Looking Back at Peppermint Patty’s Final Peanuts Strip and Memorable Quote

Peppermint Patty has a full canonical name that appeared only once in Peanuts. According to the strip for Jan. 15, 1972, her name is Patricia Reichardt. Charles Schulz named her after his secretary Susan Reichardt, although six real-time years passed between Patty’s introduction and the single strip containing her surname.

That detail highlights how Patty always inhabited a slightly different world than the rest of the cast. She and Marcie even attended a different school. In a comic where most characters regularly grappled with theology, philosophy, and ethics, Patty received poor grades, slept through class, earned a D-minus on every test, and spent a long time believing Snoopy was just a funny-looking quiet kid rather than a dog.

On the other hand, Patty was a gifted athlete whose baseball team routinely defeated Charlie Brown’s.

Patty’s academic struggles meant she often sat on the lower end of the quotability scale, with jokes at her expense. With that in mind, her most memorable line might also be her last. Both Patty and Marcie made their final appearance in Peanuts on Jan. 2, 2000, roughly six weeks before the strip concluded.

Closing time

The strip features Patty alone on a deserted football field in the rain. No one else plays, but Patty acts as though she is accompanied by Charlie Brown. No explanation is offered. Patty refuses to admit the end has arrived, asking, “Hey Chuck, it’s a great game, isn’t it?”

Marcie arrives with an umbrella and plays along:

“We had fun, didn’t we, Marcie?”

“Yes, sir. We had fun.”

Patty never leaves the field in the strip. She simply says aloud, “No one shook hands and said ‘Good game…’”

The Jan. 2 strip feels like a deliberate sendoff for Patty, Marcie, and Peanuts itself. The game is over, and darkness is falling.

Most characters in Peanuts never received an organized farewell. Schulz never commented on the sequence, but the Jan. 2 strip stands out as the only installment in the final two months of the run that resembles meta-commentary on the comic’s imminent end, aside from the actual finale.

Peanuts shifted to running new strips only on Sundays for its final six weeks, and most of those installments functioned as business as usual without referencing Schulz’s failing health or the upcoming conclusion. The Jan. 2, 2000 strip remains famous among fans as Patty’s most memorable moment and one of the saddest entries in the series.

Source: Polygon