Pen Pal - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The Australian author Geraldine Brooks wrote a memoir entitled Foreign Correspondence (1997) about her childhood, which was enriched by her exchanges of letters with other children in Australia and overseas and her travels as an adult in search of the people they had become.

In the 1970s, syndicated children's television program Big Blue Marble often invited viewers to write to them for their own pen pal.

On another children's TV show, Pee-wee's Playhouse, Pee-wee Herman would often receive pen pal letters.

At the 1964/1965 World's Fair in New York, the Parker Pen pavilion provided a computer pen pal matching service. This service was officially terminated by Parker Pen in 1967. This service did not work in conjunction with any other pen friend clubs. The computer system and database used for this service were not sold, taken over, or continued in any way.

In the Peanuts comic strip from the 1960s and 1970s, Charlie Brown tries to write to a pen pal using a fountain pen but after several literally "botched" attempts, Charlie switches to using a pencil and referring to his penpal as his "pencil-pal", with his first letter to his "pencil-pal" explaining the reason for the name change.

The 1999 Bollywood film Sirf Tum is about two people who fall in love after becoming pen pals.

The 2004 action-drama film Out of Reach is about a pen pal relationship between a Vietnam veteran and a 13-year-old orphaned girl from Poland. When the letters suddenly stop coming, he heads to Poland to find out the reason.