Gen Z is pledging its dedication to the cartoon dog by making a $15 CVS Snoopy plush one of the hottest toys of the holiday season.
The problem now is that the toy —made by the Peanuts brand and sold exclusively at CVS — is becoming increasingly difficult to snag.
On TikTok, young content creators have been documenting their journey looking for the stuffed toy, sharing tips on how to find them, and keeping the Snoopy hype alive. On Reddit, CVS employees complain about customers bugging them about the toy. And on eBay, resellers ask for double or triple the price for a puffer Snoopy.
Many have been unsuccessful, but some were able to make the purchase — and even helped others snag their Snoopy.
"We were immediately lucky, finding three of them at the CVS five minutes away from home," Erika Siemasko told The Philadelphia Inquirer. "I knew this was rare, as I was seeing lots of people on TikTok traveling to multiple CVS locations. There were even comments on my TikTok video of Snoopy asking if I could go buy the other ones I found and ship it to them."
CVS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Why does Gen Z love Snoopy so much?
The nearly 75-year-old Peanuts characters do not scream "youth" or "modernity" in any sense. The comic strip, created by Charles Schultz in 1950, spurred multiple iconic television specials.
But for a crowd of kids who revel in nostalgia, Snoopy may be the perfect character to live out their "born in the wrong generation" fantasies.
On TikTok, accounts that post old "Peanuts" clips featuring the lovable dog garner millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers. In the clips, Snoopy is just being himself: falling head over heels in love, dancing his heart out, crying in the shower, or living his best life dressed as a pretty girl.
Over the past year, news articles have speculated why the whimsical dog is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Some point to his carefree, childlike attitude. Others express nostalgic fascination with the character.
One historian told the Atlantic that Gen Z may be picking up on the existentialist subtext that the Peanuts characters and Snoopy have to offer.
Blake Scott Ball, who also authored "Charlie Brown's America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts," said the comic strip — which spawned several classic holiday TV specials — reflected the sociopolitical issues gripping Americans at the time, like the Vietnam War.
And for a generation standing at the intersection of myriad crises, it makes sense that they're leaning on the character more than ever.
Ball told the outlet that "Peanuts" was "about the difficulty of existing as a regular human being in the 20th century ... just how hard it is to handle the immensity of problems that faced us, and hold all that together with your daily concerns."
Peanuts did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
