I was recently reading a Bloomberg article about the decline of Cartoon Network (great article, I would definitely recommend giving it a read!) I don't usually write spontaneous opinion pieces here, but I've chatted about my opinion about WB's recent treatment of Scooby to friends (and mentioned in a few comments), so I decided to compile my feelings about Scooby's recent treatment in an article. This isn't going to be a rant or anything like that, I more just wanted to share about some things that I've liked about previous promotional strategies WB has had, as well as some things that have bothered me with WB's recent treatment. Although things look a bit bleak for WB at the moment, I do have faith that things can greatly improve for the franchise if we can get around a few issues. This article highlights my hopes for the future of the franchise, as well as the promotional strategies I've liked and disliked.

Looking back to the 1990s, the level of promotion the franchise got on Cartoon Network was incredible. Between the Cartoon Network reruns and marathons, the bumpers, and heavy promotion, the franchise was arguably at one of its highest points. Similarly, I feel they did an amazing job promoting Scooby in the 2000s with the DTV films, the live-action films, and What's New, Scooby-Doo? Between the thorough and consistent promotion of content, frequent TV airtime, and plethora of DVD season/series sets, the 1990s and 2000s were one of the best times in the franchise history. All of the promotion and merch released for the franchise was super high quality, and it felt like so much love and admiration for the franchise went into everything WB did.

Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated's promotion was also perfect imo. For the first 13 episodes, each episode got a 30-second preview ad which aired on Cartoon Network to promote the coming week's episode. I remember there were regular advertisements for the show, and there was a lot of effort on WB's part to spread the word about the new show. We also had Crystal Cove Online for the first season, which was an expansive game based in the SDMI universe. In the game, each level was an adaptation of an episode of the show. Each week, the level for the episode that aired that week would be released. That was absolutely incredible imo, and comes to mind as amongst the best promotion WB has done for a Scooby show in the 21st century. There were certainly hiatuses, but looking back, I don't feel any of them were unreasonably long. Even when Cartoon Network shifted to airing season 2 on weekdays rather than the traditional once-per-week format, I still felt like a decent amount of promotion went into the show.

Around the time Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! started airing, promotion and treatment of the franchise was still mostly decent. We'd get good promo on the DTVs, and there was still plenty of DVD sets and "special" stuff for fans. Other than the questionable "sequels" in 2019 (more on this later), I also felt they more or less did a great job with the 50th anniversary celebration. Between exclusive merch, the decent promotion of Guess Who at the time, the 50th anniversary DTV set, and all the special stuff they did to celebrate 50 years of our favorite cartoon dog, WB's promotion of the franchise was overall excellent. However, Be Cool was a bit of a hiccup, imo.

One thing I've chatted about a lot with friends in the fandom is that Be Cool and Guess Who didn't have great release strategies after the first 13-20 episodes were released. For Be Cool, after those first 20 episodes aired on Cartoon Network, the rollout became pretty confusing imo. Episodes 21-26 were aired on Boomerang on a random day, without any sort of announcement to my knowledge. While big fans may have been watching the schedules, the average viewer didn't have much of an idea where or when to watch those episodes. Later on, without any announcement or promotion, the first 15 episodes of season 2 were added to the Boomerang streaming service on December 22, 2017. The final 11 episodes were aired in an overnight slot on March 18, 2018. Perhaps worse yet, head writer Jon Colton Barry shared that WB wasn't even informing him when episodes were releasing after the first season, and he would have to find out online at the same time fans did.

Internationally, Be Cool's release strategy was better. It aired in a consistent timeslot on Boomerang in most countries, and received the same release strategy of airing new episodes daily in most countries. In almost all cases, the episodes would air in other countries 3-6 months before they aired in the United States.

In 2020 with the pandemic, it felt like promotion really started to go down. After hyping up SCOOB! for months, its theatrical release was cancelled due to the pandemic. After the movie was moved to DTV status with a streaming release, it felt like promotion for the franchise saw a sharp decline. WB mostly stopped promoting the DTVs beyond a trailer, and the rollouts for the Guess Who episodes also became a bit sloppy imo, where episodes would be added to the streaming service with little to no promotion. Since Zaslav took over WB in 2022, that has of course gotten even worse, with the DTVs having stopped after 2023, and now the impending threat of Zaslav removing all Scooby-Doo content from streaming by the end of this summer.

