Snoopy

Snoopy made his premiere in The Peanuts comic strip two days into the strip's history. So October 4th, 1950 is Snoopy's birthday. Charles Schultz modeled him after his childhood beagles Snooky and Spike. He originally was supposed to be named Sniffy but changed it to Snoopy after discovering that Sniffy was taken. In the early days of the strip, Snoopy walked on all fours and was silent. After two years, the thought bubble was introduced to show what he was thinking. Other characters in the strip seemed to be able to read his mind because they responded to his thoughts as if he was talking. He was mostly silent in the TV specials. It was ten years after he was introduced that Snoopy started walking upright. Since then Snoopy became the real star of the strip and shows. Schultz claims that Snoopy became the character that the loser Charlie secretly wanted to be. Schultz suffered from manic depression and he modeled the character Charlie Brown after himself. When he was young, he claims, every time he started to show pride in some of his accomplishments, his father would tell him not to get a big head. So when he created Charlie, he purposely made him with a disproportionally large head.