A gothic manor house on a moor, framed behind a cemetery in the middle of the night. A screeching noise is heard, and suddenly a swarm of bats fly across your view to ominous, crescendoing music …but then a drum beat kicks in and a ghostly mist pours out of an upstairs lit window to form the words “Scooby Doo: Where Are You!” as an immediately charming theme song begins.
I wonder what kids in 1969 were thinking when Scooby-Doo first appeared on television in this form, with such an instantly weird juxtaposition of gloomy, creepy imagery and upbeat cartoon silliness. Because that’s the whole theme song, and really, the whole show itself. Wacky cartoon antics and characters (or as wacky as William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were able to make them on a budget) against moody haunted houses, derelict carnivals, misty bayous, etc., each of them haunted by a monster or frightening apparition of some kind or another. Clearly this wasn’t like any other cartoon to have graced the then admittedly recent medium of television. And instantly it stood out and left an impression. Sure the dog may have had a personality not too far removed from Dino or Astro, but the aesthetic and atmosphere as well as its premise was so bizarre and unique it couldn’t be ignored …and it wasn’t.
Scooby-Doo quickly became a T.V. cartoon icon, arguably second only to Fred Flintstone, but unlike Fred, he, his human friends, and their adventures found ways to endure as a near constant in cartoon media and pop culture for fifty years, with never more than four years between iterations (usually less than two). There’s just something about this talking Great Dane and the four archetypal teenagers who seek out and solve mysteries with him that is appealing in a way that has transcended the decades. Maybe it’s the way the show teaches kids deductive reasoning skills or (meme though its become) the lesson that the real monsters are just people in a mask -and usually greedy capitalists at that. Or maybe we just like vaguely scary shit -the “season” of Halloween perhaps attests to that (there’s a reason I’m writing this in October). And while few of us find Scooby-Doo genuinely scary, it’s choice to adopt a horror theme for its mysteries (as opposed to a procedural take or childrens’ missing shoebox tedium) is certainly a key factor in its longevity. Many of us perhaps first encountered the horror genre through Scooby-Doo and it normalized that iconography for us.
But even then, consistency is not an accurate word for Scooby-Doo’s cultural track record. The history of Scooby and those meddling kids is not a rich one, but it is a fascinating and bizarre one, almost as much so as its original premise. Not every incarnation retained the same characters or even the horror aesthetic, however the most recent variations have since come back around to that area of focus. The latest version –Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, fitting for the fiftieth anniversary, has restored the original theme music, ghostly title, and character designs of the original series, the former two for the first time since that original series. But it’s been a long road between these two mirrors, and not one that’s coming to an end any time soon.
Scooby-Doo was initially developed to be both a family-friendly alternative to Hanna-Barbera’s superhero and adventure cartoons of the late 1960s (which were themselves family-friendly, but not enough so for parent-run grassroots organizations), and a hip capitalization on 60’s youth culture, with the gang at one time conceived to be a band in the vein of the Archies, solving mysteries on the side. With the mystery aspect inspired by radio serials and the character types borrowed from the cast of a largely forgotten sitcom called The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, it took several reworkings to heighten the comedy and centre the focus on the gangs’ dog (originally called “Too Much” until producer Fred Silverman realized how stupid that sounded and re-worked the name to a Sinatra scat –he also named Fred after himself), that the show was eventually greenlit.
Written and created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, directed and developed by Hanna and Barbera, and starring Don Messick as Scooby Doo, Casey Kasem as Shaggy, Nicole Jaffe as Velma, Stefanianna Christopherson and then Heather North as Daphne, and Frank Welker as Fred, Scooby-Doo: Where Are You! premiered on September 13th, 1969. Every episode adhered to a strict formula, consisting of the gang arriving at the setting-of-the-week where some supernatural being is terrorizing locals, investigating and meeting suspects, encountering said being who would chase them around for a bit (usually while the gangs’ split up), and eventually setting a trap that it convolutedly falls into after a series of hijinks often at the hands of Scooby and Shaggy –all resulting in an unmasking revealing a human behind the phenomenon, a breakdown of the gangs’ conclusion over why they did it, and the villain being hauled away by the police saying some variation on “I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids"; each episode would then end on Scooby’s catchphrase: “Scooby-Dooby-Doo!”