The first 13 episodes of Guess Who were promoted very well on the Boomerang streaming service. The rollout involved one episode per week being posted to the Boomerang streaming service, with shadows of guest stars for future episodes being posted so people could guess who they were. After those first 13 episodes, the release strategy again became confusing. The second half of season 1 was added to the Boomerang streaming service without announcement or promotion on July 2, 2020. This was a huge bummer imo, since this was while we were still in isolation, so this would have been the perfect opportunity to promote new episodes while everyone was at home binging content (and I bet they would have seen better audience numbers if they had).

Thankfully, the first half of season 2 was treated a bit better in the sense it was included as a part of Scoobtober 2020, but the announcement of new episodes only came one day before they were posted. After the Alex Trebek and Axl Rose episodes were released individually (with surprisingly decent press and promotion), the rest of season 2 was posted to Max exactly one year after the first half was aired. This was four months after the episodes had already aired on network TV in most other countries. There was also only a brief mention of the sudden streaming service switch between Boomerang and Max, and the series was left unfinished on the Boomerang streaming service for three years until the service was defunct.

While Guess Who's release strategy was certainly an improvement on Be Cool's, I've found the release strategies of the past couple series to be odd. The promotion and quality of the release strategy seems to go mostly out the window after the first half of the first season. It seems like maybe WB had lofty expectations for Be Cool and Guess Who when they were new series, and when they aren't able to meet those expectations, the quality of release strategy and level of promotion decreased. By the time the series finished airing, to me, it felt they were essentially dumping episodes without any promotion. Particularly with Be Cool, there isn't any logical reason why the last 11 episodes were making their television debut in the middle of the night. Guess Who wasn't as bad, but as a fan, the lengthy year-long hiatuses followed by a sudden "we're posting the episodes tomorrow!" without any further promotion was a bit disappointing imo. As a fan, I always felt excited to get new episodes, but it did make me sad that their release strategy wasn't executed in a way that would have alerted anyone who wasn't a big fan that new episodes were out.

​As a Scooby fan, I feel super grateful that we've continued to get so much new content every year. Even if we're in a lull right now, I feel that we're incredibly lucky to have gotten such a continuous stream of content over the past 30 years. I would argue most franchises do not get as much consistent content as we get in the Scooby franchise. In the future though, I'd like to see WB treating the series better throughout the entirety of their run. I think simply having a consistent release schedule with some level of promotion, even if it's just a trailer a few weeks in advance to say it's coming out, would be an improvement. Even something like the episode preview ads (or one trailer if it's a group of episodes) that Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated received would be perfect. Even if it's small, some level of promotion would go a long way, so that fans knew where and when to watch. Just dumping the episodes without promoting anything is only going to hurt any chance the show has at exposure or popularity even more imo.

Moving closer to when Zaslav took over WB, it's similarly made me a bit sad to see the few recent projects where writers have interjected their own dislike of certain aspects of the franchise. In 2019, the two sequels Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island were released. Curse of the 13th Ghost did a relatively good job providing a story that felt like it fit with the original, but unfortunately, it provided an odd ending in which Velma rationalized the 13 ghosts as being an illusion. This was in addition to some other continuity errors, and the odd studio mandate that Scrappy was not allowed to appear (despite being a main character in the series). Return to Zombie Island was similarly unsatisfying imo, in an even worse way. The tone of the film was an extremely campy contrast to the dark tone of the original, and rationalized the events of the island as "swamp gas."

While this could be interpreted as WB not being able to make something to live up to the hype of a show and a movie that were critically acclaimed by fans, WB executive Jim Krieg has openly expressed his dislike of the supernatural in the Scooby franchise, and has shared that feels the franchise should maintain the "classic tone" that he grew up with. Notably, he also named the director in Return to Zombie Island "Alan Smithee," which is an official psuedonym used in the Hollywood industry for people who want to disown a work (you can check out the Wikipedia article here for a history of the term and its usage). This seems to heavily imply that Krieg created "sequel" films that were intentionally untrue to the originals, because they didn't align with the image that he felt the franchise should staunchly stay true to.

