Remember yesterday? Man, those were some good times, right? If you recall, I wrote about a Snoopy-edition Mitsubishi Pajero Mini I saw at RADwood, and in that story I recalled a memory of a Snoopy toy I had as a kid, where a tiny plastic Snoopy figurine was behind the wheel of what seemed like an airport tug. I hadn’t really thought about that in a long time, but there’s something objectively weird about that, right?
Sure, Charles Schulz wrote plenty of storylines where Snoopy had a variety of vocations and identities, from pulp mystery novel writer to college student to WWI fighter pilot and so on, but I can’t recall a single comic where Snoopy worked at an airport driving a tug.
A bit later, in the highly exclusive and desirable Slack channel all us Autopian laborers converse in, our Managing Editor Pete showed me this, in an attempt to trigger my nostalgia in the hopes that he might avoid one of my gin-fueled mid-afternoon rages:
That’s it! And, as expected, seeing this did unleash a floodgate of memories of these odd little die-cast toys. I had other ones of these Aviva die-cast Peanuts-themed cars. Looking at that strange tug – which I remembered was clearly branded TOYOTA on the front – my hands remembered the feeling of the texture of the wheels, the contrast of temperature of the colder metal lower body and the warmer upper plastic bits, the heft of the thing, and these sense-memories unleashed more memories of another, similar toy – red and yellow, with some sliding bits. A forklift?
Yes! There was a Woodstock driving a (clearly branded) Komatsu forklift!
I like how it says “FREE WHEELING ACTION” which just means, what, it has wheels? FREE WHEELING ACTION is a nice marketing way of saying “this doesn’t drive on its own or have pull-back action or do anything cool.”
Also, what the fuck? A forklift? There were precisely zero comic strips featuring Woodstock, a bird who spoke exclusively in hash marks, having a job driving a forklift at some warehouse or the docks or something. Who the hell would put this bird in a forklift?
Clearly, Aviva was just cynically using the Peanuts franchise license to grab as much cash as they could, slapping those tiny plastic characters into whatever die-cast cars they happened to be making at the time.
Look at all of these Peanuts cars varietals. Some of these I remember having – the yellow dune buggy with “ski” decals and I guess oversize skis on the roof and Snoopy at the wheel I remember. Maybe there were some strips where Snoopy skied?
Some make a little bit of sense, like the one with Snoopy’s doghouse, but others, like the racecars or fire trucks or mail trucks or ice cream trucks? Those feel pretty random.
I voiced my bafflement in Slack, to which Pete responded
“Rack toys were like the wild west of toy licensing. And in the 1970s, King Features was just taking money from everyone.”
… and it’s easy to imagine him taking a long drag on a cigarette after saying this, looking blankly into the distance as he reflects on a hard, wild life spent in the brutal and lawless world of 1970s rack toy licensing. Like he’s been there and seen some shit.
Oh, and Peanuts was United Features Syndicate, not King Features. Jeezis, wake up, man.
But his point is taken; shit was wild! Look at this one, for example: that’s a Honda Vamos! It looks like there are versions of the Vamos with Snoopy or Woodstock; I guess either works fine, because, like so many of these choices, there is absolutely no logical or illogical reason that they’d be in that vehicle at all.
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate it, and I would absolutely love to have a Honda Vamos die-cast with either beagle or bird in it. It’s objectively great, even if happily unburdened by reason.
Aviva did seem to be at least somewhat aware of the context of Peanuts and its related themes, and even if they ignored that for the majority of the toys they put out, at least sometimes they gave a shit. Like with this toy:
Look at that! They actually tooled up to make a new custom die-cast body for this one, which is a car version of Lucy Van Pelt’s famous Psychiatric Booth! Honestly, the Psychiatric Booth may be one of the best and most enduring gags of the entire Peanuts comic strip run, so I’m happy to see this.
They did a decent job extrapolating the minimally drawn booth into a car; it’s clearly made of reclaimed planks of wood, and, interestingly, has a bumper and headlamps added to make it more car-like and, presumably, a bit safer for that entrepreneurial child to drive.
Wow, these were weird. I need to dig around in some drawers, because I think I still have that Snoopy in the airport tug one somewhere.
(top image: eBay)
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