75 years of Snoopy: How Hallmark preserves iconic character’s legacy in KC
Over a century of greeting cards, decorations, gifts and more sit inside a sealed room in Kansas City buried deep within Crown Center, holding everything from one-of-a-kind artworks to handwritten notes.
Shelves are filled to the brim with presidential holiday cards, original artwork from the likes of Norman Rockwell, Salvador Dali and Winston Churchill, multicultural celebrations — and Snoopy, who just celebrated his birthday Aug. 10.
You can find artwork like this and more inside the Hallmark archives, located inside the company’s headquarters. Everything from the very first Christmas card created in the 1910s to neon light displays are documented inside the 14,000-square-foot vault.
The archives were started in the 1950s by Hallmark founder Joyce C. Hall to keep track of the company’s history and products, but also include a complete record of the evolution of its most important art form: the greeting card. He hoped the archives would serve as an inspiration for his employees as they would go back and reference old material to renew for the next season’s batch of cards, a practice today’s employees still do, said Samantha Bradbeer-Stephens, Hallmark’s historian and archivist.
On the low end, there are 800,000 assets inside that Bradbeer-Stephens records and preserves for the future. She hasn’t processed every item in her 15 years at Hallmark, but estimates that there are over 1.5 million assets related to Hallmark, including physical and digital press releases, newsletters, catalogs and Kansas City Star articles.
“It’s really unique, and it’s why I’ve been so interested in our archive and really making it accessible,” Bradbeer-Stephens said. “It’s just such a source of inspiration, and I get goosebumps when I see something.”
In 2025, they’re putting an extra emphasis on Peanuts, the comic strip featuring world-known characters like Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Lucy van Pelt and Woodstock. The comic is celebrating its 75th anniversary and organizations all over the world, from New York Yankees Double-A affiliate Somerset Patriots to streetwear clothing brand Kith, are honoring the characters with merchandise looking back at its history.
Hallmark is right in the middle of it, showcasing its 75th anniversary collection and taking The Star down memory lane to look at how the partnership between the two brands started 65 years ago and what keeps it strong today.
Hallmark and Peanuts
Hallmark has worked with iconic figures like Walt Disney and Maya Angelou, but the longest partnership the company has had is with Peanuts Worldwide, who now manages the legacy of Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz, the American cartoonist who created the comic strip and brought its well-known characters to the world.
The partnership was forged by Arnold Shapiro, then Hallmark’s managing editor, who was a big fan of the comic that began appearing in The Star in 1959. Peanuts was first published on Oct. 2, 1950 in these seven newspapers:
- The Washington Post
- The Chicago Tribune
- The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
- The Allentown Call-Chronicle
- The Bethlehem Globe-Times
- The Denver Post
- The Seattle Times
Bradbeer-Stephens says Shapiro pitched the idea to Hallmark founder Joyce Hall that they should partner, and after a few creatives met with Schulz directly, they realized that it was a perfect match.
It began with four test cards created by Schulz in 1960 specifically for Hallmark, featuring Charlie, Lucy, Linus and Violet on two birthday cards, a get-well card and a congratulations card for the birth of a child. Snoopy wouldn’t appear until 1961, where he’s seen lying on his doghouse. Schulz later permitted Hallmark to design products featuring Peanuts characters.
Over the years, Schulz would develop a genuine friendship with Joyce Hall’s son, Donald, who was the company’s president at the time, which resulted in frequent visits and a comic strip paying tribute to Joyce Hall’s start in Kansas City.
The comic depicts Snoopy getting off a train for a stop in Kansas City, wondering if he could find a greeting card in the city. It mimics Joyce Hall’s return to Kansas City in 1910, when Bradbeer-Stephens said he arrived with a little more than two boxes filled with postcards and stayed at a YMCA.