I've shared my thoughts on this with friends and in a few comments on the blog, but I don't believe I've ever directly talked about it in a post. Since I know there have been people who have worked on the franchise that read this blog, I just want to note that my dislike of Krieg's philosophy with these films is simply my opinion. It is not an attempt to call him out, or imply that others should not like these movies. This is totally just my opinion, but WB trying to put restrictive mandates on Scooby that it "has to be just like Where Are You" limits the possibilities for the future of the franchise. The franchise arguably would not be what it was today without all the different adaptations and creative adaptions. Trying to force the franchise to be "classic" with limited character development will only make the franchise become stale over time. Personally, even in instances where it doesn't fully work, I will almost always appreciate a creative take on the franchise over something that plays it overly safe to the point of being bland. While I totally respect all the hard work that any writers or crew members who have worked on the franchise have done, I feel that writing the franchise with the mindset of "it's this one thing and can never be anything different" isn't something that's beneficial for the franchise long-term.

Another notable example of something similar is in the 2021 special Where Are You Now. In the special, the gang heavily bashed Scrappy for nearly a minute straight when asked about him, saying things such as that he defamed Scooby in AOL chat rooms. In an interview with Animation Scoop, the special's writer, Jonathan Stern shared his strong dislike of Scrappy. His quote can be seen below:

"I think there’s a lot of comfort level in making Scrappy-Doo the butt of jokes. If you watch the Scrappy-Doo episodes, he’s not nice to Scooby. He’s kind of a [expletive]. I feel if you watch it, you feel protective of Scooby and the other characters. Scrappy doesn’t belong here. Stop bothering them! And little things. Why does he have such a more fluid way of speaking English than Scooby? It really undermined… it suddenly made Scooby the dumb one of the partnership. I didn’t like that."

I know WB has been milking the "haha Scrappy sucks!" jokes for a while now, but to me, the Scrappy bashing in this special felt different. There's a difference between making brief disparaging jokes about Scrappy, and having the special's plot screech to a halt so that the only focus is the writer's personal hatred for the character. The former can be more easily looked past for those who liked or didn't mind him; but having a full scene in the special where the characters go on an in-your-face rant about him takes it to a level that is unnecessary imo. For the record, I love this special otherwise and thought they did a great job, but this scene bothered me. It felt mean-spirited in a way that past attempts to make jokes about him were not. (The live-action movie is more debatable for me with this subject. Since it was worked into the plot and the Scrappy jokes hadn't been utilized frequently at that point, it doesn't bother me as much, but I still don't love it)

While Krieg's mandates and this example are very different, I think both of them illustrate the issue I have with this kind of mentality. It is totally understandable for any writer to have strong opinions on the franchise. However, I feel there is a difference between having those opinions, and using a position of power to create a piece of media to force your strong opinions on fans in an aggressive way. For Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island, I have a very hard time enjoying those films (particularly the latter), as it seems the intention behind creating them was to intentionally retcon the films out of hatred for the originals. It is totally fine to feel nothing will beat classic Scooby-Doo, but in that case, I feel that standalone movies in that style could have been created, rather than intentionally creating two "sequels" to challenge the continuity of the originals. Given how beloved these pieces of media are by a good chunk of the franchise (especially Zombie Island), packaging these sequels as a "50th anniversary present" feels mean-spirited in a way that does not sit right with me.

One of the best things about the franchise imo is that there's been so many amazing different creative directions that it's gone over the years. We all have our preferences, and one of the things I love most about being part of this fandom is that almost everyone is super welcoming and respectful of each other's preferences and opinions. That said, I feel the writers should also do their part to ensure they are respectful of all fans, and not openly including their aggression against certain characters or pieces of media. I don't have too much of an issue with brief jokes (i.e. the Scrappy jokes over the years), but in my opinion, there is a difference between a joke and creating aggressive scenes that are prominent parts of the plot.

