Lucy Must Be Traded Charlie Brown Original and Limited Edition Art (2003)

Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown is the 42nd prime-time animated television special based upon the popular comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz.^[1] It originally aired on the ABC network on August 29, 2003.

Lucy Must Be Traded was released on VHS and DVD on March 2, 2004, and again on May 1, 2012, as part of a single disc called Happiness is...Peanuts: Team Snoopy.

Plot

In Lucy Must Be Traded, it's the beginning of baseball season, and Charlie Brown is looking forward to the new season with a mixture of joy and apprehension. The apprehension is mainly due to Lucy, who is constantly bothering him with idiotic questions, sarcastic remarks and non-sequiturs, to the point where poor Charlie literally becomes physically ill on the pitcher's mound.

After his team loses their first game to Peppermint Patty's team, Charlie Brown then thinks of a great idea of trading one of his team players to Peppermint Patty. He decides to trade Snoopy for five of Peppermint Patty's players (because Snoopy is the only player Patty would want). However, the team is angry with Charlie Brown for this, and Charlie Brown finally decides to rip up the contract made for the trade (which is just as well, as the five players Patty was going to trade declared they'd give up baseball before they'd ever play for Charlie Brown). The team continues to play throughout the season normally until Peppermint Patty suggests that they should trade Lucy for one of Peppermint Patty's team members, which Charlie Brown does. Peppermint Patty gets Lucy, while Charlie Brown gets Marcie (and a pizza). Marcie, however, chooses to not play at her position but spend the entire game next to Charlie Brown on the pitcher's mound. Meanwhile, Lucy, over on Peppermint Patty's squad, gets into her usual fuss-budget business by failing Peppermint Patty at every game the team plays by doing something stupid. Peppermint Patty finally has enough and asks Charlie Brown for the trade to be reversed, which Charlie Brown agrees to do, though he does admit to Peppermint Patty that he had already eaten the pizza included in the trade. At the end, everyone but Charlie Brown leaves due to rain. Charlie Brown stays on the pitcher's mound as the credits roll, only leaving the field when the credits end.

Source material

The storyline involving Snoopy's botched trade to Peppermint Patty's team was based on a lengthy Peanuts storyline from the fall of 1967. The storyline involving Lucy's and Marcie's trades originated in a storyline from 1988.

Of note is the fact that Peppermint Patty refers to Snoopy as "the little kid with the big nose," which is in line with the content of Peanuts in 1967 when the original strips were drawn. In the actual strip, Peppermint Patty did not learn Snoopy was a dog until 1974 and never referred to him as a "kid with the big nose" afterwards.