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peanut It’s been a very popular comic series for a very long time, so it was no surprise to find an extended reference to Snoopy and the gang in a decades-old TV show. And yet here we are.
On September 28, 1968, Be smarta spy parody co-created by Mel Brooks, aired an episode titled “Snoopy Smart Versus the Red Baron”. This may seem self-explanatory, but I can guarantee you that you have no idea where this is headed.
The episode begins with our newly engaged main characters – Clueless Agent 86, real name Maxwell Smart, and Agent 99, real name unknown – traveling to Idaho. On the plane, Max is reading Snoopy and the Red Barona collection of comic stories published two years ago. Foreshadowing!
After some senseless slapstick, our heroes learn that their new mission is to stop Operation Starch, which their boss describes as “the most diabolical scheme KAOS has ever devised” – KAOS being the evil organization our heroes and CONTROL are always fighting. What could be so bad? KAOS has created a poison that eats America’s potato crop from the inside out, leaving nothing but empty peels. Since Americans can’t deal with the problem without a steady supply of French fries and potato chips, the 86 and 99 poisonings must stop, so the government can stop covering them up by selling edible foam rubber instead of the real thing.
In Idaho, the pair stop to visit 99’s mother, only to discover that her new neighbor – “Mr. Smith”, wearing an old German military uniform – is the one behind Operation Starch. His real name is Siegfried, and he used a Fokker D.VII that he built from a tool kit and reused as a crop pesticide to deliver the poison. He is very proud of himself. Even Max seems impressed.
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“Boy, I bet Snoopy would love to have his eyes on that kid,” Max says.
But since Snoopy isn’t around, and since the local military base doesn’t have any planes to loan because they’ve sold everything to other countries, Max is the one taking to the skies using another World War I-era plane, complete with helmet and white scarf, that just happens to be lying around. The subsequent battle ends with Max heroically jumping from his private plane into Siegfried’s plane and forcing him at gunpoint to land the criminal Fokker plane.
Why does this episode exist? I have no idea. Be smart He’s certainly done a lot of research on other properties – the previous episode was a Mission: impossible Parody, for example. Maybe, like Max, someone was reading peanut One day I started seeing old fighter planes everywhere.
Anyway, this episode is sure to entertain Snoopy fans, and the show as a whole is generally very entertaining, even if not every joke has stood the test of time. Satisfied admiration from a long-time Peanuts fan.