Circling back to the current day, it's made me sad to see how David Zaslav's philosophy has affected the franchise, who has been pretty open about his dislike for animation. Publicly, Zaslav has said that he feels animation projects are "not profitable." However, he has also made statements that he feels animation is simply "not a priority" to WB, despite not really addressing the disconnect of other companies having successful animated projects. Similarly to what I mentioned above, there is a difference between personally not liking something, and using a position of power to actively sabotage that franchise.

In the future, I think what I hope most as a fan is that the Scooby franchise will be in the hands of people who value it. While this doesn't mean constantly pumping out content, or even a return to what the franchise had in the 1990s or 2000s, it would be amazing to see WB do a little better at promoting shows and ensuring they have a consistent release schedule. Not only do I think this would bring up ratings; I also think it would be a sure way to have Scooby-Doo remain as popular as it is today for generations to come. I also would like to see the crew members and WB execs show more respect towards Scooby, through not creating media that actively seek to vent personal disparagements against certain media or characters. While it's a tumultuous time right now at WB, I hold out a lot of hope that someday, the franchise will be in the hands of people who see all the potential that it can have.

I'm excited to share that I've published a new fanfic! When writing my fics, I've always felt most comfortable writing stories that slightly expand upon already existing media. I tend to shy away from writing "fanfic"-y fanfics that have far-fetched premises that would never occur in official media. I was recently reading a novel titled The Influencers (which I would highly recommend btw), and for whatever weird reason, the idea of Shaggy and Scooby becoming food-related influencers popped in my head. I wasn't sure I was going to write the idea at first, since it's pretty out there, but I decided to do it. Despite that I'd never usually write this type of story, I had an absolute blast writing this, and loved all the silly directions it ended up going. Despite the outlandish premise, I felt like I was successful in making everyone in the gang still act very much in-character, which is a big reason why this was such a fun challenge.

The premise of this fic involves Shaggy and Scooby becoming viral EarTube vloggers with a cooking channel. Their channel becomes so famous, in fact, that they begin to collaborate with celebrity guests including Don Knotts, Batman and Robin, Meadowlark Lemon, and Liza Koshy. However, when a gossipy new cooking vlogger named Redbeard starts posting videos about Shaggy and Scooby, the cowardly duo must figure out what to do when their Internet success is put in jeopardy. 

Despite the premise probably sounding ridiculous, this story turned out so well imo. My aim was to have a The Scooby-Doo Project/Night of the Living Doo style of tongue-in cheek tone and humor, since I felt like that would fit very well with the gang being in an unusual situation that doesn't fit within the normal tone of the franchise. There were several times throughout this story where I was laughing at my own writing and the ridiculous direction it took, which is a big part of why I had so much fun writing something so out of my comfort zone like this. The bit about Shaggy's Soulja Boy inspired theme song, and trying to make his channel more relevant to Gen Z and "sad girl" audiences particularly made me laugh. This fic also served as a nice way to have that "ghost of the Three Stooges" mystery mentioned in Happy Halloween finally happen lol.

The story is now available on AO3 and ScoobyAddicts for those interested in checking this out! Unlike most of my other fics, which are numerous chapters, this is just a one-chapter story, so it is available in full now!

Professor Phantasmo from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo has the same voice actor as Scooby-Dum. Alan Oppenheimer voiced both characters. Looking through his other credits, Alan also voiced a number of other characters that I was surprised to see the voice of Scooby-Dum doing, including Jim Rivets ("High Rise Hair Raiser"), Officer Oldfield ("The Harum Scarum Sanitarium"), Squire Marley ("To Switch a Witch"), the Moon Monster ("Scooby's Chinese Fortune Kooky Caper"), and the Mummy from Reluctant Werewolf.

Since so many people seemed to enjoy the "Scooby-Doo and the ..." DVD set poll a couple weeks ago, I thought it would be fun to look at some of the other compilation sets! This week, we're looking at some of the earliest 2000s DVD compilations, each which featured four or five episodes. With the exception of Winter Wonderdog, all of these pre-date any Scooby-Doo series sets being released on DVD.

