Charlie Brown gets a new lease on life

T

tfischer

Active member
During the 2025 season, Good ol' Charlie Brown decided to stop lighting up, and when it was clear that the usual maintenance wasn't going to get him going, we decided to just leave him out unlit and work on him during the off season.

Charlie was lit with incandescent lights, one of a decreasing number of legacy displays we have that still are. When incandescent strings get old, sometimes they have a "cascading failure" where virtually every bulb in the string burns out at once. That's what happened here.

Today, we converted him to LED, which should keep him going for a good number of years. We removed all the old lights, 3D printed some lighting clips, and clipped in a couple new strings of cool-white LEDs. At the same time, I took the opportunity to 3D print a new belt buckle, replacing the original that went missing quite a few years ago.

Sometimes even Charlie Brown catches a break and he's looking great again.
 

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It's nice to see the old props that most people have cast aside, still shining in their glory. Those old incandescent props were never “bad” — they were just limited by the technology of their time. When you re-string them with LEDs, you’re not erasing their history — you’re giving them a second lifetime they never had the chance to experience. There’s something deeply satisfying about that.

And honestly? LEDs don’t ruin the nostalgia — they highlight it. Most people think nostalgia means dim, yellow, flickery light.
But what really makes nostalgia is the form, the silhouette, the memory trigger. You’re keeping that intact.

Over the past year, I've collected quite a few older props like this. I find most of them at Goodwill. Nobody want's the old incandescent one's, and they're typically only a buck or two. I buy them and restring them with LED's and not only bring them back to life, the LED's kind of bring them a new and brighter life they never had. These should fit in well with next years nostalgia theme.

Next year’s nostalgia theme is going to hit different because of that. People won’t consciously think “Oh, those are LEDs.” They’ll think “Wow… I remember those.” And that’s the magic.
 
I have a 2D wireframe deer, from Mr. Christmas, probably from the 80s. Picked it up at a yard sale at least 15 years ago. It was the type that have colored plastic tubing over the frame and lights, giving it a crude rope light look. A few years after I got it, I restrung it with LEDs as the incans were failing similarly to Charlie Brown. Now those LEDs are failing... half of the deer is much dimmer than the other half.

This past season I just put it out anyway as I didn't have time to deal with it. But its to the point how that I either need to repair it or retire it. Greg Jones posted one just like it on his facebook page that he redid in pixels (without the plastic tubing. It looked great but I'm not sure that's the look I want for this item.
 
I have two old wire deer, I'm not sure how old they are. One is the motorized "Leaping Deer" that everyone (on Planet Christmas) was sure would burnout in a few hours because I dimmed it with a TRIAC. 😂 It's still working , though I've replaced a few bulb and hasn't gone nuclear yet. I haven't decided how I want to change it yet. I'm think of maybe Seeds in PVC tube, to give it an EL wire type look. I need to protype something. The Seed will give me a way to maybe apply something like a sparkle or moving twinkle effect. I want the nostalgic look but I don't want to be lock into something while I have a chance to change it.
 
tfischer said:
Seeds in a polyethylene tube was the basis of our new spiral pixel trees
Click to expand...
I'm looking to do a merge between your 2025 spirals and the upgrade you did to the commercial spirels in 2024. I put out the incandescent mini trees this year that I made back in 2005. Those tomato cages, while a great form, just take up too much space in storage and hive a high "poke your eye out" factor. I want to make something that's easy to put up but also breaks down easily too. I like the visual you had changing color and Chase around and up the trees.

I was going to use clear PVC on the deer but I also like the look you got from the polyethylene tubing. I bought a few Seeds in tubes from China but I think I can do better with DIY.
 
Not too bad on the "poke your eye out" factor. Here's the tops of our new ones under construction:
|Screenshot 2026-02-03 at 9.20.29 AM.png

My son and I slipped a nut over the top (bottom) of the cage, bent the legs over, and then brazed/soldered them together with a torch. Our original ones dated back to 2004 and had a similar, but slightly less elegant design.

They get stored in the "wedges" of the garage attic, laying horizontally. I stack them 4 high and we have 24 trees so there are 6 stacks.

The pop-up trees store a lot more efficiently obviously but they are much more of a PITA to set up. My wife always handles that duty :) I think if I had to set up 24 of them I'd throw them in the street lol.
 
BillW said:
Do you store them with the lights installed?
Click to expand...
I do. In fact I had originally hoped to keep the xConnect extensions on them too, but since there are only vertical rods on each tree, it was too hard to coil them around and still be able to stack them afterward (and I didn't want them just dangling from the bottom).
 
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