5 Forgotten 'Peanuts' Characters That Charles Schulz Abandoned in the Comic Strip

Do the Character Limbo, Charlie Brown

Every long-running comic strip has a few characters who got phased out early on. The most famous example might be Lyman from Garfield, Jon's roommate and Odie's original owner, who simply disappeared one day around 1985. (Davis has occasionally joked that if you want to find Lyman, you should dig up Jon's basement.) You could also point to most of the early human characters in Bloom County, Nicole in Doonesbury getting sidelined in favor of Joanie Caucus, or the abortive Uncle Max arc in Calvin and Hobbes.

Peanuts is no exception. Charlie Brown and Snoopy were central from the start, but the kids around them changed as Charles Schulz evolved the comic and his cartooning style. Early on, Charlie Brown mostly hung out with his buddy Shermy and their mutual friend Patty (not Peppermint Patty), both of whom were slowly cycled out of the strip in favor of later creations like Lucy, Linus, Schroeder, and Woodstock.

Schulz continued to introduce characters over time, such as Snoopy's brother Spike or Linus and Lucy's little brother Rerun, but he'd settled on what would become the most recognizable version of the comic by the '70s. That left Shermy, Patty, and a few other former stars in character limbo. By now, they're usually reserved for crowd scenes and cameos in animated specials, the most recent of which air semi-annually on Apple TV. As part of Polygon's ongoing retrospective on the Peanuts comic strip, here are some of the best moments of Peanuts' long-time benchwarmers.

5 Shermy

Schulz based Shermy on his childhood buddy Sherman Plepler. For the first year of Peanuts, Shermy was one of its core protagonists, and holds the distinction of being the first member of the gang to have a speaking role.

However, Shermy rapidly got sidelined in favor of later, more interesting characters. His early role in Peanuts was as a straight man, without any trademark traits or talents of his own. As Schulz got more confident in his abilities and introduced more cast members, Shermy's appearances dropped off dramatically. He was a rare sight by 1959 and had his final speaking role in June 1969.

4 Patty Swanson

The original Patty was named after Schulz's cousin Patricia Swanson. Like Shermy, she appears in the first-ever Peanuts strip; also like Shermy, her lack of specific quirks resulted in her being phased out over time.

It took significantly longer for Patty to leave circulation, however, as Schulz quickly shifted her to a role as one of the neighborhood snobs. She and Violet would often team up to mock and bully the other kids. That gave her enough of a hook that Patty, despite her relative obscurity, appears in most of the classic animated specials and continued to make occasional cameos in the comic strip all the way up to the 1990s.

Even so, Patty's appearances started to slow down in 1960, especially after Schulz introduced Peppermint Patty in August 1966. While the original Patty still showed up in Peanuts from time to time, it wasn't unusual for her to go for entire calendar years without a speaking part. Her final comic strip ran in November 1997.

3 Violet Gray

Violet racked up a lot of firsts while she was around. She was the first new character Schulz created for the Peanuts cast, she's technically the originator of the "football gag," and she was the first to call Charlie Brown a "blockhead." In a lot of ways, Violet is a sort of beta version of Lucy Van Pelt.

Like Patty, Schulz eventually gave Violet a niche as one of the neighborhood’s upper-crust kids, who frequently bragged about her affluent father. Violet also had a peculiar love-hate relationship with Charlie Brown that persisted for the strip's first couple of decades.

Violet's appearances tapered off in the mid-1980s, and by 1985, she was an occasional cameo at best. Violet and Patty share their final strip, which was a Thanksgiving-themed comic in November 1997.

2 Frieda

If you remember Frieda at all, it's probably for her pride over her "naturally curly hair." She was introduced in 1961 as a vain, chatty girl who was friends with Linus. Schulz named her after his friend Frieda Rich.

Frieda had one of the shorter runs as a Peanuts character. Reportedly, Schulz didn't know exactly what to do with her besides write jokes about her hair. Her other memorable bits include flirting with Schroeder in front of Lucy, bringing her cat Faron to meet Snoopy, and being more tolerant of Linus' quirks than most of the rest of the cats.

While Frieda's in a number of the animated specials, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, she was knocked down to cameo status by 1970 and stopped appearing entirely after 1985.

1 Five

There are more obscure characters in Peanuts than Five, but he's the basis of a weird joke and he kept showing up for a long time afterward. He initially appeared in 1963 as a parody of the recently introduced ZIP postal codes, which Schulz didn't appreciate. Five, we're told upon his introduction, has a number instead of a name. His twin sisters are 3 and 4, and his surname is 95472, which is the ZIP code for Sebastopol, California, where Schulz was living at the time.

After his introduction, Five spent a solid 20 years as one of the most consistent background cameos in Peanuts, although he’s often mistaken for an inexplicably clean Pig-Pen. He's present for the big dance scene in A Charlie Brown Christmas and made silent appearances in many of Peanuts' classic animated specials. When Five got a speaking role in 2022's It's the Small Things, Charlie Brown, it was the first time he'd had a voice actor in almost 40 years.

As far as the comic is concerned, Five was a one-joke wonder. He had a handful of appearances after his debut, but left circulation entirely after getting hit with a baseball in May 1983. Hopefully, the two events are unrelated.