Calendars (mini-wall for 2022): Snoopygrams. Andrews McMeel. $9.99.
Calendars (page-a-day for 2022): Peanuts; Bible
Verse-a-Day.
Andrews McMeel. $9.99 each.
Calendars (desk for 2022): Walter Geoffrey. Andrews McMeel. $16.99.
Old dogs can certainly learn new tricks.
Anyone who doubts that has only to look at the many and various ways in which
Charles Schulz’s bouncy beagle, Snoopy, has evolved in the two decades since
Schulz’s death (after previously going through considerable evolution during
the five decades of the Peanuts comic
strip). Snoopy has become a fixture online and in many roles in which Peanuts fans did not expect to see him,
such as his famous (or infamous) role as spokesdog for insurance company
MetLife from 1985 to 2016. Being at least as popular a character as Charlie
Brown, Snoopy continues to bedeck displays of all sorts, reappearing in Peanuts book collections as well as
being the star of offerings such as a 2022 mini-wall calendar featuring various
Peanuts characters. Based on Snoopy’s
official Instagram account – yes, he has one – and formally called @snoopygrams, this small calendar spans
a full 16 months, as is now the norm for wall calendars – with September
through December 2021 on a single page and the months of 2022 on their own
individual ones. The four-month page is not for the faint of heart or faint of
sight, since the calendar measures seven inches square (7” x 14” open), which
means each of the four months of 2021 gets a space less than two inches square
– but the Snoopy cartoon is worth seeing for all four months, showing the
redoubtable beagle standing proudly beneath the words, “Keep your head up!”
That is good advice for any month in any year. The rest of the calendar
features several Snoopy poses: he marches with an American flag for July, lies
flat atop a cupcake (in a pose familiar from strips in which he lies flat on
the roof of his doghouse) for February (amid the words “Sprinkled with love”),
and is draped over the top of a Christmas tree for December. Other Peanuts
characters make appearances, too: Charlie Brown is about to pitch a baseball
for April (“Believe in yourself!”); crabby Lucy walks along for March vowing,
“I’m on a new campaign to be nice to people”; Linus is in the proverbial
pumpkin patch, with Snoopy in the background, waiting for “the Great Pumpkin”
in October; and so forth. Snoopy has quite clearly made the transition to the
Internet age seamlessly, and anyone looking for a wall calendar that will fit a
small space while providing a large amount of enjoyment (including some
nostalgia) will find this one right on target.
Nor is Snoopy confined to
mini-wall-calendar status. He also appears on a mini-page-a-day calendar – the
type featuring one illustration per weekday plus one per weekend. These little
calendars measure only 3.5” x 2.5”, which is scarcely enough room for a full Peanuts strip or even a full panel with
words. But there is plenty of space for close-up views of Snoopy and other Peanuts characters, all offered
wordlessly but in characteristic poses. One page shows Pig-Pen walking as his
usual dust cloud surrounds him; another has Linus pointing at the sky and
apparently asking or demanding something, probably relating to his philosophical
musings; one has Snoopy sitting in a distinctly human pose, gazing downward at
the date as if trying to figure out the number; and there are walking Charlie
Brown pages, a befuddled-looking Peppermint Patty, an enthusiastically running
Marcie, a backpack-bearing Lucy, plus Snoopy at his typewriter, in his World
War I Flying Ace costume, holding a water dish for Woodstock, even one of him
looking uncharacteristically downcast. The nostalgia quotient is high here,
since you have to know the characters already in order to get full enjoyment
from their poses and the subtle alterations in their appearances on different
pages. This mini-calendar – which has four magnets on the back, so it can be
neatly affixed to a refrigerator or other metal surface – is further evidence that
Snoopy and Peanuts retain the power
to amuse that they had during the strip’s half-century run.
And it is worth pointing out that you can find a mini-page-a-day calendar with
words, ones that have stood the test of time even longer than Peanuts. That would be Bible Verse-a-Day, which – in the
absence of pictures – has plenty of room on each page for a short quotation
from the Old or New Testament. There is much to think about here, on every
page. “For the word of the Lord holds true, and we can trust everything he
does. – Psalm 33:4.” “The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul
that seeketh him. – Lamentations 3:25.” “You will have mercy on us again; you
will conquer our sins…. – Micah 7:19.” “For ye shall go out with joy, and be led
forth with peace…. – Isaiah 55:12.” “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for
tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today. –
Matthew 6:34.” The quotations not only come from many books of the Bible but
also are taken from many different English translations, so there is variety
baked into the verbiage of this calendar along with the thoughtfulness and
spiritual uplift. The calendar’s size may be small, but its value as a
counterbalance to the everyday hectic-ness of modern life can be quite large –
and the absence of illustrations or of a mascot such as Snoopy matters not at
all.
And Snoopy, for all his continuing popularity, is scarcely the only dog star on the Internet and social media today. One of his many canine compatriots is Walter Geoffrey, a French bulldog whose claim to fame is living in “Meltdown City.” As his website proclaims, “If you're looking for wg, you can find him on the corner of emotionally unstable and overdramatic.” That makes him an ideal purveyor of merchandise (toys, T-shirts, hoodies and more) and a suitable star of his very own desk calendar, a 16-month planner (September 2021-December 2022) with a cartoon drawing of wg’s head at the bottom right corner of every right-hand page. Like the mini-page-a-day Peanuts calendar, this desktop offering is for existing fans, since it provides no information on wg beyond the brief comments that appear next to his head at the bottoms of the pages. And those remarks are intended to reinforce what his fans already know: “5-Star Dog Living in a 2-Star World,” “Walter for President,” “The Sexy Leg,” “The Bilingual King,” “Mr. Tiny T-Rex Arms,” and so forth. In truth, the design of this desk calendar makes it less than completely suitable for the usual purposes of desk calendars: it does not open flat (although it has a built-in bookmark to keep a user’s place in the year), and at roughly 5” x 8” it is on the small side for desktop use. On the other hand, wg fans looking for a planner suitable for a small space – to go along with a small-space wall calendar and/or small-space page-a-day calendar – will enjoy using this one. They will also certainly agree with the bottom-of-some-pages declaration that wg is “The Most Interesting Dog in the World.” Snoopy fans, however, will understandably beg to differ.
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