MetLife Dumps Snoopy As Their Mascot

Insurance company MetLife will part ways with Snoopy after more than thirty years of the beloved cartoon beagle acting as their mascot in print and TV ads and at personal appearances.

Money picked up a story from The Wall Street Journal reports that MetLife is changing tactics.

Metropolitan Life has paid between $10 and $15 million per year to license Snoopy's image,

Money reports that MetLife is in the middle of big changes: they plan on spinning off or selling most of their U.S. business and focus on employer plans and individual accounts in the international market.

That doesn't explain the loss of Snoopy, necessarily, outside of just a general change of the company's direction; the character and the Peanuts strip in general has broad international appeal. Last year's The Peanuts Movie made almost exactly the same amount of money at the international box office as domestic.

MetLife has for years flown Snoopy on the side of their blimp at sporting events and other big public gatherings, and that's gone now, too; it's not clear whether they'll continue to sponsor such events, but Snoopy won't be part of it if they do.

Snoopy first appeared in Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts strip in October of 1950. He has become one of the most recognizable characters not only in that strip, but in all of popular culture, having appeared in dozens of books, movies, and TV specials. For a time, Snoopy (particularly his "Joe Cool" persona) was one of the most merchandised characters in all of fiction on toys, t-shirts, and other memorabilia.