We had a pretty decent mix of votes for last week's poll, but one option had a strong lead. Here are the results of last week's poll:

What upcoming Scooby-Doo project are you most looking forward to?
Go-Go Mystery Machine - 44
Netflix live-action series - 21
Gremlins Getaway - 18

A few weeks ago, I wrote a list of my top 10 favorite guest stars in the franchise. A few people shared their least favorite lists in the comments of that post, so I thought I'd share mine as well! While my favorites list leaned heavily towards The New Scooby-Doo Movies, my least favorite list will lean towards Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? A part of that is my nostalgia over The New Scooby-Doo Movies from childhood, but I also just find it to be a stronger series than Guess Who was. I found a decent number of Guess Who's guest stars to be good, but there were a handful that I felt kinda phoned in their performances and didn't really feel engaged with the role. Despite Guess Who being the most prominent series on this list, I feel there's a pretty healthy mix of other series and DTVs here!

10. WWE
Film: WrestleMania Mystery and Curse of the Speed Demon
I remember enjoying both of the WWE films a fair amount on my first watch, but they haven't held up as well for me in rewatches. Again, I'll give credit where credit is due, though...as I just mentioned, there are a handful of guest stars from Guess Who where I felt their performance was kinda lackluster, but this is not one of those cases. All of the wrestlers did a good job with their performances here. I don't feel anything about their role in these movies is objectively bad, it's more just that wrestling isn't really my vibe.

9. Blue Falcon (Guess Who)
Episode: Scooby-Doo, Dog Wonder!
I was not really a fan of Blue Falcon's new voice actor here. A lot of his lines felt pretty forced to me (particularly "Click it or ticket!" lol). I didn't dislike him as much as the dark, gritty version in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, but his portrayal felt a bit stiff to me and like it didn't fully capture the essence of the original Blue Falcon.

8. Babu
Episode: Mystery in Persia
​Although "Mystery in Persia" is my least favorite episode of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, I do like Jeannie as a guest star. Cory and Henry are pretty good too, even if they aren't particularly memorable. On the other hand, I found Babu to be pretty annoying. His shtick of constantly messing up gets to be a bit much over the course of the episode, and he's the only guest star of The New Scooby-Doo Movies that I don't really care for.

7. Halsey
Episode: The New York Underground!
This one was such a bummer, because I like a number of Halsey's songs and was excited to see her episode. However, her characterization felt really bland here. The poetry competition setting was also neat, and could have fit with Halsey's vibe super well. Unfortunately, nothing interesting is done with it, and the setting feels surface-level despite the opportunity to have tied it to Halsey's real-life passion for poetry.

6. Jim Gaffigan
Episode: The Fastest Food Fiend!
Guess Who had a number of modern guest stars that I was really excited to see. Despite this, a few of the ones I was most looking forward to ended up being kinda disappointing. Jim Gaffigan was one of the first guest stars announced for the series that I was excited to see. I'd seen several of his comedy specials, and enjoyed them quite a bit! With the occasional exception, I felt Jim's comedy specials were decently family friendly (at least, more so than other comedians). That combined with his frequent jokes about food made him feel like a perfect fit to be included in a Scooby episode! Unfortunately, this episode wasn't anywhere near as good as I hoped it would be. Compared to his comedy specials, Jim feels really watered-down, and not nearly as funny as usual. His characterization feels really one-note and bland, and is basically just shown as "a guy who likes food." Combined with the episode also feeling rushed, this episode ended up being pretty disappointing and is one of my least favorites of the series.

5. Saweetie
Episode: ​This Halloween Needs to Be More Special!
If I were ranking this based on episode quality, this would be very close to the bottom. As a guest star, I don't really have too much issue with Saweetie. She did fine, but the reason she makes my list is that her role in the episode feels rather pointless. The one tiny role this episode gives her is to provide the nonsensical social commentary that the only way to stop zombies is by being sexy, and that people often find different things sexy in life. As is on par with this show, it's a total troll move on the writers' part, and then she starts twerking and rapping in the cemetery for the rest of the episode's climax. This is a case where the problem is 100% the show's clown-tier writing, rather than any issue with Saweetie's engagement in the episode.

