'Peanuts' gang sold to Joe Boxer owner

You've got a new owner, Charlie Brown. Newspaper publisher EW Scripps is selling the licensing rights for Snoopy, Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang to Iconix Brand Group, the licensing company which owns Joe Boxer and London Fog.

The family of late Peanuts creator Charles Schulz will also own part of the business, giving it more control of and money from the 60-year-old comic strip's legacy.

Heirs said the deal, announced yesterday, is what the artist would have wanted. Mr Schulz worked for decades to win back the rights to his work, which many other artists like himself sold to appear in print.

Scripps will sell its licensing unit, which also represents characters such as Dilbert and Raggedy Ann and Andy, to Iconix for $175 million dollars. The bulk of revenue generated by United Media Licensing comes from the Peanuts franchise.

Iconix will form a partnership with the Schulz family, who will receive 20 per cent ownership in the unit which owns Peanuts and pay that percentage of the sale price. Craig Schulz, one of the late artist's five children, said the family was relieved to win an ownership interest.

At the time of his death in 2000, Mr Schulz had approval over all business deals and the use of art, which his family maintains. But now, they can craft their own proposals and shape the legacy of Peanuts, said Barbara Gallagher, a lawyer for the Schulz family.

The family could potentially earn more money as well, and already earns a "significant revenue stream" each year from Peanuts.

Scripps first brought the strip to market in 1950 and owned the rights.

"They were simply like an actor in a play," Mr Schulz said of cartoonists from the era. "You did your part and everything else you had to give up totally, and that's the way the world was." By the time Charles Schulz retired in 1999, Peanuts featured in more than 2,600 papers around the world and its cast of characters appeared everywhere, from T-shirts to greeting cards.

Iconix said it expects Peanuts to generate about $75 million dollars in annual royalty revenue and noted an existing revenue split with the Schulz family will remain, separate from the new 20 per cent arrangement.

A look at the strip by numbers

• Number of years Charles Schulz drew Peanuts: nearly 50.

• Number of comic strips: 17,897.

• Number of newspapers in which Peanuts made its debut on October 2, 1950: seven.

• Price paid by United Feature Syndicate for Schulz's first month of strips: $90.

• Year Hallmark printed its first Peanuts greeting card: 1960.

• Number of Hallmark Peanuts cards sold: More than two billion.

• Peanuts first cover of Time magazine: 1965.

• Year You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown opened off Broadway: 1967.

• Number of readers by the strip's 25th anniversary: 90 million in 1,480 US and 175 foreign papers.

• Number of newspapers in which Peanuts was running when Schulz retired in December 1999: 2,600.

• Number of languages in which the strip is printed: 21.

• Year the Schulz family got a black and white dog which inspired Snoopy: 1934 (his name was Spike).