The beginnings
In 1968, many Americans began to complain that there was too much violence in the Saturday morning cartoons. Most of these series were action movies, such as Spider-Man, Space Ghost or Speed Racer, many of which were also taken off the air towards the end of the 1960s due to these protests. CBS executive Fred Silverman, who was specifically involved with children's programming, was now looking for a suitable show to resurrect his Saturday morning line-up, while also appeasing the minds of strict Americans. The result was The Archie Show, a series about the heroes of Archie Comics. In addition to the animated series, the Archies' music was also very successful; the song Sugar Sugar was released in 1969, and managed to stay at #1 in the US and European charts for quite some time. Silverman then contacted producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera to persuade them to create another animated series about a teenage rock band, but one that would solve mysteries and puzzles between their performances.
Hanna and Barbera forwarded this suggestion to their story writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears (1938-2020), as well as character designer Iwao Takamoto. The original concept for the show was titled Mysteries Five and featured five teenagers Geoff, Mike, Kelly, Linda, and Linda's brother W.W. , as well as their dog Too Much. They were all members of the band The Mysteries Five, even the dog who played bongos. In their spare time, the group solved spooky mysteries involving ghosts, the undead, and other supernatural creatures. Ruby and Spears didn't agree on whether the dog should be a big clumsy Great Dane or a shaggy sheepdog. Joseph Barbera ultimately decided on the Great Dane.
Takamoto met with a breeder of Great Danes to learn more about the character of these dogs. Drawing the character Too Much, he broke every rule, he gave the dog black dots, which normally does not have a Great Dane, bent legs, a double chin and other peculiarities.
Shortly before the release of the new series, Silverman began to change a few things. Geoff and Mike became one person Ronnie (later renamed Fred), Kelly became Daphney (later Daphne), Linda became Velma, and Shaggy (formerly W.W. ) was no longer her brother. Silverman was also not very happy with the name Mysteries Five and unceremoniously changed it to Who's S-S-Scared? However, the CBS board still felt the previously animated sequences were too scary for a young audience and decided not to release the series.
However, Silverman wanted the show on the block of upcoming "Saturday morning cartoons," so he went to Ruby and Spears, who were in the process of making the show funnier and less frightening. They also took the rock band element out of the show and tried to put more attention on Shaggy and Too Much. Furthermore, it was decided to rename the dog Scooby-Doo, and by extension, the entire show Scooby Doo, Where are You! CBS agreed to present the series to viewers.
Scooby-Doo on TV
CBS Years (1969-1975)
On September 13, 1969, Scooby Doo, Where are You! (Scooby Doo, Where are You! ) went on the air on CBS with the first episode, What a Night for a Knight (Haunted Museum). Seventeen episodes of Scooby-Doo were produced in 1969.
The series was a success for CBS, and so they revamped the show somewhat for a second season, focusing more on slapstick humor. The eight episodes that went on the air in 1970 already featured the signature chase music during the more hectic scenes.
In 1972, after twenty-five half-hour episodes, the program was expanded to a full hour and was now called The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Each episode featured guest appearances by various stars, including the Harlem Globetrotters, The Three Stooges, Batman and Robin, and Laurel and Hardy. These helped the group unravel the strange happenings. After two seasons with a total of twenty-four episodes (1972 to 1974), they repeated the original show until Scooby-Doo moved to the ABC network.
Scooby clones
Due to the success, Hanna-Barbera decided to produce more shows similar to the Scooby-Doo concept. This resulted in "Josie and the Pussycats" in 1970, "The Flintstone Comedy Hour" in 1972 and "The Funky Phantom" in 1971.
Other shows about young people solving unusual cases, usually with the help of a pet, would include:
- 1972: The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan
- 1973: Goober and the Ghost Chasers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, Inch High, Private Eye
- 1976: Clue Club, Jabberjaw
- 1977: Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels
- 1978: Buford and the Galloping Ghost
After Joe Ruby and Ken Spears left Hanna-Barbera in 1977 to form Ruby-Spears Productions, their first animated production was another Scooby clone called Fangface.
During the 1970s, these clones managed to hold up very well alongside the original Scooby-Doo on morning programming. All of the series produced before 1975 aired on CBS, but when Silverman moved to ABC, he took the mystery series including Scooby-Doo with him.
