Listings for eight brand new Scooby-Doo books have popped up on Amazon with a January 1, 2025 release date. Four of these books are a continuation of the Scooby-Doo & Krypto Mysteries series which released four books this past January. The series is written by Michael Anthony Steele, illustrated by Mike Kunkel, and published by Picture Window Books. The new books include:

The other four books are a continuation of a nonfiction science-related book series, previously called Scooby-Doo! Space Adventures. The series written by Ailynn Collins, now titled Scooby-Doo! Science Adventures, will also be releasing four new books on January 1, 2025.

Jinkies! The Mystery of States of Matter

Amazon listing:
https://www.amazon.com/Jinkies-Mystery-States-Matter-Scooby-Doo/dp/1669084663/

Ruh-Roh! The Mystery of Chemical Reactions
https://www.amazon.com/Ruh-roh-Mystery-Chemical-Reactions-Scooby-Doo/dp/1669084744/​

Thanks to Scoobyverse for letting me know about these listings!

As you likely know, an exciting milestone is coming up in the Scooby franchise! Friday, September 13 marks the 55th anniversary of the very first episode of Scooby-Doo airing on CBS. In addition, we also have another exciting anniversary coming up! Tuesday, September 3 is the 10 year anniversary of the day this site and blog were first published. Given the two anniversaries, I wanted to do some special things to celebrate over the next few weeks!

I've really been enjoying doing rankings and rewatching some of the episodes for the weekly polls lately. Some of you may remember back in 2020 during the pandemic, instead of weekly polls, I posted a poll every day for Scooby's anniversary month. I enjoyed doing this a lot, but it was very time-consuming to set up a poll every day for an entire month (hence why I didn't continue it after 2020). I also remember getting the feedback at the time that while people enjoyed them, having a poll each day with so many options was a bit overwhelming.

To celebrate the upcoming anniversary of the blog and franchise, I'm planning to do daily polls again leading up to the 55th anniversary! So that it's more enjoyable for everyone, I rethought the idea and am planning to do it a bit differently than I did in 2020. Instead of doing it for the entire month, the daily polls will just be happening leading up to the 55th anniversary, from September 1 - 13. The polls will be open for 24 hours, ending at 10 a.m. CST each day (I'll try my best to keep consistent to this time and post each day's poll then!). Instead of being a normal amount of options, each poll will be a maximum of three options (and many will be just two), making it easier to quickly vote each day, rather than having to decide between a ton of options.

Also, while I enjoy when people give suggestions for the weekly polls, I did already set up all 13 polls in advance, so I won't be able to take any suggestions for these. It does take a bit to set up the poll, so I wanted to have them all ready to go in advance. I had a lot of fun with the daily polls back in 2020, and I'm thinking this new format should make it a lot easier and more enjoyable for everyone.

In addition to the polls, I also have a few special posts planned for the anniversary month! On the site's 10 year anniversary on September 3, I'll be doing a retrospective post looking back at some of my favorite memories and posts from the blog, as well as reflecting on how the site has evolved since I first published it in 2014. In addition to that, I'll be doing a special fun fact this coming Monday, to celebrate both 10 years of fun facts (the anniversary is on September 29) and 5 years of weekly polls (the anniversary for that is September 1). On the 55th anniversary, I also will post an article that I'm excited to share with you all.

Lastly, I'm excited to announce that the fan spotlights will be returning this year! Because there's so much content I'm posting this month and I don't want to overload people (or myself), I decided to rethink how to handle the fan spotlights. Instead of doing daily fan spotlights like I have in past years, I'm planning to spotlight a different fan every Friday throughout the month of September. 

I'm really excited to celebrate both the franchise's 55th anniversary and the blog's 10th anniversary, and I hope you all are as well!

The first Scooby Snacks box shown in the franchise is in "Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too!" Contrary to the colorful design that the box eventually had, the first Scooby Snacks box is depicted as a pale blue color simply reading "Scooby Snacks" in normal print.