One-of-a-kind drawings of the characters from Schulz’s pen sit in the archives alongside the first cards created with the characters. Official correspondence letters between Schulz and Donald Hall, who died in 2024, lay laminated and protected from the elements in the same metal shelves hosting photographs of the two together at Hallmark’s Visitor Center in 1985.
Hallmark designers even leveraged the archives for the upcoming collection, paying tribute to a 1977 Christmas ornament with a new ornament releasing this year.
“They’re standing the test of time here,” Bradbeer-Stephens said. “We continue to relate to them so much, and they have so much more to say.”
They also continue to meet with Peanuts Worldwide’ creatives to share what they have in mind for future products, like the iridescent Snoopy plush fans can see on shelves at Hallmark stores, said Susie Heimer, a creative licensing strategist with Hallmark.
Most of the time the Hallmark designers get free range on how to design the Peanuts characters, but Heimer said the final products for the 75th anniversary collection took a few back-and-forths over two years between the companies to finalize.
In author Patrick Regan’s book “Hallmark: A Century of Caring,” he estimated that there were over 150 billion products featuring the Peanuts characters that were created by Hallmark. That book released in 2009, and Bradbeer says that number has increased by the millions since.
Visitors can see some of the items created throughout the partnership at the Peanuts exhibit in the visitor’s center for free, where Bradbeer curates what’s on display to match with the season.
“I think they’re just really, really relatable characters, and there’s a childlike wonder and nature that you’re naturally drawn to,” Bradbeer-Stephens said.
Inside the archives
On top of the Peanuts collaboration, the Hallmark archives also hold 50,000 pieces of original art made for greeting cards, gift wrap, books, candles, games, party supplies, stationery, gifts, seasonal collections and more. Vintage holiday cards from the 1800s are a highlight, and they have their hands on two of 24 known copies in the world of what’s credited as the first commercial greeting card created in 1843 by Henry Cole and John Calcott Horsley in London.
The archives also serve as a reminder of the company’s local roots. The cards were all produced in Lawrence, and the gift wrap is produced in Leavenworth. They make cards for every holiday and occasion you could think of, and for Christmas alone they create 2,000 new designs yearly.
Bradbeer-Stephens said she doesn’t get lost in the hundreds of rows of filing cabinets and shelves within the archives, crediting the organization style Hallmark uses to mark where everything goes. In a typical archival setting, she said, you would file everything by the SKU number, which is used to track products when they reach stores, but that didn’t make sense for Hallmark.
Instead, it’s organized based on how employees would access it. Shelves are marked by holidays, themes, years or artists, which she said makes it a lot more easy to pull and search for items.
The room is kept at 65 degrees, the humidity sits between 30% and 40% to try and keep the room as cool and dry as possible, and the lights are turned off every time she exits the room. The colors on older cards would fade in another setting, but they look like they were just printed yesterday inside the archives.
Large movable cabinets that almost touch the ceiling are operated by a wheel on each column, which allows for more item storage since they can collapse next to each other. Most places with these cabinets move them electronically, but Hallmark intentionally opted for a wheel in case of a power outage, giving them access at any moment.
“We want to make sure that we’re protecting these materials so that they are accessible for generations to come,” Bradbeer-Stephens said.
Even with the extensive database, there are gaps in the collection that she’s hoping to fill by working with other archivists who may have worked with Hallmark in the past. They’re also always taking donations for items collected over the years.
Many of their donations come from employees whose parents and grandparents worked for Hallmark at one point in time and were holding onto the item as a memento of their time spent with the company.
“Anytime you see any retro or vintage cards being pulled out, those, often more than not, are from people that have donated their greeting cards to us over the years,” Bradbeer-Stephens said. “Those types of moments really showcase the importance of why we have an archive.”
When archives are this robust, it allows for collaborations and commemorations like what Hallmark is currently doing for Peanuts. The space alone holds over 200 boxes just with Peanuts-related items. Bradbeer-Stephens expects more to be added in the near future.
This story was originally published August 25, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