ABC Years (1976-1991)
On ABC, the show was changed slightly almost every year. Between 1976 and 1977, they combined Scooby-Doo with the new Hanna-Barbera show "Dynomutt, Dog Wonder" to create the Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt hour. Later, other series were added and one hour became several. Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics from 1977/1978, Scooby's All-Stars from 1978/1979.
New episodes in the format of the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? show were produced, and Scooby-Doo was joined by his somewhat dimwitted cousin Scooby-Dum. After three seasons, the show was renamed The Scooby-Doo Show and continued to air.
In 1979, Scooby's nephew Scrappy-Doo was added to the series in an attempt to revive falling ratings. The 1979/1980 episodes ran under the name Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo, and since there was renewed interest in the show, they overhauled the entire series and put more focus on Scrappy-Doo. Fred, Daphne and Velma were taken off the show, and the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo show now consisted of three seven-minute comic adventures of Scooby, Scrappy and Shaggy, rather than a half-hour ghost hunt.
Daphne returned for The All-New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, and the now twenty-two minute show was somewhat reminiscent of the first season Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? This version lasted for two seasons, with the second season going under the name The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries. Fred and Velma also made some guest appearances here.
In Germany, The Scooby-Doo Show was first broadcast on Sat. 1 in May 1985, and shortly thereafter Scooby and Scrappy-Doo. The Scooby-Doo Show was then repeated several times on Sat. 1.
1985 was the debut year of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. The main characters were Daphne, Shaggy, Scooby, Scrappy and new characters Flim-Flam and Vincent Van Ghoul, dubbed by and based on Vincent Price. The team's task was to catch the thirteen scariest ghosts in the world. In 1986, the series was cancelled after thirteen episodes and no new version of Scooby-Doo was created for two years.
Hanna-Barbera revived the characters from the original series as high school students for A Pup Named Scooby-Doo in 1988. This series was somewhat reminiscent of the classic cartoons of Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. They avoided the drawing style of the original to create a Looney Tunes-like style. The show lasted until 1991.
The Kids' WB Years (2002-2008)
Reruns of the various versions of Scooby-Doo ran on a wide variety of stations in the U.S., but after some networks pulled the Hanna-Barbera films from their schedules, Scooby-Doo became the property of Cartoon Network and its sister station Boomerang.
In 2002, following the success of the reruns on Cartoon Network and the sale of the Scooby-Doo videos, the original characters were updated for the 21st century, and What's New, Scooby-Doo? aired on Cartoon Network and WB Network. This series revisits the tradition of the original series. The team is made up of the original characters, and they go on monster hunts in familiar fashion, though again the monsters are always criminals in disguise. Only the appearance has been modernized a bit compared to the original series. What's New, Scooby-Doo? was broadcast from September 2002 to July 2006 in a total of 42 episodes. The theme song of What's New, Scooby-Doo? was recorded by the Canadian music group Simple Plan.
At the beginning of 2008, the tenth series offshoot Scooby-Doo auf heißer Spur (Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! ) began airing on Kabel eins. In the USA, a total of 26 episodes were produced and broadcast in two seasons between 2006 and 2008. In this spin-off, Shaggy inherits money and an estate from his uncle Albert Shaggleford. The latter is an inventor, but has to hide from his enemies who want to steal his secret invention. Fred, Daphne and Velma are usually not part of this spin-off, but do appear in some episodes to support Shaggy and Scooby.
The Cartoon Network Years (2010-present)
An eleventh spin-off was presented in the form of Mission Scooby-Doo (Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated) by Warner Bros. Animation, the pilot episode ran on April 5, 2010 on US television, the complete first season contains a total of 26 episodes. In Mission Scooby-Doo, as with the previous three spin-offs, the focus was on a slightly different design for the characters, but this time more polished, they wanted to recall the earlier years in the form of a retro look. Additionally, Mission Scooby-Doo is darker, more violent and much more realistic than the previous series spin-offs. Thus, individual episodes are linked to each other and a cross-episode storyline was created. In Germany, the series began airing on February 27, 2012 on the pay-TV channel Cartoon Network. In the United States, the second season was announced at the end of March 2012, so the first episode already aired in advance on 30 March 2012 on Cartoon Network Videos, an online spin-off. Warner Bros. announced to move the official start of the second season to July 30, 2012.
On February 25, 2013, Cartoon Network announced that Mission Scooby-Doo had concluded with Season 2, with no new episodes of the spin-off planned, it said.