So yeah, outside of the premise there was very little room for storytelling creativity, the focus being mainly on the jokes and the mystery. The animation certainly reflected the limited budget, with the characters not being very expressive and a lot of recycling of backgrounds and compositions. It was always neat as a kid being able to point out what object in a scene was about to move based on its outline. And yet it was and still is a fun show with a consistent charm. The talents of the voice actors imbued personality to the archetypes and made them endearing, the tone in spite of being frequently undercut by the same music motifs and a laugh track, could still give off a slightly eerie vibe -transgressive in childrens’ cartoons, and many of the monsters introduced in this series, including the Tar Monster, the Creeper, Charlie the Robot, the Snow Ghost, and the Ghost of Captain Cutler, became among the series’ most iconic.
The theme song by Danny Janssen and Austin Roberts, performed by Roberts, is one of the all-time cartoon greats, joining those of the previous Hanna-Barbera staples, The Flintstones and The Jetsons. And Scooby-Doo himself, as the cowardly, clumsy dog capable of feats of accidental bravery, resonated immensely with children who empathized with his fears and his ability to rise above them and save the day -hell, it’s still probably the reason he resonates. Obvious though it may be given this was the initial incarnation of the show, it is the purest version racked against all of the subsequent series and still holds up in spite of its obvious datedness.
Two years after the initial run of Scooby-Doo: Where Are You?, a second series was commissioned in 1972 called The New Scooby-Doo Movies, where the episode runtime was extended to an hour and one of the franchise’s most famous clichés was introduced, despite for a long time being a trait unique to this version: the celebrity guest stars. Each episode featured a guest appearance by either a celebrity as themselves (such as Dick Van Dyke, Phyllis Diller, Don Knotts, and Jonathan Winters), or a crossover with another cartoon (such as The Addams Family, Josie and the Pussycats, and Jeannie), with a new theme song to match. To my memory, the one that stands out most is the Batman crossover, where the mystery gang and the dynamic duo foil the machinations of the Joker and Penguin; but the most referenced and frequent guest was the Harlem Globetrotters. Divvying up the screen-time between the regular characters and the guests hurt the series though, the mysteries and monsters were never as memorable as the earlier show, and the clear exploitation by Hanna-Barbera did take away from its charm. But that was only the beginning.
In 1976, the show was relaunched again as The Scooby-Doo Show, dispensing with guest stars and returning to the original format. However there were a few interesting changes to this version, now airing on ABC where the series was previously on CBS. Once again, the theme song was remade into a more upbeat, friendlier tune to emphasize the adventure and comedy. Jaffe left the series to become a talent agent and was replaced by Pat Stevens. A recurring cousin of Scooby’s called Scooby-Dum (voiced by Daws Butler) was added to the cast, presumably because the show wasn’t condescending to children enough. And perhaps most importantly here was where Hanna-Barbera began to use the series to buffet their other projects.
You see, Scooby-Doo had come up with a winning formula, and so Hanna-Barbera spent much of the 70s creating a series of copycat shows also about gangs of teens and a mascot solving mysteries: Jabberjaw, The Funky Phantom, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Goober and the Ghost Chasers, Fangface, all operated under the same premise. The Scooby-Doo Show during its run was repurposed into both a programming block with Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, and a package show with pretty much all of Hanna-Barbera called Scooby’s Laff-A-Lympics as a way of promoting these less popular shows. The Scooby-Doo Show itself though wasn’t bad, its’ episodes almost interchangeable with the original show. But the corporate meddling was beginning to exceed the kids’, and that’s when things got weird.
The 1980s was a fascinating period of failures for Scooby-Doo, Hanna-Barbera desperately wringing anything they could out of the franchise. After the fourth-wall breaking parody TV special called Scooby-Doo Goes Hollywood (featuring the late Rip Taylor), starting in 1979, the franchise’s focus was radically shifted with Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, a series which both did away with the mystery component in favour of real yet silly supernatural phenomena and phased out Fred, Daphne, and Velma entirely. Oh, and it also introduced one of the most hated cartoon characters in pop culture.
