How Charles Schulz Turned Snoopy And Charlie Brown Into One Of The Wealthiest Legacies In History
It’s been 25 years since Charles Schulz passed on, yet the cartoon universe he created—a bald-headed boy, a cheeky dog, and their quirky companions—remains as relevant as ever. The Peanuts characters have appeared everywhere—from cereal boxes and fashion items to insurance adverts and TV shows on Apple+. Whether it’s on school bags in Tokyo or theme park rides in California, Peanuts has become more than just a comic strip. What started in 1950 as a simple four-panel cartoon has grown into a multi-billion-dollar brand—one of the most profitable and long-lasting intellectual properties ever created.
The money hasn’t stopped flowing. Schulz reportedly made about $1 billion while alive. Surprisingly, his passing in 2000 didn’t mark the end of Peanuts’ financial success—it was the beginning of a new chapter. Since then, the Schulz estate has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from licensing deals, merchandise, syndication, and animation partnerships. On average, his heirs make more yearly than the combined estates of legendary names like John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Elizabeth Taylor.
So, how did a quiet artist from Minnesota build such a massive empire from simple drawings of kids and a beagle with big dreams? And how has the Peanuts franchise remained a money-making machine decades after his death? This is the story of how Peanuts turned into one of the most successful posthumous brands ever—and how Schulz joined the ranks of the world’s richest late celebrities.
From St. Paul to the Comics Page
Born in 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Charles Monroe Schulz grew up in a modest home—his father a barber, his mother a homemaker. Much like Charlie Brown, Schulz was introverted and deeply observant. He had a strong interest in drawing from a young age, especially characters like Popeye. Despite skipping two grades in primary school, which made him younger and more isolated from his peers, his focus on becoming a cartoonist never wavered.
After secondary school, he took a correspondence art course and got a job drawing cartoons for a Catholic magazine. However, World War II interrupted his journey. He served in Europe and eventually became a staff sergeant. When the war ended, he returned to Minnesota and picked up where he left off, taking on freelance work while shaping his own unique cartoon style.
By 1949, Schulz began a comic strip titled Li’l Folks in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The following year, United Feature Syndicate offered to distribute his work nationally—with one condition: the name had to change. Schulz didn’t like the new name Peanuts, calling it “totally ridiculous”, but he agreed.
The first Peanuts strip was published on October 2, 1950, just after Schulz turned 28. It started small, appearing in only seven newspapers. Within a year, he was earning $90 a week in royalties (about $1,200 a week in today’s money). By 1953, the comic had taken off, and Schulz was pulling in $30,000 a year, equivalent to about $360,000 today.
A Cartoon Worth Billions
In the decades that followed, Peanuts expanded to over 2,600 newspapers in 21 languages, reaching millions of readers daily. But the real money wasn’t just in newspaper syndication—it was in licensing.
The characters became a gold mine for merchandise. Snoopy and the gang were featured by companies like Hallmark and Mattel and appeared on everything from greeting cards to pajamas. Schulz was reportedly earning $30 million per year by the 1980s (around $95 million today), and from 1990 until his passing in 2000, he made about $40 million a year—making him the highest-paid entertainer globally at that time.
Astonishingly, Schulz drew every single Peanuts strip himself—17,897 in total—up until he died of colon cancer on February 12, 2000. The final strip was published the very next day. He left instructions that no new Peanuts strips should be drawn after his death—a rare act of creative control in syndicated comics.
At the time of his death, Schulz had a net worth of about $200 million—roughly $375 million today. But that was only the beginning of the brand’s second life.
