Who’s The Better Franchise? #2: Charlie Brown Vs. Winnie The Pooh

ORIGINAL POST DATE: September 12, 2013

Well, last week’s Who’s The Better Franchise? turned out to be not as exciting or action packed as I was hoping it was. I really believed that Batman vs. Superman would’ve made for an interesting debut posting for this series but Batman really took most of the list with 6 out of 7 wins, and the one category that Superman one was barely the winner.

So, not a good way to start off this new blog post, but okay, this time around, we have a much more fairer fight between two beloved franchises who are alike in many ways but different at the same time, this week, we find out who’s the better franchise, Charlie Brown or Winnie The Pooh?

CHARLIE BROWN VS. WINNIE THE POOH

So, let’s begin the battle between Charlie Brown & Winnie The Pooh by looking at….Charlie Brown & Winnie The Pooh, this is the best main character:

BEST MAIN CHARACTER

The two most well-known characters in children’s history besides, of course, Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny, are Charlie Brown and Winnie The Pooh. In a way, both characters are very much alike, they are extremely likeable, each of them are happy, and each of them have a lot of misadventures in their universes.

Both characters are very memorable and it’s hard to choose between the two of them but in this case, I made my choice over who I feel sorrier for. And when I say that, I mean that each character has something that makes me care more when something doesn’t go their way.

Let’s look at Winnie The Pooh, he’s living a mostly care-free lifestyle and very curious about the world around him and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. In most of the movies and TV shows, Pooh’s main worries come from not having one important thing to him….eating honey. Granted, it’s part of his trademark and it’s not the only worry that Pooh has in the Hundred Acre Wood, he’s concerned about his friends and especially for Christopher Robin, but for the most part, honey is the most important part of Pooh’s worries.

Charlie Brown, on the other hand, has a lot of things to be worried about and properly so. His friends think he’s a pushover, his dog takes advantage of him, he can’t fly a kite, his baseball team can’t win a game, he gets rocks instead of candy for Halloween, and worst of all, he can’t kick a football because Lucy keeps throwing it away from him when he kicks it.

And, that’s where I feel the most sorry for Charlie Brown because of both characters, Charlie is like the Trix Rabbit, he didn’t do anything to anybody else but nobody wants to give him any respect at all.

He’s a character that is very likeable, albeit bland, but the fact that hardly anybody respects him, except for Linus and even Snoopy, that’s where the moments when Charlie Brown finally does something great more priceless. Of course, when Charlie Brown’s a spelling mastermind in A Boy Named Charlie Brown is a great example.

My favorite moment when Charlie finally gets respect is in the TV special, “It’s Magic, Charlie Brown.”. This is the special where Charlie Brown ends up becoming invisible during Snoopy’s magic show and because he’s invisible, he can finally kick the football from Lucy, which is both awesome and doesn’t go against the rules that if Charlie Brown ever kicks the football, the joke would be over because Brown was invisible when he actually did it. At the same time, the best part is when Charlie tries to kick the football again as Snoopy fixes the spell to make Charlie Brown visible again and slowly but surely, Charlie starts coming back to being visible again as Lucy suddenly discovers that Charlie Brown’s becoming visible and she pretends that she doesn’t see him and when Charlie goes to kick the football…well, you know what’s coming. That’s really funny and the best part of the special.

In terms of who you feel the most sorry for and the character that I like better, it’s Charlie Brown. No offense to Pooh but Charlie Brown has so many bad things happen to him in his life, I put him as the winner in this category.

Point goes to Charlie Brown.

BEST MAIN CHARACTER WINNER: CHARLIE BROWN

Of course, the supporting cast also plays a huge part of the story as well and all of them are very memorable characters. Let’s take a look at the best supporting cast:

BEST SUPPORTING CAST

As I said, both of these franchises have very memorable supporting characters for each Charlie Brown and Winnie The Pooh to deal with.

In Charlie Brown’s world, his dog Snoopy is the most well-known of the supporting characters but that’s not all there is, there’s his sister Sally, his best friend Linus, Lucy, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Pigpen, Schroeder, and Woodstock among many others.

