Scooby-Doo
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Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based on an animated television series launched in 1969 and continued through several derivative media. Writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears created the original series,
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, for Hanna-Barbera Productions. This Saturday-morning cartoon series featured teenagers Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, and Shaggy Rogers, and their talking Great Dane named Scooby-Doo, who solve mysteries involving supposedly supernatural creatures through a series of antics and missteps.
Scooby-Doo was originally broadcast on CBS from 1969 to 1976, when it moved to ABC. ABC aired various versions of
Scooby-Doo until canceling it in 1985, and presented a spin-off featuring the characters as children called
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo from 1988 until 1991. Two
Scooby-Doo reboots aired as part of Kids' WB on The WB and its successor The CW from 2002 until 2008. Further reboots were produced for Cartoon Network beginning in 2010 and continuing through 2018. Repeats of the various
Scooby-Doo series are frequently broadcast on Cartoon Network's sister channel Boomerang in the United States and other countries. The most recent
Scooby-Doo series,
Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, premiered on June 27, 2019, as an original series on Boomerang's streaming service and later HBO Max.
In 2013,
TV Guide ranked Scooby-Doo the fifth-greatest TV cartoon of all time.
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CBS years (196976)
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Every episode of the original
Scooby-Doo format contains a penultimate scene in which the heroes unmask the seemingly supernatural antagonist to reveal a real person in a costume, as in this scene from "Nowhere to Hyde", an episode of
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! originally aired on CBS on September 12, 1970.
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
The first episode of
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! "What a Night for a Knight" debuted on the CBS network Saturday, September 13, 1969, at 10:30 AM Eastern Time. The original voice cast featured Don Messick as Scooby-Doo, Casey Kasem as Shaggy, Frank Welker as Fred, actress Nicole Jaffe as Velma, and Indira Stefanianna as Daphne. Scooby's speech patterns closely resembled an earlier cartoon dog, Astro from
The Jetsons (196263), also voiced by Messick. Seventeen episodes of
Scooby-Doo Where Are You! were produced in 196970. The series theme song was written by David Mook and Ben Raleigh, and performed by Larry Marks.
Each of these episodes features Scooby and the four teenage members of Mystery, Inc.Fred, Shaggy, Daphne and Velmaarriving at a location in the Mystery Machine, a van painted with psychedelic colors and flower power imagery. Encountering a purportedly supernatural monster terrorizing the local populace, such as a ghost, they decide to investigate. The kids split up to look for clues and suspects, while being chased at turns by the monster. Eventually, the kids come to realize the paranormal activity is actually an elaborate hoax, andoften with the help of a Rube Goldberg-like trap designed by Fredthey capture the creature suit-wearing villain and unmask him or her. Revealed as a flesh and blood crook who used the costume to cover up their crimes, the villain is arrested and taken to jail, often with the catchphrase "if it weren't for those pesky/meddling kids".
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