The Crocs shoe company has just announced a collaboration with the Scooby-Doo brand! Two different Scooby themed Crocs were just released, according to Yahoo. One is a brown shoe with Scooby's trademark spots, along with a 3-D embellishment of Scooby's collar. These shoes are available for $69.99 on the Crocs website. The other variety is a blue and green colored shoe, featuring the trademark Mystery Machine flowers. The Mystery Machine Crocs are now available for $99.99 on their website.

We had a landslide win for "Creepy Cruise" in last week's time travel poll! Here are the full results:

What is your favorite episode involving time travel?
Creepy Cruise - 23
Sword and the Scoob - 9
Come Undone - 8
The Man in the Mirror - 7
It's a Wonderful Scoob - 4
A Run Cycle Through Time! - 4
​Pole to Pole - 2
Scroogey Doo - 2
Scooby-Doo 2000 - 1
One Million Years Before Lunch - 0

Following the announcement of Boomerang's streaming service shutting down on September 30, it has been announced which Scooby-Doo titles from Boomerang will be added to Max in September. It's unclear if this is the only Scooby content being carried over from Boomerang, or if there will be additional Scooby content that is added in October once Boomerang's streaming service officially shuts down.

Max will be adding a number of Scooby series that were previously unavailable on the service. The New Scooby-Doo Movies, The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo will all be added on September 14. In terms of series, this just leaves The Scooby-Doo Show and Get a Clue that will be unavailable on Max.

Four movies will also be added. Zombie Island, Witch's Ghost, Cyber Chase and Aloha will also be added on September 14. It's worth noting that this means a significant amount of Scooby films will not carry over from Boomerang, unless additional Boomerang content is being added to Max in October. The films that won't carry over include Scooby Goes Hollywood, the Superstars 10 films, Alien Invaders, Legend of the Vampire, Monster of Mexico, Loch Ness Monster, Where's My Mummy, Chill Out, and Big Top.

This information was found on Max's press release (thanks to JustMeJordanW for sharing the link).

I'm probably one of the few fans who enjoys Daphne & Velma. Upon rewatching it, my opinion on it has gone down a bit over time, as I felt the dialogue was a bit awkward at times, but I still think it's a cute film that feels like Scooby if it were Disney Channel Original Movie.

I'm excited to share I've just released a fanfic that takes inspiration from the Daphne & Velma canon. While I know this may be a turnoff for some, I really enjoyed how the Daphne & Velma books took inspiration from other parts of the Scooby franchise through including Easter Eggs and centering the story in Crystal Cove. Around the same time I rewatched Daphne & Velma, I'd also rewatched Camp Scare, and I was interested in writing an amalgamation of those two stories that would continue the story of the film, through providing an origin story for the girls meeting Fred, Shaggy and Scooby. I also took inspiration from another camp-themed episode, "Camp Comeoniwannascareya," to a lesser extent. While a combination of Daphne & Velma and Camp Scare may sound a bit odd, I'm quite proud of how it ended up coming out. I felt I was able to combine those two stories in a way that stayed faithful to the Daphne & Velma universe, while also pushing the story more in the direction of traditional Scooby featuring a person in costume.

The story centers around Daphne and Velma getting camp counselor jobs at Camp Little Moose, where they meet fellow camp counselor Fred. They quickly realize the campers may be in jeopardy when a phantom appears and tries to ruin the activities.

The story features Daphne, who as we see in Daphne & Velma, is quite sheltered by her father, but is trying to be more self-sufficient and confident with her impending transition to college. Daphne's best friend, Velma, tries to help Daphne as she takes her first full-time job at Camp Little Moose, but Velma also deals with her own struggles of emotionally supporting the campers. Fred, who was a camper at Little Moose when he was young, befriends Velma and Daphne, but struggles with how to be a good leader when a conflict suddenly emerges amongst two of the campers. All three of them meet Norville, who works at his parents' gift shop in a town near the camp, after having decided to take a gap year to figure himself out. Together, all four of them, with Norville's dog Scooby, must solve the mystery of the ghost, and prevent it from ruining the camp festivities.

I just published the first chapter on AO3, which you can read here. There are ten chapters in total, and a new chapter will be published every Friday. There will be a mid-story intermission in October, while I take a break to publish a (non-Scooby) Halloween story  throughout the month of October. I hope you enjoy the story if you choose to check it out!

