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It’s one of the most famous running jokes in Peanuts’ 50-year run: Lucy holds a football for Charlie Brown to run up and kick, only to pull it away at the last second. Despite years of attempts to move faster than Lucy could react, Charlie Brown always misses the kick and lands flat on his back. Like much of Peanuts, it’s a story about hope. No matter what happens, Charlie Brown keeps trying.
The history of the “football gag” is a little more complicated than you might expect. It first appears in the strip for Nov. 14, 1951, where Violet is the one holding the football. Instead of deliberately tricking Charlie Brown, she pulls her hand back out of fear that he’s going to kick her instead of the ball.
Nov. 16, 1952 was the first time Lucy used a football to play a deliberate trick on Charlie Brown. The concept went on hiatus for the next few years, until it reappeared in 1956. From that point forward, as a sort of informal indicator that the American football season had started back up, every autumn featured a new spin on the Peanuts football gag.
In the next 44 years, Charlie Brown never successfully kicked the football. There are a couple of strips over the years in which the joke plays out a little differently than usual, but the joke itself stays the same. It’s arguably a non-trivial part of why Lucy has the reputation she does among Peanuts fans, as it’s one of the only examples in Peanuts of Charlie Brown’s hard luck having a specific, personal cause. Lucy has to choose to hurt Charlie Brown, and does so every time.
Reading Peanuts now, the funnier football gags tend to be later in the strip’s run, when the formula is established well enough for Schulz to play with it. With that in mind, here are our picks for the best versions of the football gag in Peanuts.
1
October 4, 1959
By its fourth run, the basic elements of the football gag were already in place. Charlie Brown knew the score; Lucy knew he knew; and it was simply a question of how she would talk him into trying anyway.
“Anyone can trust someone who’s trustworthy,” Lucy tells Charlie Brown. “I’m giving you a chance to learn to trust someone who is not trustworthy!”
He takes that argument at face value and tries to kick the football again anyway. Naturally, she pulls it away. While Charlie Brown’s flat on his back, Lucy asks him, “See you here again next year?”
Lucy may be at fault here, but frankly, Charlie Brown should know better, even this early on.
2
October 24, 1999
The last football gag in Peanuts, due to Schulz’s retirement, was also as close as Charlie Brown ever got to a victory in the bit.
Right as Lucy’s preparing to deliver another version of the prank to Charlie Brown, her little brother Rerun (introduced in 1972, but brought into greater prominence in the 1990s) comes out to tell her it’s time for lunch. Lucy goes inside, leaving Rerun to hold the ball for Charlie Brown.
Later, Rerun comes inside with the ball. “What happened?” Lucy asks. “Did you pull the ball away? Did he kick it?”
“You’ll never know,” Rerun replies, to Lucy’s horror.
It’s a real lady-or-the-tiger moment for Peanuts, and is an odd send-off for one of the strip’s oldest jokes. You can make an argument either way for what Rerun chose to do here, but I’d like to think he let Charlie Brown land the kick.
3
October 29, 1995
The football gag for 1995 requires a bit of knowledge of Peanuts to land. It’s a traditional spin on the strip, with Lucy trying once more to get Charlie Brown to kick the football, but this time she suggests he could always sue her if she pulls it away again.
Naturally, this time, when Charlie Brown runs towards the football, he’s accompanied by Snoopy, who’s dressed as his (comparatively little-known) alter ego the World Famous Attorney. The outcome’s never shown, but if the worst comes to pass, at least Charlie Brown has secured appropriate representation.
4
October 16, 1983
Charlie Brown didn’t always fall for Lucy’s scam. In the strip for Oct. 16, 1983, he chooses not to listen to Lucy.
“What you really mean is you’ll pull the ball away,” Charlie Brown tells her, “and I’ll land on my back and kill myself! Well, I have news for you! Never again! Forget it!”
Charlie Brown immediately runs into five more people (if one were to grant Woodstock personhood) with their own footballs, potentially ready to play the same trick on him. Worse, those five people include his sister, his dog, and one of his best friends.
It’s one of those trademark Peanuts punchlines that gets darker the more you think about it, as it highlights just how much this world chooses to pile onto poor Charlie Brown’s head.
5
Aug. 2, 1979
In a slightly unusual move for Peanuts, most of July 1979 was devoted to a storyline in which Charlie Brown was in the hospital. While it’s never explicitly said what the problem was, Charlie Brown was sick enough that many of his friends were worried about him. Even Lucy, in an unguarded moment, promised that if Charlie Brown got better, she’d never play the football prank again.
She was, surprisingly, as good as her word. Unfortunately, the universe is rarely so kind to Charlie Brown, as Lucy soon discovered.
Instead of kicking the football, Charlie Brown missed and kicked Lucy’s hand. A couple of strips later, she’s shown with it in a cast, still annoyed with Charlie Brown.
You can’t count this as any kind of win for Charlie Brown. This was an accident, and he clearly feels terrible about it in the next couple of strips. Even so, if you’re one of the Peanuts readers who enjoys it when Lucy suffers any kind of consequences for her actions, the 1979 football gag does serve her up a little bit of her just desserts.