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The Scooby-Doo Show
The Scooby-Doo Show | |
Premiere | September 13, 1969 |
Finale | November 30, 1985 |
Creator | Joe Ruby & Ken Spears |
Network/Provider | CBS (season 1-4) ABC (season 5-14) |
Style | 30-minute (season 1-2 & 5-7, 10-14) 60-minute (season 3-4, 7-8) animated comedy |
Company | Hanna-Barbera Productions |
Seasons | 14 |
Episodes | 177 + 5 telefilms |
Origin | USA |
The Scooby-Doo Show (over the course of its run also airing as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, and from time to time as the anchor segments in larger program blocks, including The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour, Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics, Scooby's All-Stars, The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show, and The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo/Puppy Hour) is a long running Saturday morning cartoon show, airing on CBS for seven seasons (3 of which did not include any new episodes) and on ABC for another ten seasons.
During the 1980s ABC aired repacked episodes of the show, using several different titles: Scooby-Doo Classics (1981), The Best of Scooby-Doo (1983-1984), Scary Scooby Funnies (1984-1985) and Scooby's Mystery Funhouse (1985-1986).
The show had its first spinoff series in 1976: Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, and then in 1988-1991, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo aired. Additionally, Scooby also appeared as a main character in Laff-a-Lympics. Beginning in 1998, Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. Animation revived the franchise with movies and specials, as well as new series What's New Scooby-Doo?, Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? , Velma, and the forthcoming Go-Go Mystery Machine.
Contents |
History
The show originally centers around four teenagers, unofficially called "Mystery Inc.", whose hobby was mystery solving. The basic premise remained unchanged through the many series of the franchise: Criminal activities were covered up as faux supernatural events with red herrings and clues leading up to the eventual denoument. The kids were patterned after the characters of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis: Fred Jones is the stocky, straight-laced member; Daphne Blake, beautiful but accident-prone red-head; Velma Dinkley, the pudgy, bespectacled brains of the outfit; Norville "Shaggy" Rogers, the pencil-thin chow hound; and the star of the show, the gangly, bow-legged Great Dane Scooby Doo.
Kids immediately embraced Scooby because he's been funny to them, and he's true to himself—a craven coward, and he's not afraid to admit it, although he's been known to set his cowardice aside for the common good, or at least a Scooby Snack.
The show's very beginnings had creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears (who did double duty as story writers for The Perils of Penelope Pitstop) harkening back to old radio shows like I Love A Mystery and Hardy Boys novels. Under the original designs, the kids were nothing like what they became, and the dog was originally meant to be a sheepdog named Too Much. However, The Archie Show (also on CBS) already had a sheepdog named Hot Dog, so taking a cue from a Hanna-Barbera staffer who raised Great Danes as a hobby, the dog was turned into a Great Dane. This presented a secondary problem: The comics section of the newspaper had a Great Dane named Marmaduke. H-B character designer Iwao Takamoto gave this TV dog a bulging chin, a slanted back, and bow legs. He still didn't have a name, as the kids were the stars. The show had Mysteries Five (the five being the kids, who were originally named Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda and W.W.) and Who's Scared? as working titles, but CBS rejected the presentation art as too scary. They had to have a show for the cornerstone 10:30 a.m. spot. Otherwise, the schedule would have fallen apart.
Fred Silverman, head of CBS daytime and children's programming, was on a flight to New York when he heard Frank Sinatra singing "Strangers In The Night" on his in-flight radio. The ending tag, "Scooby-dooby-doo", caught his fancy. Once in New York, Silverman called Joe Barbera and told him to give the show a comedy slant, make the dog the star and call him Scooby-Doo. The rest is cartoon history.
The show originally aired as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! for two seasons from September 13, 1969 to October 31, 1970, when it was replaced by reruns during the following two years. Then, on September 9, 1972, new episodes returned, now in a 1 hour telefilms format, The New Scooby-Doo Movies. The show lasted another two seasons, before the production was halted once again, and the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! returned to the CBS schedule, where they remained until the Summer of 1976; it ended in August 1976, as the network replaced it with Clue Club, a Scooby clone that they hoped would be as successful.
