It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown end credits
Bill Melendez produced and animated It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, his third Peanuts animated special, and second holiday themed one after the success of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
While the opening titles are hand lettered, the closing titles are set in type. Steile Futura was designed by Paul Renner in the 1950s. A straight-sided variant of Renner’s more familiar Futura of the 1920s, like Futura Black, Steile could be considered a totally separate family despite the shared name. The branding of these typefaces was likely a marketing decision given the huge success of the first Futura.
The credits appear in the sky as Linus proclaims to Charlie about the arrival of next year’s “Great Pumpkin”. Most of the names in the show’s closing credits are set in all lowercase, which lends the text an informal, youthful look. Curiously, the first four credits aren’t treated in the same way. The final card is set in all caps with a copyright line in Futura.