4. Kacey Musgraves
Episode: The Phantom, The Talking Dog, and the Hot Hot Hot Sauce!
We now move to the third and final guest star on this list that I was really excited for, but ended up not living up to the hype at all. Kacey was one of the guest stars I was the most excited for. I love her music, particularly Golden Hour and her recent album Deeper Well. However, she feels surprisingly disengaged here. This episode is the first one that comes to mind for me when it comes to phoned-in guest star performances from this series. She feels like she is just going through the motions, which causes a number of her lines to feel awkward and forced. I really wanted to like her episode, but with how disengaged and spacey Kacey (those who follow her on Instagram will get this joke lol) is here, this episode ends up being a huge let-down.

3. KISS
Film: Rock and Roll Mystery
I really struggled with where to put this one. I thought their role in "A Scooby-Doo Halloween" was really fun, so I want to specify that this is just for the whole band's appearance in Rock and Roll Mystery. There are aspects of this DTV that I like, although the alternate dimension part of the plot is a bit too out there for me. The main reason KISS is getting placed on here though is the...umm...strange relationship between Starchild and Daphne in this film. I wasn't really sure where to put this in the list, but I decided to rank it here since the guest stars above it are bland, whereas this creeps me out a bit. Aside from that, I felt KISS were very into their roles here and overall did a good job, even if there were a number of aspects of this film that I didn't enjoy.

2. Ricky Gervais
Episode: Olly Olly In-come Free!
My gripe with most of the Guess Who guest stars that I dislike are that they feel bland, but Ricky is one of two that actively annoy me. Ricky felt obnoxious in this episode, and overshadowed the gang with his constant unfunny jokes. His presence in the episode feels overbearing. This is one of my least favorite episodes in the franchise.

1. The Funky Phantom Gang
Episode: A Mystery Solving Gang Divided
Speaking of least favorites, my least favorite episode of Guess Who takes the top spot for a similar reason. The Funky Phantom Gang felt like arrogant jerks, and the fighting between the two gangs gets to the point of being obnoxious. There's a neat premise in this episode that could have been good, but the mystery feels like it has to cut corners, because there's no time left to develop anything after 90% of the episode is spent arguing. (An example of this being Augie instantly believing in Abe Lincoln's ghost at the end, despite no proof being established.) Overall, "A Mystery Solving Gang Divided" is a frustrating episode imo, and that is all because the guest stars are characterized poorly here.

Hope you enjoyed reading my list! If you didn't already share your least favorite guest star list in the last post, I'd love to see them in the comments!

Following the release of the cover art about a week ago, Lily Meade has announced an additional exciting detail about her upcoming novel The Hex Girls: A Rogue Thorn! Lily shared on Instagram that anybody who pre-orders the book and saves their receipt will get an exclusive surprise with their purchase. In addition to this, anyone who pre-orders the book through Lily's local independent bookstore, Grit City Books, will get an extra surprise on top of the other pre-order gift. If you plan to pre-order the book, be sure to save your receipt to ensure you're getting the extra gift!

Thanks to Scoobyfan4ever for letting me know about Lily's Instagram post!

A 1978 article in SuperMag Magazine shows that Hong Kong Phooey and Spot were referees in the original concept for Laff-a-Lympics​. Thanks to Scooby4fanever for sending me this picture. 

Photo credit: Kerrytoonz on Flickr

It had been previously rumored that Max would remove some more Scooby content, as outlined in the Reddit post that's been correct about every Scooby show to be removed. This morning, thanks to Amazon, we just got the official confirmation that Max is indeed moving ahead with removing three additional Scooby shows from their service at the end of this month. The Amazon series pages for Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (season 2), and The New Scooby-Doo Movies show that those series will all be removed from Max on June 1. This also means that "Wednesday Is Missing" will no longer be available to legally watch anymore. Last September, it had been added to Max after previously being the only episode to be excluded from streaming and DVD releases due to rights issues.