On March 10, 2014, Cartoon Network announced it would produce numerous new series based on old animated films, including the twelfth Scooby-Doo spin-off Stay Cool, Scooby-Doo! (Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! ). The series will feature the famous Scooby gang who just finished their senior year of high school. They plan their last summer together and travel the country in the Mystery Machine, but along the way they are always stopped by monsters and other disasters.
Originally, the series was to be broadcast on the US TV channel Boomerang, which, along with Cartoon Network, also belongs to the media company TimeWarner. Nevertheless, Bleib cool, Scooby-Doo! started on October 6, 2015, like Mission Scooby-Doo before, on Cartoon Network. To date, 20 episodes have aired, and since March 2016, Stay Cool, Scooby-Doo! has been on hiatus. On March 7, 2017, Time Warner announced that the remaining episodes would be available in the future through Boomerang's SVOD offering. However, of the remaining 26 episodes, only 15 episodes were available through the SVOD offering, with the final 11 episodes airing in March 2018. The final episode of Stay Cool, Scooby-Doo! aired on March 18, 2018 on the Boomerang television network. In 2019, the remake Scooby-Doo and Who Are You.
Movies and videos
TV Movies
Between 1986 and 1988, Hanna-Barbera produced Superstars 10, a series of television movies featuring her most popular characters, including Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, the Flintstones, and the Jetsons. Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo, and Shaggy appeared in three of these films: Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers (1987, Scooby-Doo and the Boo Brothers), Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf (1988, Scooby-Doo and the Unruly Werewolf), and Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (1989, Scooby-Doo and the Ghost School). Scooby-Doo and Shaggy were also the narrators of the made-for-TV film Arabian Nights, later also broadcast as Scooby-Doo in Arabian Nights.
In 2009, Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins (Scooby-Doo! The Adventure Begins) to television, similar to the feature films with actors. This was followed in 2010 by the sequel Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster followed in 2010.
Video
Beginning in 1998, Hanna-Barbera (here already as a Warner Bros. subsidiary) produced Scooby-Doo video films, which would now be released annually as direct-to-video. The first four films were Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island (1998, Scooby-Doo and the Ghost Island), Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (1999, Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Secret), Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders (2000, Scooby-Doo and the Aliens), and Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase (2001, Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase).
In the film series, Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, Velma and Scooby-Doo actually fight real monsters and have to deal with real phenomena. Scooby-Doo and Ghost Island, the first direct-to-video film, reunites Mystery Inc. after the group had been out of touch for several years. In Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Secret, Mystery Inc. meets a writer who invites them to his hometown. However, once there, the friends discover that the town is haunted by an ancestor of the writer who was a real witch. In addition, this film introduced the Hex Girls, a gothic band consisting of three girls who have since become a recurring part of the Scooby-Doo franchise.
Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase was Hanna-Barbera's last production before the studio was completely taken over by Warner Bros. Since then, Warner Bros. Animation has produced the annual films as well as new television series spin-offs on its own.
The video series continued with Scooby-Doo! and the Legend of the Vampire (2003, Scooby-Doo - Adventures at Vampire Rock), Scooby-Doo! and the Monster of Mexico (2003, Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico), Scooby-Doo! and the Loch Ness Monster (2004, Scooby-Doo and the Loch Ness Monster), and Aloha, Scooby-Doo! (2005). Well over 20 video films have since been released, which continue to be released at irregular intervals, most recently Lego Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash in July 2017.
Movies
Warner Bros. released the live-action film Scooby-Doo in 2002. Scooby came to the screen using CGI technology. The film was extremely successful with box office takings of 275 million US dollars. The sequel Scooby Doo 2 - Die Monster sind los (The Monsters Are Out) from 2004 brought in 181 million US dollars.
On August 26, 2013, Warner Bros. announced that an animated Scooby-Doo feature film was being planned in collaboration with Atlas Entertainment. Charles Roven and Richard Suckle, who already produced the first live-action film, were commissioned to oversee this film as well. On August 17, 2015, Warner Bros. announced Tony Cervone as director and a September 21, 2018 release date. On April 13, 2016, it was announced that the film would be called S.C.O.O.B. and it would also be the first spin-off within the Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe. S.C.O.O.B. will primarily serve as a reboot of the previous live-action film adaptations. In May 2017, it was announced that S.C.O.O.B. would not be released until 2020. Scooby! Voll verwedelt was finally released in theaters internationally in July 2020, but only online in the U.S. due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