For Pooh, he has Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Eeyore, Gopher, Kanga, Roo, and of course, Tigger.

And as much as I love Snoopy, who could easily help the Peanuts win this category. My vote is going to go to the supporting cast of Winnie The Pooh.

I find myself loving the characters from the Hundred Acre Wood more than I do the characters from Peanuts.

What makes the characters in Winnie The Pooh interesting is that they are not too bright but at the same time, they’re not that stupid, they just don’t know the ways of the world because their lives are in the mind of a kid. One of the good examples is in Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search For Christopher Robin where Pooh and the gang go out of the Hundred Acre Wood to find Christopher Robin because they believe that he was taken to a place called “Skool”, which the gang interprets as Skull but in actuality, Christopher Robin went to school. They don’t figure this out because they’re stupid but it’s because they don’t know better and it’s because Owl, who’s not as smart as he perceives, continually believes that he’s right about this even though he continues to make up stuff.

At the same time, all the characters are very likeable, Tigger, in particular. Can he be annoying sometimes with his overabundance of bouncing? Sometimes, but never to the point where you hate him.

When it comes to the Peanuts characters, they are all very likeable but they really don’t do all that much that’s different. When it comes to the Winnie The Pooh characters, they may seem like they don’t do all that much but they still have personalities and will occasionally do something different from the norm.

Point goes to Winnie The Pooh.

BEST SUPPORTING CAST WINNER: WINNIE THE POOH

Again, both of these franchises have amazing music written by some legendary figures of music. This is best music:

BEST MUSIC

There are some great musicians that they get to perform the songs for these franchises.

For Winnie The Pooh, the songs for most of the movies are by the legendary duo, Richard & Robert B. Sherman, who are also well known for Mary Poppins and many of the other classic Disney movies like The Jungle Book, The Aristocats, and Bedknobs & Broomsticks just to name a few.

In other movies, other names like Carly Simon, the songwriters of Avenue Q & The Book Of Mormon, and even Zooey Deschanel have written some great songs for some of the movies during the 2000s.

When it comes to Charlie Brown, everybody knows the legendary music of the late Vince Guaraldi from everything up until his 1976 death and It’s Arbor Day, Charlie Brown.

Some of the other names who’ve composed Charlie Brown movies and specials include Ed Bogas & Desiree Goyette, who later went on to become the voice of Nermal in Garfield & Friends. Famed jazz musician David Benoit became one of the main composers for the Charlie Brown specials of the 80s and 90s and even did a pretty damn great rendition of Linus & Lucy in the late 80s:

Rod McKuen wrote much of the songs for A Boy Named Charlie Brown and even the Sherman brothers did the songs for Snoopy Come Home.

And for this one, I’m going to give it to Charlie Brown because as great as the Winnie The Pooh songs and covers are, the music for the Charlie Brown specials are to me, more memorable and more catchy.

Like I said before, the cover of Linus & Lucy is pretty awesome but a lot of the songs in A Boy Named Charlie Brown, Snoopy Come Home, and the rest of the peanuts specials are pretty damn spectacular and, I feel, are much catchier than the Winnie The Pooh songs.

Point goes to Charlie Brown.

BEST MUSIC WINNER: CHARLIE BROWN

The benefits of both franchises is that they are, for the most part, timeless and unlike other franchises, haven’t resorted to modern day references to appeal to today’s audiences…however, one of these may be too timeless. You’ll see what I mean as we look at best…timeless…ness. Yeah, I’ll just go with that for now:

BEST TIMELESS-NESS

Franchises nowadays believe that have no choice but to update the characters in order to appeal to audiences, nearly every franchise has done it, Garfield, Alvin & The Chipmunks, The Smurfs, and many others, and most of the time, it falls flat on its’ ass big time.

When it comes to Charlie Brown and Winnie The Pooh, they seem to keep what makes the characters special and don’t update them to appeal to their audiences of today.

However, as I mentioned in my review of A Boy Named Charlie Brown, the fact that the Charlie Brown franchise is timeless, might also be a bad thing.

