Will 2024 Be the Year of Snoopy Girls?

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I could tell you about my earliest memory of Snoopy, but that doesn’t really matter because this isn’t about me. You see, this story is much bigger than me because Snoopy is having a moment at the ripe age of 73. Yes, I’m fully aware that the beloved beagle has been a fundamental figure in pop culture since the 1950s, but believe me when I say that Snoopy has ascended to a new level of stardom on the Internet that makes his role at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade look trivial. He’s racking up 1.9 billion views on TikTok and has 5.6 million posts to his name on Instagram. (Did I forget to mention that there’s also a Flos lamp named after him?)

While I was browsing all the goods at the Brimfield Antique Flea Market way back in May, I was delighted to discover a bounty of vintage Snoopy memorabilia inside the Picker Pete’s tent. My friend Annie is a longtime Snoopy fanatic so I decided to buy the complete set of The Peanuts Philosophers by Charles M. Schulz as a gift for her upcoming birthday. (I previously found one of the books at random while I was thrifting in Austin, Texas, a few months prior.) “Wherever we go, there seems to be Snoopy,” Peter of Picker Pete says. “We always put the Snoopies right in the front corner [of our tent] and people make a beeline straight for them.” Apparently, Picker Pete’s has a number of devoted Snoopy collectors that purchase merchandise from overseas in China and Japan. This year, Picker Pete’s will also be participating at D.C. Big Flea Market, Todd Farm Flea Market, and Harvard Flea Market. “It’s amazing how much the collectors know about this,” Peter adds. “They’ll pick a piece up and be like, ‘This is the second generation of the 1973 model.’ I’ll be like, ‘Okay, if you say so.’”

Fast-forward to October, when The Atlantic declared that Snoopy is Gen Z’s new “hero” thanks to a new wave of fans on TikTok hit by an influx of existential dread. (But if you’re in it for the hauls, there are dedicated accounts for that type of lighthearted content too.) Out of all the Snoopy memes that have graced my screen, my favorite is the viral image of a Snoopy plushie on a mouse trap with the caption “this would catch a lot of you.” (The runner-up is this screengrab of an animated Snoopy on the shoulder of Elliott Smith captioned “when i say ive got that dog in me, this is what i mean.”) Snoopy seamlessly moves in and out of the cultural zeitgeist, never quite falling off the face of the earth, but always returning with even more je ne sais quoi—whatever “It” is, Snoopy has that and then some. In recent years, an unhinged amount of exclusive Peanuts collaborations have surfaced from brands like Marc Jacobs, Lacoste, Vera Bradley, Re/Done, Moncler, Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn Kids, Swatch, and CVS.