first one is from 1959:
And here is a slightly later one from 1960:
I'm not sure if this one was originally in black and white or color; I suspect the latter as more recent artists probably would have made Charlie Brown's shirt the iconic yellow rather than blue.
Of course, since FoMoCO was the sponsor of the show it only made sense for the characters to also promote at least one of Ford's automobile products as well. Hence, we get the not-very-famous Peanuts car commercials. Some are typical 30-second spots whereas others are longer, almost standalone promotional short films.
The car to which they were drawn (heh) is the Falcon, a late 1950s compact that had a somewhat storied history of its own:
Don't let its humble looks fool you. America's Ford Falcon started out as a late 1950s economy car, then became America's most-loved 1960s pony car, morphed into a compact and sporty coupé/sedan for the 70s, and finally retired in garish style in the early 1980s. Except for one small exception.
And along the way, the Falcon was a two-door coupé, a four-door sedan, a convertible, a station wagon, a van, and, oh yeah, a Ford Ranchero.
I'd never given the Falcon much thought before the above post went up, except insofar as it provided the starting point for my beloved Mustangs. But they've been popping up more and more at car shows, and even driving around and I find it fascinating that it was billed as an economy car with good gas mileage well before the gas shocks of the 1970s that most of us are probably more familiar with. So I'm more inclined to give the Falcon some props these days, even though I never thought it was such a bad little car. It's not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.
This first one seems to be the initial commercial spot. The drawings seem fairly primitive compared to the later versions. Only portions are colored and there is a jerkiness to the movement from 2D to a 3D view. Their features are also less childlike (or neotenous) than the later versions:
And good heavens, can you imagine the uproar today if child cartoon characters were seen with tobacco products!
Here is one of the longer ones for the 1961 Falcon:
Better animation, but still fairly rough, yes? This next one is also for the 1961 Falcon, but the animation is much improved and the characters are much more like we remember them:
Note that the beginning of this clip features the ending of the first Ford Show intro we saw with the Ford emblem at the end of it.
Finally, we have another Falcon commercial, this time for the 1964 model:
And just because they were on TV doesn't mean the print version wasn't getting in on the action:
(source)
Schultz went on to bigger and better(?) things as far as advertisements go, including work for Hostess and, more recently, Met Life.
I should note that all of these ads and intros were animated by Bill Meléndez who also later did the Christmas special.
I won't go into the history of the Christmas special itself; you can watch the documentary tonight for that if you wish. For myself, I think it still holds up well because the basic themes still resonate: Consumerism, the vicissitudes of childhood, and having the underdog win in the end. It's doubtful such a thing could be made today, at least not by a major studio. "Too violent" they would say. "Too Christian" they would say. Of course, many said largely the same things in 1965 as it was making its way through the production sequence. Through it all, Schulz remained confident that the basic lessons of the program -- perseverance, faith, belief in oneself, all leavened with humor -- would shine through all the noise of the production process and the holiday season itself. As Schultz himself is reported to have said -- which also serves as a good lesson during the holiday season and beyond -- "Don't worry, it's going to be fine."
Credits: Top Falcon ad is from here. The Andy Griffith ad is from here and you can view the original TV commercial here.
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