The fact that this franchise is very timeless should be a step up for Charlie Brown but at the same time, the humor hasn’t really stood the test of time except in the older specials. When you watch the most recent Charlie Brown movie, Happiness Is A Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown, a decent movie but some of the jokes do get really stale and they don’t stand up as well. They even tried to transfer the first Charlie Brown comic strip in a flashback scene and while it’s amusing to see the first strip translated into animation, it’s not really funny. And since we’ve got a new CG movie coming up with the Peanuts in 2015, I’m really scared of what’s going to happen to this franchise after that happens.

With Winnie The Pooh, however, the timelessness really helps this franchise stay strong.

Granted, there was one time in the history of Winnie The Pooh where they did do modernized jokes. It’s in The Tigger Movie when the ‘’Round My Family Tree’ song comes on where they throw in so many modernized jokes including 3D movies, the Busby Berkley ‘Buy A Waterfall’ segment, Hollywood actors, and even The Jerry Springer Show. To be fair, it’s one song and it’s only 2 minutes of the movie so it’s a little annoying but not enough to the point where the movie becomes unwatchable.

Despite that one bit in The Tigger Movie, Winnie The Pooh does manage to make the timelessness work and the jokes that they use are still very good. With Charlie Brown, however, they have more jokes that fall flat pretty quickly.

Point goes to Winnie The Pooh.

BEST TIMELESS-NESS WINNER: WINNIE THE POOH

Both Peanuts and Winnie The Pooh have made the transition to the big screen but who’s put out the better movies, let’s look:

BEST MOVIES

Both franchises have made the transition to the big screen as early as the late 60s.

Charlie Brown’s film run began in 1969 with A Boy Named Charlie Brown, of course, and I don’t even need to say anything more that I haven’t said when I mentioned the movie in my top 30 favorite movies. Snoopy Come Home followed in 1972, and then came Race For Your Life, Charlie Brown in 1977, and finally, Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown! (and don’t come back) from 1980. After that, that was it up until the recent news of the new Peanuts movie from Blue Sky Studios coming in 2015 and lord knows how that will fare up.

However, Winnie The Pooh got his start on the big screen in half-hour shorts starting with 1966’s Winnie The Pooh & The Honey Tree, which was the only Pooh short to be made while Walt Disney was still alive, and continuing on with 1968’s Winnie The Pooh & The Blustery Day, 1974’s Winnie The Pooh & Tigger Too, and 1983’s Winnie The Pooh and A Day For Eeyore. The first three put together into the 1977 movie, The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh.

It would take nearly 20 years until Pooh would return in a movie…a straight to video movie but a movie nevertheless. 1997’s Pooh’s Grand Adventure: The Search For Christopher Robin is often considered the darkest movie of the Pooh series because of its’ dark themes and imagery such as a scene where the gang end up falling off a cliff…you know, for kids.

Even Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and don’t come back) got a little dark in its’ climax when Linus and Violette get stuck in the chateau as it catches on fire.

But honestly, I really liked Pooh’s Grand Adventure a lot because it felt like a really good epic Winnie The Pooh movie and they kept what makes these characters work and you know what, even some of the dark themes and imagery are pretty impressive.

Plus, I always have beliefs that when TV shows or characters star in a feature length movie, you need to up the ante a little bit in terms of action or dark material.

Other direct-to-video movies followed with Seasons Of Giving, A Very Merry Pooh Year, Springtime With Roo, and Pooh’s Heffalump Halloween Movie.

A few years later, the theatrical movies began being released in theaters starting with 2000’s The Tigger Movie, 2003’s Piglet’s Big Movie, 2005’s Pooh’s Heffalump Movie, and the most recent release is 2011’s Winnie The Pooh, all four of those movies are all really good movies with Winnie The Pooh, the highlight of the four.

So, who’s produced the better movies? For this one, I’m going to go with Charlie Brown because they only had four movies released theatrically and most of them were pretty good. With the Winnie The Pooh movies, it’s very hit or miss if you include the direct-to-video movies where the Charlie Brown movies managed to be really good with just four feature length movies.

With that, the point goes to Charlie Brown.

