Brand manager Iconix Brand Group Inc. announced Tuesday that it has acquired the Peanuts brand from E.W. Scripps Co. in partnership with the heirs of Charles Schulz, who created the comic strip featuring Snoopy and his owner, Charlie Brown.Iconix and the Schulz family will pay about $175 million for the brand, with Iconix controlling an 80% share.
Iconix also owns Joe Boxer, Mossimo, and the rights to use Madonna's "name and personality." They estimate that Peanuts brings in "annual retail sales of more than $2 billion world-wide."
I just exchanged e-mails with Fantagraphics' Associate Publisher Eric Reynolds, and he says that this deal shouldn't affect Fantagraphics' gorgeous chronological reprints of every single Peanuts strip. Which is a good thing, because those Peanuts reprints are in the running for the books I would save first from a burning building.