Following this removal, the only Scooby-Doo series left on Max will be Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, The Scooby-Doo Show, What's New Scooby-Doo?, and Velma. However, it is rumored in the linked Reddit post above that Max has plans to remove What's New on August 1, and plans to purge Where Are You and The Scooby-Doo Show from the service on September 1. Since Velma is a Max original, it does not seem like they plan to remove that series. The plans for Scoob! and Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo!, the two Scooby-Doo movies remaining on the service, are also unclear.

There is thankfully a bit of a silver lining with these removals. Unless something changes, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated still will have a streaming home on Netflix. In terms of The New Scooby-Doo Movies and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, just like most of the other series that have been removed so far, the seasons are all still available to purchase digitally on Amazon, Apple TV and Fandango. However, oddly, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo season 3 has been removed from all services, and it is completely unavailable to watch digitally on any platform for an unknown reason.

Thanks so much to Shadowscooby for coming up with this poll idea! Next week, we'll start doing the DVD set polls again like we did a few weeks ago, but I thought this poll fit well with last week's theme. This week, we're going from looking at the current crossover era to asking the question of what you're most looking forward to next in the franchise!

In last week's poll, most options were pretty close in votes, but one option blew all the others away! Here are the results for last week:

What is your favorite Scooby crossover film?
Straight Outta Nowhere - 30
Mask of the Blue Falcon - 12
Brave and the Bold - 9
Rock and Roll Mystery - 6
Happy Halloween - 6
Curse of the Speed Demon - 5
WrestleMania Mystery - 4
Gourmet Ghost - 3
Krypto Too - 3
Arabian Nights - 2

Personally, I've never been a huge collector, and thus don't tend to spotlight too much Scooby merch on here beyond any upcoming stuff being released. However, I recently was made aware of some vintage Scooby merch from the early 2000s that I thought was really cool, and wanted to share it on here. Mr Neither, a regular commenter on this site since close to the time it began, has been slowly collecting some Scooby-Doo glasses produced by Nutella. Because of his nostalgia from using these glasses in childhood, he's wanted to collect all of them for quite a while now, but has finally completed his collection. Many of these glasses are relatively rare and have taken him quite a while to find. These glasses are relatively small, and also have a lid for them to be used as jars. In this article, I'll be going through all of the different collectible glasses, featuring pictures courtesy of Mr Neither. Also, apologies that the images are a bit bigger. As you may have noticed over the years, the site's interface doesn't seem to be particularly good at shrinking some images (and there's not really anything I can do about it, unfortunately), so I wanted to make sure the images were large enough where there wasn't a blurring effect.

The first glass features the Mystery Machine. It features a generic view of the Mystery Machine from both sides, and has the van's trademark flowers and a shot of the gang running, similar to the style of the What's New, Scooby-Doo? intro.

The second glass features Dracula and the werewolf from "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts." The front of the glass features Shaggy and Scooby trying to sneak away.

These glasses feature a black-and-white picture of the full gang on the front, along with the silhouettes of them running away on the back.

Moving on to the gang's individual glasses, we'll start with Scooby. On Scooby's glass, he's looking for clues (or food), eating Scooby Snacks (oddly with a spoon for some reason), and running from a ghost (or towards food lol). During his search, Mr Neither found that the Scooby, Fred and Shaggy's glasses are rare, and somewhat difficult to find.

Our loveable, sassy leader Fred is next up, and he's seen in a spooky forest with his iconic clue-searching and "let's split up, gang!" poses.

We move next to Shaggy, who's at first shown relaxed, but quickly becomes agitated when he realizes he's surrounded by ghosts!

While the previous three glasses were pretty rare, these are super rare and took Mr Neither the longest to find. Velma's glass features her look for her glasses, as well as sporting a few iconic poses.

Daphne's glass oddly features her wearing a red scarf, instead of her trademark green one. She is surrounded by some Mystery Machine style flowers.

Those are all of the eight glasses! Thanks so much to Mr Neither for sharing a bit about his journey of collecting these glasses, and for sharing pics!