Snoopy and the gang are going to live forever. I haven't seen a Mickey Mouse comic strip in years, in decades even. But Mickey and Minnie are still out there, representing the U.S. all over the world. And Snoopy's bigger than Mickey. I joked with Sparky last week, suggesting that, in that silly beagle, he has given shape and form to the life force.
Snoopy is way beyond universal.
There were Snoopy and Linus toys in the refugee camps of Kosovo. We all know stories like the one told to me by a young woman who spent part of her college years in Spain. It was in the poorest part of that then-poor country, in a village where there was no running water and not enough food, that she saw the little girl, walking with her mother. She was pitifully thin, barefoot and ragged. Under one arm she carried a small Snoopy.