History Of Scooby Doo

A huge, intimidating Great Dane looks back at you through the television screen, as though he would snap your head off by just looking at you. And then, all of a sudden, he turns and scampers away like a mouse with a cat hot on its trail! He then jumps into the hands of a scruffy looking guy, shivering like an icicle. You guessed right! It is none other than Scooby Doo himself! Scooby is a part of a team of detectives known as "Mystery, Inc.", comprising of his best friend Shaggy Rogers, along with Fred Jones, Velma Dinkley and Daphne Blake. It is Scooby's greatest ambition to be the hero of the team and catch as many bad guys as possible. And he even does end up as a star each time, but not always the way that he would like to be (more often through a stroke of luck). Wouldn’t you just love to know just where did the idea of this adorable mutt emerge from? Read on to know about the history of the Scooby Doo series.

 

Scooby-Doo, the much-loved animated series, first premiered in the year 1969 and has been a huge rage since then. This Hanna-Barbara Production series created a great hype since this was the first ever mystery show involving a teenage group and a dog. The show initially took off as ‘Mysteries Five”, featuring five teenagers, but was later cut down to a gang of four adventurous teenagers- Fred “Freddie” Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Norville “Shaggy” Rogers, along with a talking dog, Scooby Doo. Together, they were called “Mystery, Inc.” and were mostly associated with mysterious cases, especially those involving ghosts.

 

It’s said that Fred Silverman, the then in-charge of CBS’ children’s program, didn’t like the name “Mysteries Five” and changed the title to “Who’s S-S-Scared?” However, the show didn’t go down well with CBS executives who found it too scary for young children. Silverman asked Ruby and Spears, owner of Hanna-Barbara Production to change the theme of the serial from horror to comedy. Ruby and Spears released an all-new series of the animated show that primarily focused on Shaggy and his dog, called Too Much. However, Silverman changed its name to Scooby-Doo, which is believed to be inspired from Frank Sinatra’s song “Strangers in the Night”, and the show came to be known as “Scooby-Doo, Where are You!”.

 

The first episode of “Scooby-Doo, Where are You!”, called “What a Night for a Knight”, was aired on September 13, 1969. This episode showed the teenager group trying to solve a mystery case involving ghosts and monsters. Don Messick, Casey Kasem, Frank Welker, Nicole Jaffe and Stefanianna Christopherson voiced for Scooby-Doo, Shaggy, Fred, Velma and Daphne respectively. The series was a huge hit and returned with its second season soon after i.e. in the year 1970. The show was called "The New Scooby-Doo Movies” and had guest starrers like Batman & Robin, Don Knotts, The Three Stooges and others. The show ran till 1976, until it was taken over by ABC.

 

"The New Scooby-Doo Movies” went through a few changes and even some lows after ABC took over. Scrappy Doo, Scooby Doo’s nephew, was added to the show, to boost its TRP ratings and it was renamed as “Scooby-Doo and Scrappy Doo”. When the show clicked, Fred, Daphne and Velma were dropped from the show. In the year 1985, Scooby Doo was back with “The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo”, which starred Daphne, Shaggy, Scooby, Scrappy and two new characters Flim-Flam and Vincent Van Ghoul. This new series showed the character chasing the thirteen most deadly ghouls all over the world. The ‘13 Ghosts’ show came to an end in 1986 and no new episode was aired till 1988, when 'A Pup Named Scooby-Doo' debuted and ran till 1991.

 

The decade of the 1990s mainly saw re-runs of the earlier Scooby Doo series and no new shows were launched. Scooby Doo was back on air in 2002, with a gang of smarter teenagers and their cool escapades. The new show was produced by Warner Bros. Television Animations. The show ran for three seasons and was replaced by “Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!” in September 2006. The present Scooby Doo series features a wealthy Shaggy, who has inherited money along with a mansion from an uncle. Shaggy and Scooby form the central characters of the series, with Fred, Velma and Daphne making occasional appearances to help them.