Behind the line
What it means
Our interpretation.
Snoopy never wins a dogfight, so the line is defeat spoken as a battle cry. It sums up the beagle's whole fantasy life: grand, doomed and delivered with total commitment from a doghouse roof. It has outlived the strip as a joke about any small setback, and a New York Times headline reused it in 2016 when MetLife retired Snoopy as its mascot.
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In context
Spoilers for PeanutsShow the scene
Snoopy first became the World War I Flying Ace in the Peanuts strip of 10 October 1965. He climbed on top of his doghouse, declared it a Sopwith Camel and went to battle the Red Baron, until Linus crept up behind him and made a machine-gun noise. After an imaginary dogfight Snoopy often calls out the line. The Flying Ace reached television in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on 27 October 1966, and the Royal Guardsmen's song Snoopy vs. the Red Baron peaked at number two on the US Hot 100 at the end of that year.
Sources (3)
- Peanuts Wiki: World War I Flying AceHistory sectionReference checked
- Wikipedia: SnoopyCharacteristics and history sectionsReference checked
- Wikipedia: Snoopy vs. the Red Baron (song)Lead and historyReference checked
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