Peanuts, with a capital P, is the name of a famous American newspaper comic strip by Charles Schulz, which ran from 1950 to 2000. Its world is children and one dog, with the adults never really shown. Charlie Brown is the main character: kind, thoughtful, always trying, and almost always losing — he never manages to kick the football, because Lucy pulls it away every time. Snoopy is his dog, who lies on top of his kennel and imagines himself as a fighter pilot or a novelist. Others are Charlie's little sister Sally, bossy Lucy, her thumb-sucking brother Linus with his blanket, dusty Pigpen, sporty Peppermint Patty, and Schroeder at his toy piano. The strip is gentle and quietly sad as much as funny; a lot of its jokes are about disappointment, loneliness and trying again anyway, which is why adults love it as much as children. In Taiwan most people know these characters through Snoopy — on stationery, bags and shop signs — often without knowing the strip is called Peanuts. Note also the animated television specials, especially 'A Charlie Brown Christmas', which many American families watch every year, and the phrase 'a Charlie Brown Christmas tree' for a sad, bare little tree. Because it is a title, it takes a capital letter and usually a singular verb: 'Peanuts was published in over two thousand newspapers.'