The year is 1969. Groovy pop-tinged folk music fills the air. A group of teenagers leave their homes and travel across the country in a 'Magic Bus'(actualy a van) painted with psychedelic colors and flowers, spending their time holding conversations with a 'talking' dog and eating 'Scooby Snacks.' Need I go on? Taking up where The Monkees left off, this drug-soaked Saturday Morning Cartoon may very well be the most subversive show in Television history.

The show centered around a talking dog named Scooby Doo and his human pals, who would travel across the country solving supernatural mysteries. The dog's best friend on the show was Shaggy, a long-haired goatee wearing beatnik who was constantly afflicted with a raging case of the Munchies. Other characters included the mini-skirt wearing go-go girl Daphne, and the sexually ambiguous teens Velma and Fred.

Even setting all the underground sub-culture subtext aside, this is undoubtedly one of the finest television series ever to air, animated or otherwise. The writing, if formulaic, was always superb, and the mysteries were capable of surprising you even up to the end. The acting on the show was routinely excellent, featuring the vocal talents of popular Rock and Roll radio personality Casey Kasem as Shaggy, and with the legendary animation actors Don Messick and Frank Welker performing the voices of Scooby Doo and Freddy, respectively. Another regular actor contributing his vocal talents to the show was Psychedelic Pop-Rocker Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees fame, who performed the voices for many of the supporting characters.

Unfortunately, the corporate executives at Hanna-Barbara were not satisfied with the series and would constantly sabotage it over the years; the current version as it exists today is virtually indistinguishable from the original version as it first aired in 1969. First to go was the groovy Sixties Folk-Pop theme song, replaced by a cheesy Top 40/Commercial jingle style dud. Then Scooby Doo and the gang started to get teamed up with ridiculous celebrities like Phyllis Diller and Johnathan Winters, playing themselves. Sometimes these team-ups worked (the classic Don Knotts episodes come to mind), but most of the time they were embarrassingly awful. Next came the addition of Scooby Doo's idiotic relatives (as if one talking dog wasn't enough). First came Scooby Dumb, Scooby Doo's thick-as-a-brick backwoods hillbilly cousin. Second came Scooby Dee, Scooby Doo's Southern Belle, kissin' cousin. She was supposed to be some kind of romantic interest for Scooby (why they felt the need to have a romantic interest for a dog is beyond me), but just seemed to cause trouble for the crew, constantly getting kidnapped and what not. As painful as these characters were, however, they were nothing compared to the Scooby relative that was to follow.

It seems that when ever a popular show has been on for a few years, some brilliant studio executive has the bright idea of adding on some cute little kid to the cast in an effort to spice it up. Examples include the addition of that red-headed little dork Sam to the cast off Diff'rent Strokes, Jinx (AKA Oliver) to the Brady Bunch, and about a hundred little kids tacked on to the last couple of years of the Cosby Show, etcetera, etcetera. At least on some shows, however, if not forgiveable, it is at least understandable. For shows that are based around kids and family, bringing in new kids, as the real actors playing the children grow up and no longer fit into their old roles, at least this makes some sense. Looking back on these show's track records, however, it becomes painfully obvious that these little kid additions rarely if ever work. Most audiences loathe to accept a new character into a situation that they have become accustomed to seeing, watching the original children on the show grow up before they're eyes. The addition of a cute little kid to the cast of a show is usually the last step in a show's history before a quick and bitter cancellation.

Of course, the above shows are all examples of Live-Action series, shows that are filmed on a location with human actors. For an animated show this is unnecessary. Shows like the Simpsons or the Flintstones, for instance, can go on for years without their characters aging a day. On a series like Scooby Doo, moreover, there is even less of a point, because none of the characters were little kids to begin with. But on a dark day in the 1970's, this didn't stop the producers of Scooby Doo from introducing the most hated character in the history of television animation: Scrappy Doo.

It might sound a bit extreme to refer to Scrappy Doo as the most hated character in the history of television animation, but it is probably true. More than any other element that was added to the series throughout it's existence, Scrappy Doo shoulders the blame for the ruining of this once great show. To the true fan of Scooby Doo, Scrappy is hated with a passion, even violently. In much the way you could tell a true Beatles fan by asking him or her who their favorite Beatle was (the correct answer was of course John Lennon, if they answered 'Ringo' then you knew they were just hopping on the trend -- although some leeway could be given if they answered George Harrison or even Paul), the true Scooby Doo fan can be spotted by asking him or her who his/her favorite charcter is. The correct answer is "Shaggy", although Velma, Fred, Daphne, and Scooby are all acceptable. If the respondent answers "Scrappy (or to a lesser extent, Scooby Dumb or Scooby Dee)," then you know the person is not a true Scooby fan at all, but just someone who likes the show out of some vague sense of childhood nostalgia (the same person is just as likely to claim to be a fan of the Smurfs or The Snorkles or any other crap that they happened to watch on Saturday mornings).

Once Scrappy was added to the cast as Scooby Doo's pint-sized nephew, the producers quickly made him the focus of the show. Scrappy was always causing trouble for the gang, forcing Scooby to risk his neck to save the obnoxious little idiot week after week. All the elements of mystery and suspense on the show became weak and contrived, and little effort seemed to be made to write a decent script. The powers that be at Hanna-Barbara seemed to believe that the Scrappy character would make the show more popular with a younger set, and that no effort should be made to write any decent jokes or stories, because the little kids would probably be too stupid to understand them anyway.

As the shows went on over the years, things only got worse. Daphne only appeared on the shows occasionally, and the characters of Velma and Fred got dumped off altogether. They also got rid of the mysteries over the years. It used to be that the kids would start off investigating reports of a haunted house or a spooky ghost, and on the way pick up clues that would lead them to the real criminal behind the scares, faking the supernatural as part of some nefarious scheme. On the current incarnations of Scooby Doo, however, when Scooby and Shaggy run in to a ghost, it's just a ghost. There's no mystery figure behind it all, and instead of tracking down clues to solve a puzzle, they just run around like idiots trying to keep from getting their blood sucked or something.

Through the years Scooby Doo has appeared in a number of series, including Scooby Doo Where are You and the New Scooby Doo Movies, up to more current series such as The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo and A Pup Named Scooby. He has also appeared in a number of direct-to-video movies; the latest, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, was released in September of 1998.

CAST:
Don Messick as Scooby Doo
Casey Kasem as Shaggy
Frank Welker as Freddy
Heather North as Daphne
Nichole Jaffe as Velma

CATCHPHRASES:
-"Zoinks!"
-"Jinkies!"
-"I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids."
-"Like, what's for dinner?"

SCOOBY DOO RESOURCES ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB:
-The Dark Side of the Scooby Doo Gang
-Scooby Doo, What Happened to You?