BEST MOVIES WINNER: CHARLIE BROWN

And now, let’s look at the best TV shows:

BEST TV SHOWS

Because of the successes of the specials and movies, Winnie The Pooh and Charlie Brown also made their way to the small screen as TV series.

Winnie The Pooh first made the transition to the small screen in the Disney Channel’s Welcome To Pooh Corner, filmed in the same style as Dumbo’s Circus at the same time and debuted on the same day Disney Channel went on the air, Welcome To Pooh Corner ran from 1983 to 1986.

Two years later, ABC gave us the animated series, The New Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, which is arguably the best known Pooh TV series, which ran from 1988 to 1991 in new episodes but continued in reruns well into the early 2000s.

In 2001, Disney Channel created another live-action Winnie The Pooh series called The Book Of Pooh, which was created by the same people that brought us Bear In The Big House, and ran for about three years.

The most recent Pooh series was My Friends Tigger & Pooh, which ran from 2007 to 2010, and is the first Pooh series that doesn’t feature Christopher Robin as the main human character. A young girl named Darby is the main human character, and she’s actually voiced by Hit Girl, Chloe Grace Moretz.

Charlie Brown, on the other hand, has had only one TV series during the 1980s, The Charlie Brown & Snoopy Show, which ran from 1983 to 1985.

So, who wins in this category? I give it to Winnie The Pooh in this one because The Charlie Brown & Snoopy Show, to me, was pretty forgettable except for that intro.

Winnie The Pooh had two really good shows, New Adventures and Book Of Pooh, that were pretty fun to watch. Also, The New Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh took advantage of expanding on side characters like Gopher and the Heffalumps and Woozles and The Book Of Pooh expanded on Kessie, a character that we met in a New Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh episode, and made her a permanent character. Something that the Charlie Brown series didn’t do with its’ minor characters.

Point goes to Winnie The Pooh.

BEST TV SHOWS WINNER: WINNIE THE POOH

All right, now we have a much closer race than last week which means that the next category will decide it all, here’s the best overall franchise:

BEST OVERALL FRANCHISE

As I said, this is a tough decision because both of these franchises are really memorable and great, they both manage to keep their characters timeless and they don’t reduce them to new lows by updating them to make sure the audiences of today can relate to them.

But how do you choose which one is the superior franchise? Well, let’s look at who’s presented the far better material.

In the case of Charlie Brown, the four feature films, as I previously mentioned, are all very enjoyable but it’s A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home that are the two highlights of the films. But it’s the TV specials that are what we remember most from the Charlie Brown franchise especially It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and A Charlie Brown Christmas.

With the Winnie The Pooh franchise, the highlight films include Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh, Pooh’s Grand Adventure, and the 2011 Winnie The Pooh film and…that’s really about it. Not to say that the three Pooh movies that were released in between Grand Adventure and Winnie The Pooh were bad but they were, for the most part, weren’t on the level of the Charlie Brown movies.

So, in that case, the best overall franchise is Charlie Brown.

Sure, a lot of the great Charlie Brown stuff came out in the early years but it’s those movies and specials that we remember the most and can watch those over and over again every year. When A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home air every Thanksgiving Weekend on ABC Family, my TV is always tuned to it as well as when the holiday specials air on ABC each year.

With Winnie The Pooh, there are few times where I watch the movies and specials each year with the exception of the Winnie The Pooh & Christmas Too special, which also airs every year on ABC Family.

Please keep in mind that even though Charlie Brown wins this battle, both franchises are still really entertaining and as I’ve said countless times in this, both franchises work because of how they keep the characters from moving out of their timelessness.

But, we’ve got to choose a winner and again, the best overall franchise, at least to me, is Charlie Brown.

BEST FRANCHISE WINNER: CHARLIE BROWN

Follow The Reviewing Network at our Facebook page at Facebook.com/TheReviewingNetwork for continuing updates and debuts for new blog posts.

Who’s The Better Franchise? is a production and presentation of The Reviewing Network inc.

‹ Who’s The Better Franchise? #1: Batman Vs. Superman

Who’s The Better Franchise? #3: Alien Vs. Predator ›

Tagged with: TheReviewingNetwork, WhosTheBetterFranchise
Posted in Who's The Better Franchise?