Scooby’s nephew Scrappy-Doo (voiced by Lennie Weinrib, and eventually Messick) really wasn’t any more annoying than your average network-mandated creative imposition that was incredibly common to television of that time. It was the fact that Hanna-Barbera was so confident in the hyperactive puppy character that he came to overshadow the entire IP during that decade, promoted as much as Scooby himself that he earned his place of derision. In the early days he did fulfil his purpose, to save the show from cancellation -kids were genuinely into Scrappy and the new direction he ushered in. But with the various rebrandings throughout the 80’s (The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show, The Scooby and Scrappy Puppy Power Show, The Scary Scooby Funnies, and Scooby’s Mystery Funhouse -all of which mostly consisted of reruns), it didn’t take long to become sick of the twerp and Scooby too, to be honest.
The tone, focus, and formula of the original series was gone, the mysteries no longer served an educational purpose -80’s Scooby-Doo was pure goofy cartoon comedy no different from any other, and a shell of its former self. The New Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show attempted to fix this by combining the pandering elements of the Scrappy series’ with some of the cohesion of the original, even bringing back Daphne and tweaking the premise for modern sensibilities by giving her, Shaggy, and the dogs the cover of working at a teen magazine. But it was barely any better, with the only noteworthy thing about it being the Thriller dance performed during the theme song. The mediocrity continued into a series of TV movies in the late 80’s, Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers, Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, and Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf -all still featuring Scrappy despite his waning popularity.
However amidst all this, in 1985 Hanna-Barbera allowed for one brief compelling experiment: a serialized, marginally creepy creation called The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, in which Scooby and Shaggy open a Pandora’s Box that unleashes the thirteen most powerful demons on the world, and with Scrappy, Daphne, and a young Latino con artist called Flim-Flam (Susan Blu) (a slightly better attempt to pander to a youth demographic), they embark on a quest to return each of the ghouls to the chest. This was the most 80’s variation on Scooby-Doo, and not just in the redesigns of Daphne (with her updated hairstyle and distinctly April O’Neill style jumpsuit) and Shaggy (now sporting a red V-neck and jeans), but in its art design and tone clearly meant to evoke The Real Ghostbusters. Of course it was still silly and formulaic of another kind, but it was incredibly distinct next to all the other Scooby incarnations of that decade. Also, it featured Vincent Price as a warlock in a crystal ball called Vincent Van Ghoul –what’s not to love about that?!
13 Ghosts was cancelled however before its characters could complete their quest, and the next Scooby-Doo series didn’t arrive until three years later –arguably the other exception to the franchise’s lacklustre performance of the 1980s. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo was developed by Tom Ruegger, the man who would go on to create Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain, and was extraordinarily simple in concept. In the footsteps of other “babyfied” cartoons of the time, it merely took the original cast and premise and reimagined them as children. It nixed Scrappy and the supernatural, brought back Fred and Velma, and restored the original formula. Yet it was still something of a complete series overhaul, the first to radically depart from the singular art style in favour of something more flexible and exaggerated in the mould of classic Warner Brothers cartoons –as such, the physical comedy was ramped up and the sensibility made much more irreverent (very much predicting Ruegger’s later works). I don’t know if this framework and style entirely worked for Scooby-Doo, but it can’t be denied the show was smarter than most of its contemporaries in the “Little” subgenre with some clever writing (including a great “Red Herring” running gag), and some really creative mysteries and monsters. And this series introduced a few concepts and characterizations that would remain with future incarnations of the series, such as the town of Coolsville, Daphne’s skepticism, and Fred’s outlandish conclusions.
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo ran until 1991, and though popular enough, it didn’t make much of a dent. And with the landscape of Saturday morning cartoons irrevocably changing, Hanna-Barbera was no longer relevant in an age when cartoons were becoming much more ambitious and complex. In 1991, Hanna-Barbera was acquired by Turner, and the company’s creative input was effectively ended, their back catalogue of cartoons used to launch the all-new Cartoon Network. In 1996, Turner merged with Time Warner, and Scooby-Doo became the property of Warner Brothers. In the midst of these deals, a 1994 TV movie called Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights was produced wherein Scooby and Shaggy merely hosted a framing device for Hanna-Barbera Arabian Night adaptations starring Yogi, Boo Boo, and Magilla Gorilla. It’s a fascinating, and occasionally funny special, though very obviously trying to milk the success of Disney’s Aladdin and Animaniacs. But more importantly, it was the last time Don Messick would voice Scooby-Doo before his death in 1997. Scooby was now gone, and with him Scooby-Doo itself.
But there’s a funny thing about nostalgia, and the impact a media franchise can have over twenty-five years; and it wasn’t long before this cowardly canine and his mystery gang found a way to rise from the dead.
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