The Sonny Angels to Snoopy Pipeline
Snoopy has always been everywhere. There is, in fact, so much Snoopy that both the Tokyo Snoopy museum and an Instagram account tracking Snoopy's fashion appearances update on a near-daily basis. Literally as I wrote this, new Snoopy merch launched online.
But, as of late, Snoopy is more everywhere than ever before, so much so that no less than four different media outlets have taken different tacts to exploring similar questions that, effectively, all boil down to ,"Why is Snoopy so omnipresent? And especially with Gen Z?"
The answers are as varied as Snoopy's many careers. He's cute, for one. His design is ingeniously simple. He doesn't speak and thus relies on expressions so adorable that're they were memetic before memes were memes.
There's over 70 years of Snoopy to draw on, too, from comics to cartoons to plush toys that're still doggedly in-demand.
But, nowadays, it's not enough to simply suggest that Snoopy's everywhere. It's more accurate to say that Snoopy's in his Sonny Angels era.
And I don't just mean that today's Snoopy culture is predicated on collectible Snoopy toys (there are a lot of those but there has always been a lot of those).
Instead, I mean that Snoopy status as a youth culture icon is fluid. It adapts to meet the times.
Because when you're as inimitable as Snoopy or Hello Kitty or the smiley face or the I Love New York logo, you don't need to evolve, despite what meddling ad execs might think.
Instead, culture will evolve around you.
Two decades ago, it was Joe Cool merch; a decade ago, it was KAWS T-shirts; now, it's Snoopy as a symbol of the self.
Sonny Angels, which have existed for two decades, were only recently positioned as symbols of girlish individuality, of personal expression, of cuteness. Snoopy, who has existed for seven decades, is indicative of self-love, of sincerity, and, yes, of cuteness.
On Twitter, images of vintage Snoopy products are hoarded and disseminated as breathlessly as archival fashion photos; dedicated fan pages share daily Snoopy pictures; Snoopy is edited into album covers or juxtaposed against, er, Better Call Saul (actually, that's not so surprising, what with BCS' irreverent young fanbase).
There's a veritable cottage industry of Snoopy content, what with upwards of 60 million views afforded to Snoopy TikTok clips — tellingly, there is no official Peanuts account on TikTok but there is a verified Snoopy page that regularly racks up millions of views.
You can, as the other outlets have posited, tie Snoopy enthusiasm to any number of factors (same for Sonny Angels, really). But part of it, unquestionably, is down to the same simple appeal that makes him such a marketable pitchman.
Consider the case of Swatch.
In early 2024, the Swiss watch conglomerate hinted at a special Snoopy edition for its wildly popular Swatch x OMEGA MoonSwatch collection.
Swatch, which already has a few Peanuts team-ups under its belt, was likely expecting Snoopy's cross-generational appeal to help refresh the MoonSwatch line, which is still popular but potentially close to fatigue, what with the constant stream of drops.
Swatch was not likely expecting its Snoopy watch teasers to explode, however. Or maybe it was: it wisely spaced them out over several weeks, each scoring upwards of triple the average number of Likes generated by MoonSwatch reveals.
And then the comments. We're, like, talking 400 comments per post compared to maybe 100 comments. The riotous popularity of this thing blows even the extreme demand for ordinary MoonSwatches out of the water.
The purchasing power of Snoopy, like that of the Sonny Angels, cannot be understated.
This commercial element is crucial because allowing fans to buy in creates a hook that holds tight. Even the people sharing Snoopy imagery and art on social media are adding to a collection, to some degree, in that they're amassing a stash of digital Snoopy stuff.
Gen Z is a collector culture and the vastness of the Peanuts empire naturally lends itself to the desire for a personalized stash of Snoopy stuff. The sense of self afforded by the Sonny Angels opened up an eagerness to identify with Snoopy's many nonverbal moods.
And you don't just see yourself in Snoopy but in your Snoopy collection, too.
So it goes for all of the collectibles of the day: Sonny Angels, Smiski, Snoopy.
