The First Appearance of Woodstock - Peanuts Daily April 4, 1967

While Schulz had used similar birds for many years, on April 4, 1967 (my 12th birthday), one bird was singled out and forever attached to Snoopy. That bird was given a name 5 years later: Woodstock.

This and one other Peanuts strip from the same week in 1967 were both found by a friend of mine. The other daily had Snoopy as the WWI Flying Ace on his dog house with Woodstock playing the role of his mechanic. He didn't have the money needed to buy the two strips, I gave him enough to buy both, and we agreed that we would each keep one. Since my friend already had a very similar strip from the same time period, I assumed that I would get the new Flying Ace example and the he would take this one, and I consistently told him that I wanted the other strip. But when we met after he had paid for the strips, he said that he was keeping the Flying Ace. I was dumbfounded, and I proceeded to argue that I should get the Flying Ace. I even pointed out that that strip was dated just a few days after my birthday, along with the obvious reality that I had paid for both! But he wouldn't giv in, and I wasn't about to come to blows with him. So I went home, so disgusted that I didn't even look at this strip for two or three days. But one evening I was looking through a book on Peanuts which included the dates of the first appearance of each character in the series. And that is when I found out that I was in possession of the first appearance of Woodstock. So, I called and told my friend of my good fortune that had been the result of his being a jerk. Of course, he immediately offered to let me have the Flying Ace strip instead of the one he had forced on me, and I politely declined his magnanimous offer.

Collecting Peanuts Strips, Part 2:

Apparently Charles Schulz didn't request the return of his original art during the early 1950s. But they were stored at United Feature Syndicate rather than being destroyed. What I heard was that an employee at UFS liberated hundreds of Peanuts originals, which is why originals from 1952 to 1954 were always far easier to find than the classic examples from the 1960s. While Schulz would request strips from later years to give away to friends and fans who wrote to him for examples of Peanuts, most of these were dispersed throughout the world, making it hard for dealers and collectors to know where they resided. Before prices began to dramatically rise in the 1990s, and especially after Schulz' death in 2000, one rarely saw a great Peanuts strip from what I consider to be the peak years, from about 1961 to 1967 or so.