Scooby Doo Where Are You?

The story behind the continued success of the world's greatest detective dog

Photo by Jay

In the beginning

First broadcast on 13^th September 1969 with the episode ‘What a Night for a Knight’ Scooby-Doo initially ran for two seasons to 31^st October 1970 placing itself as a firm favourite with families across the US. The show was aired opposite the mystery-solving show, The Hardy Boys and soon got a foothold in the Saturday morning line up with ratings reported as high as 63% when first broadcast on CBS.

The first series ‘Scooby-Doo Where are you’ came about partly, due to parent pressure groups, protesting about the perceived excessive violence in Saturday morning cartoons. Pressure groups cited such cartoons as Space Ghost, which was popular at the time. Such was the influence of parent groups at the time almost all ‘violent’ cartoons were cancelled leaving the Hanna-Barbera animation studio with the challenge of creating something new for the popular Saturday mornings slot.

After various incarnations, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears came up with the idea of Scooby-Doo. A group of teenagers and their pet Great Dane solving mysteries in the Mystery Machine all wrapped up with the now infamous theme song by David Mook and Ben Raleigh -performed by Larry Marks.

Characters

Like any good cartoon, the characters had to be just right. The lead detective, Fred Jones, is always on hand for a dose of rational thinking. Velma Dinkley, is the more methodical and analytical thinker. Daphne Blake is always prone to risk and being kidnapped, Norville ‘Shaggy’ Rogers, motivated by cowardice and huger and of course, Scooby-Doo who, as many people now know, was given the name from the closing lines in the song Strangers in the Night by Frank Sinatra

Over the years slight changes have been made to character roles to reflect the changes in society, especially in the 1990s and 2000s with changes to Daphne to make her more ‘kidnap proof’ being one of the character tweaks.

Episodes

Each episode contained the winning formula of unmasking the villain to reveal a real person and the catchphrase:

‘We would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling/pesky kids.’

By 1972 new hour-long episodes were introduced and started to feature stars from other cartoons such as the Harlem Globe Trotters and Josie and the Pussycats along with celebrity voices from Dick Van Dyke and Sonny and Cher to mention a few.

As the show progressed other characters were added such as Scooby-Dum (1976), the slow-witted cousin of Scooby-Doo. Later, in the 1970s, Scrappy-Doo (1979) was also introduced to try and reverse the falling ratings of the show a decade on.

In the mid to late 1980s, the show started to use supernatural monsters breaking away from the familiar format but in 1988 the Hanna-Barbera team altered the Scooby-Doo format for a new series called ‘A Pup Named Scooby Doo’ with the cast as elementary school students. At the time, this was in common with 1980s children’s television and saw the show return to the original format of unmasking the villain in costume.

In 2002, following the success of the first feature film (see more below) Scooby-Doo returned to Saturday morning television for the first time in a decade. The show, now produced by the Warner Bros studios used modern-day culture and technology as a feature of the show. Another new addition was the voice of Shaggy which saw the return of Casey Kasem but on the proviso that Shaggy became a vegetarian like he was.

Late, in 2006, Warner Bros launched Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue based on the premise that Shaggy had inherited a huge mansion from an uncle who was an inventor. The show was based on Shaggy’s uncle being in hiding as villains were trying to steal his inventions.

The next Scooby-Doo series then aired in 2010 on cable television as Mystery Incorporated again re-establishing the characters, personalities and some familiar locations. This series then expanded to include friends, parents, neighbours and borrowed parts from the show’s long history.

The show still followed the basic format but this time was broadcast as a 52-chapter animated televised novel similar to other popular shows at the time such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost.

A mystery that surrounded the gang’s hometown of Crystal Cove, California was the main story with pieces of the mystery being revealed with a three-part finale reveal. These episodes also saw some romantic liaisons and conflicts between the main characters, which hadn’t happened until now.

Coming right up to the present day, spin-offs from the original cartoon such as Velma (2023) a prequel to the gang getting together and the formation of Mystery Inc doesn’t feature Scooby-Doo. Unlike many of the previous shows’ voices, the voices in Velma are from a much more diverse cast of actors and is a much more adult-orientated animated series.

Scooby-Doo and the Mystery pups have also recently been announced with a CGI adventure comedy scheduled for 2024.

Since the 1980s, returns of Scooby-Doo have been syndicated and shown in as many countries as the gang has visited to solve mysteries, currently an unofficial 33! 

Photo by Dinu J Nair Unsplash

Movies

With the popularity of the returns of Scooby-Doo, Time Warner started to make a straight-to-video movie per year from 1998 for the next three years. Each of these films featured a slightly older gang than the original version of the cast. Ranging in popularity as they again moved away from the original format opting for a more supernatural script.

Live-action films followed in 2002 with special effects. The first of these made circa $130 million in gross box office sales. This led to the sequel which earned box office takings of circa $84 million in the US. A third feature film, planned by Warner Bros’, was shelved due to the poor sales of the sequel.

In 2009, on the 40th anniversary of the first airing, a live-action television film Scooby-Doo The Mystery Begins was aired on Cartoon Network with a further live-action film Scooby-Doo Curse of the Lake Monster being released in 2010, Further direct-to-video spin-offs Daphne and Velma followed, to mixed success, in 2018.

Away from the screen

Since December 1969 Scooby-Doo has been featured in his own comic which has contained adaptations from the cartoon show along with their own storylines. From 1977-1979 Marvel Comics published nine issues of the comic. From 1995 a monthly Scooby-Doo comic was produced and featured Scrappy-Doo in the cast then, in 1997, Warner Bros acquired the right to publish and continued to do this. In 2013 the comic moved to a digital bi-monthly and, coming right up to date, both digital and print copies are available.

Other Merchandise

There has been a plethora of other merchandising from the 1973 board game, lunch boxes, Cluedo and colouring books, to mention a few. In 1986 the first video game featuring Scooby-Doo was released and from 2001 you could even buy Scooby-Doo multivitamins. There is also the Scooby-Doo live stage play and the Hot Wheels Mystery Machine to fill your Scooby desires.

To date, Scooby-Doo has generated $3.69bn and shows no signs of slowing its pace.