Pig-Pen

:"This page is about the Peanuts character; for other definitions, see Pigpen.

Pig-Pen is a character in the comic strip "Peanuts" by Charles M. Schulz.

Pig-Pen's gimmick is that he is always dirty. He is best-known for the cloud of dirt and dust that follows him wherever he goes. When he takes a deep breath such as to sing, the dust rises briefly around him. He sometimes refers to it somewhat nobly as the dust of ancient civilizations. [ [http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/meet_the_gang/meet_pig_pen.html The Official Peanuts Website - Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Friends - Charles Schulz | Meet the Gang - Snoopy ] ] He cannot and will not wash it off for more than the briefest of periods. In fact, he is referred to in an early strip as the only person who can get dirty while walking in a snowstorm. Nevertheless, on rare occasions he has very briefly appeared clean, and hence unrecognizable, in the strip. Once this was in order to impress Violet, of whom he was a bit fond.

One night after washing and dressing in clean clothes, as Charlie Brown watched, Pig-Pen stepped outside and almost instantaneously became dirty and disheveled, and noted, "You know what I am? I'm a dust magnet!" At one point, Pig-Pen decided it was important to have clean hands, but one day while trying to wash his hands, he realized that the dirt would not come off and he had "reached a point of no return." Apparently Pig Pen is clean only "inside" a house-but becomes dirty after he steps outside!}

Charlie Brown is the sole "Peanuts" character to accept Pig-Pen for who he was, even defending Pig-Pen's uncleanliness in one strip (which was re-used in "A Charlie Brown Christmas"):

Pig-Pen first appeared in the "Peanuts" comic strip on July 13, 1954 (in a strip directly parodying part of the first chapter of "Lord of the Flies"). Schulz admitted that he came to regret Pig-Pen's popularity, given his essentially one-joke nature; he utilized the character very rarely in the later years of the strip's run.

Like most of Schulz's characters, Pig-Pen appeared in several of the animated "Peanuts" television specials beginning in the 1960s. In the 1990s, he appeared (in an animated overlay against a live-action backdrop) in a series of television commercials for Regina vacuum cleaners where all the dirt is sucked off his filthy trousers by one of the company's products.

Geoffrey Ornstein first voiced Pig-Pen in the 1965 movie "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Although he also later played the role in "A Boy Named Charlie Brown", other various actors have voiced him ever since.

Pig-Pen last appeared in the "Peanuts" comic strip on September 8, 1999. That strip was very uncharacteristic of him in that it showed him embarrassed to the point of shame in his dirtiness; with none of the pride or inevitability that was in the earlier strips.

References

External links

* [http://www.snoopy.com/comics/peanuts/meet_the_gang/meet_pig_pen.html Pig-Pen at Snoopy.com]