After baseball player Gunnar Henderson recently used a Scooby-Doo bat at the Home Run Derby last month, we have another Scooby-Doo baseball related news tidbit! At this Sunday's game, Detroit's starting pitcher Tarik Skubal wore a special piece of Scooby-Doo clothing during the game. Throughout the year, his team has affectionately has referred to him by the nickname "Skub." This Sunday was the Little League World Series, and to celebrate, Tarik Skubal embraced his "Skub" nickname by wearing Scooby-Doo cleats.

"Everyone calls me 'Skub,' so probably just a Scooby Doo theme," Skubal said in an interview with the Detroit Free Press.

According to the Detroit Free Press, Skubal planned this in advance, and requested Men's Force Zoom Trout 8 Pro Baseball Cleats with Scooby and Shaggy on them. The shoes were custom designed and in addition to Shaggy and Scooby, featured a brown Nike logo with black Scooby-Doo spots. The heels also are teal and neon green, with the Mystery Machine's trademark orange flowers. The cleats took seven hours to paint, and were painted by Elliott Gilardi and designed by Ari Solomon. The image of Shaggy and Scooby was hand-painted, and the shoes were airbrushed.

In the same interview with the Detroit Free Press, Solomon and Giliardi, as well as Alex Katz (founder of Stadium Custom Kicks)shared a bit about the process of designing the custom Scooby-Doo shoes:

"I'm a very visual designer," Solomon said. "I don't like to map things out. I just go straight into it without any initial thought process. This cleat, I know Scooby Doo colors are green and blue because of the Mystery Machine. I like to look for the coolest colors and throw them on the board, and then I start trying things."

"You want to make the cleats look like the Scooby Doo colors," Gilardi said, "so that was probably the most difficult part, just figuring out how to get the right colors. That took a little bit, but in the end, I think it turned out pretty well."

"The Scooby Doo cleats turned out fantastic," said Katz. "The cleat model Tarik is wearing is particularly complex, as it incorporates different types of plastics, which are difficult to paint on. We were able to integrate a vibrant and engaging Scooby Doo design that truly pops."

Thanks so much to Greybishop for sharing this story! Here's an image of the final product that Skubal wore at the game yesterday:

This week's fun fact was discussed a bit last year in the comments section, so I'm aware that some people are already familiar with it. However, I thought it was worth still doing a fun fact about it, since my impression is that many fans still aren't aware of this.

Alan Smithee from Return to Zombie Island is a reference to an in-joke amongst screenwriters who want to disown their work. The term was coined in 1968, and was first officially credited in the 1969 movie Death of a Gunfighter. During the filming, the lead actor Richard Widmark did not feel director Robert Totten was fit for the job, and he was shortly replaced by Don Siegel. Both Totten and Siegel were dissatisfied with the film in the end, and felt that the film's plot had gotten muddled to the point where it didn't represent either of their creative visions. As a solution to this, they suggested crediting the film's director as a fake name, "Al Smith." However, the name was already in use, so they chose a less common name, Alan Smithee.

The name became an in-joke amongst writers, and was used for several dozen films in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as a few in later decades. You can check out the full list of films credited to Alan Smithee on the Wikipedia article.

In the case of Return to Zombie Island, producer Jim Krieg is not a fan of supernatural villains within Scooby-Doo, because he feels the franchise should stick to the person-in-a-mask formula. Since Alan Smithee directed Zombie Teenagers and the Island of Doom in the film, this is a likely implication that this is a reference to Krieg's desire to disavow the original Zombie Island film, due to it not fitting his idea of what he believes the Scooby-Doo formula should be.

I did not include Cyber Chase, since it's just a video game rather than real time travel.

Here are the results for last week's poll: 
What is your favorite episode taking place in Florida?
Beach Beastie - 21
Night of the Upsetting Shorts - 14
​The Ghostly Creep from the Deep - 13
Shiver and Shake, That Demon's a Snake! - 6
​Revenge of the Swamp Monster! - 4
​Florida and China - 3