Thus: in the Fall of 1976, Scooby-Doo moved to ABC, where it initially anchored the 1-hour programming block The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour. The following years new episodes kept being produced, each season paired with new shows. In September 1979, the series was back on its own feet, new called Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, due to the addition of Scooby's nephew. The following year, Daphne, Velma and Fred, disappeared from the show, which also went back to lead one hour blocks for another three years.
For the last three years of the series, 1983-1985, the series was once again on its own, albeit under slightly different names each season. Daphne returned full time, while Fred and Velma made only occasional guest appearance during the 1984 episodes. For the final season, the show was titled The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, and featured an ongoing story arch, as well as new characters Vincent Van Ghoul (inspired and voiced by Vincent Price), Flim Flam, Weerd, and Bogel. The final episode aired on November 30, 1985.
Cast
Actor | Character | Duration | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Main Cast | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | |
Don Messick | Scooby-Doo | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * |
Scrappy-Doo | * | * | * | * | * | * | |||||||||
Yabba-Doo | * | ||||||||||||||
Mumsy-Doo | o | o | o | ||||||||||||
Dada-Doo | o | o | o | ||||||||||||
Casey Kasem | Norville "Shaggy" Rogers | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * |
Stefanianna Christopherson | Daphne Blake | * | |||||||||||||
Heather North | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | |||||
Frank Welker | Fred Jones | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * | o | |||||
Deputy Dusty | * | ||||||||||||||
Nicole Jaffe | Velma Dinkley | * | * | * | * | ||||||||||
Patricia Stevens | * | * | * | * | |||||||||||
Marla Frumkin | * | o | |||||||||||||
Lennie Weinrib | Scrappy-Doo | * | |||||||||||||
Vincent Price | Vincent Van Ghoul | * | |||||||||||||
Susan Blu | Flim-Flam | * | |||||||||||||
Orange/Red/o indicates a recurring or guest role during that season. Dark Green indicates top billing during that season. | |||||||||||||||
Supporting/Recurring Cast | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | |
Daws Butler | Scooby-Dum | * | * | ||||||||||||
Arte Johnson | Weerd | * | |||||||||||||
Howard Morris | Bogel | * |
Seasons
Telefilms
Title | Network | Airdate | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Scooby Goes Hollywood | ABC | December 23, 1979 | ||||
Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers | Syndication | November 1, 1987 | ||||
Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School | Syndication | February 1, 1988 | ||||
Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf | Syndication | November 1, 1988 | ||||
Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights | TBS | September 3, 1994 |
In-Depth
- At a Glance: Additional information about the series
DVD Releases
Blu-ray
Title | Release | Discs | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Multiple Season Sets (Region A) | ||||||
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You: The Complete Series: Limited Edition Seasons One, Two and Six |
September 3, 2019 | purchase | 4 | |||
The New Scooby-Doo Movies: The (Almost) Complete Collection Seasons Three and Four (missing one episode) |
June 4, 2019 | purchase | 2 |
DVD
External Links
The Scooby-Doo Franchise |
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Primary series |
Original series (1969-1985) • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (1988-1991) • Specials & Movies (1998-present) • What's New Scooby-Doo? (2002-2006) • Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! (2006-2008) • Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010-2013) • Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! (2015-2018) • Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? (2019-2021) • Velma (2023-2024) |
Spinnoff series and guest appearances |
Dynomutt, Dog Wonder (1976-1977) • Laff-a-Lympics (1977-1978) • Johnny Bravo - Bravo Dooby-Doo (1997) • Batman: The Brave and the Bold - Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases! (2011) |
Package shows |
The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour (1976) • Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics (1977) • Scooby's All-Stars (1978) • The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show (1980-1981) • The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo/Puppy Hour (1982-1983) |