This very well may be the most surprising fun fact I've ever posted on here haha.

​I was shocked to find this out after my theme song ranking from last week, but apparently, the guy who sang the Shaggy & Scooby Doo Get a Clue! theme song, Mark Mothersbaugh, is also responsible for singing another hit that is likely well-known to most people. Mark is most famous for the lead singer of the band Devo, whose song "Whip It" was a huge hit in the 1980s. So yes, the guy who sung "Whip It" is the same person who sings the Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! theme song.

Thanks Shadowscooby for coming up with this week's poll question! Here are the results for last week's poll:

What is your favorite episode set in a hotel? 
Doo Not Disturb - 18
Vampire Bats and Scaredy Cats - 14
The Secret of Shark Island - 11
The Ghost of Bigfoot - 8
There's No Creature Like Snow Creature - 7
Creeping Creatures - 5
Scoo-Be or Not Scoo-Be? - 4
Snow Place Like Home - 2
Rocky Mountain Yiiiii! - 1
Doom Service - 1
Ghostly Creep from the Deep - 0 
Naughty or Ice - 0

October is nearly upon us, and that means the return of several traditions, including pumpkin carving, trick or treating, and yes, of course, the annual Scoobtober celebration! Some of this news has already been announced, but since we have the full schedule now thanks to Romper, I thought it would be helpful to lay it out all in one place since the announcements have been so scattered. 

First, the month kicks off on October 3 with frequent showings of Scooby-Doo movies throughout the month on Cartoon Network. Of course, Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! will also be released digitally on October 4. On October 7, Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo & Courage the Cowardly Dog will air for the first time on Cartoon Network. Also on October 7, Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! will make its New York Comic Con premiere on 4:45pm at the Jacob K. Javits Center. Costumes will be encouraged at this event. 

On October 14 at 7:00pm, Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! will premiere on Cartoon Network. it will be released on HBO Max the next day (October 15). On October 18, Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! will be released on DVD. On October 28-30, Multiversus has announced that a special Twitch event will take place where players can watch and earn rewards.

Two new sneak preview clips from Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! are now available to watch in the videos above. The first clip, which is a Cartoon Network promo, reveals that in addition to the HBO Max, DVD and digital releases, the film will also premiere on Cartoon Network on October 14 at 7:00pm according to Romper. It will also be posted on HBO Max on October 15.

Both clips seem to hint that the movie has a very zany tone, between the guy at the end of the second clip (courtesy of Scoobyverse) exclaiming "hi Mystery Inc!!!" in a goofy voice, as well as Shaggy and Scooby dressing up as each other for Halloween in the second clip.

A full version of the song's audio previewed in the second clip can be heard by watching the video below.

Scooby-Doo has had a wide variety of theme songs over the years. In the following post, I'm going to share my personal rankings of the theme songs from least favorite to favorite, as well as an explanation of why I ranked it there. I will forewarn you that I have an extremely unpopular opinion, so you can look forward to that haha.

16. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?
I don't think I've talked about it much on here, but I really do not like the Guess Who theme song. It feels like a cheesy cover of the original Where Are You theme to me. The guy's voice sounds like he's kinda trying to sound like the original theme song, but it doesn't sound good at all. To be honest, I didn't even listen to theme song for more than a few Guess Who episodes, it's just so terrible to me I couldn't justify wasting time listening to it. The theme sequence itself isn't really that good either. It seems very generic to me. I realize my opinion on this is probably stronger than most people's will be, but yeah, the guy's voice just sounds obnoxious and this song comes off like a bad parody of the original.

15. The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour
Honestly, this theme song takes generic to a new level. I'm sure it took them a grueling two minutes in the writers room to write this song, given the only lyrics are "Scooby! Scoobity-Doo! Scooby! Scoobity-Doo!" lol. The theme sequence itself is fine, but it only makes it fall further into the category of being generic. There isn't really much going on here besides Shaggy and Scooby running into a mad doctor, Scrappy, Yabba and Dusty running around, and then some random shenanigans with some puppies from The Puppy's New Adventures. Although I do have a lot of criticisms of these theme songs from the 80s, I do want to assure you this whole post isn't just me complaining. I like all of the theme songs beyond some of these generic 80s ones.

14. The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show
Our next theme song has the exact same lyrics of "Scooby! Scoobity-Doo!" lol so essentially I'll just be discussing the theme sequence. I like the monster building in the intro, but otherwise, it's mainly just recycled monsters from Where Are You chasing Shaggy and Scooby. I guess at that time, it was probably kind of cool to have them reference those old villains, because they hadn't been seen in a while, but I didn't find this particularly notable at all.

13. The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show
We have a slight step up from "Scooby! Scoobity Doo!", since the lyrics to this are "Scooby! Scrappy Dappy Doo! Scooby! Scrappy Dappy Doo!" lol. The theme song doesn't really leave much to analyze, but what I do like about this theme sequence is that it sort of gives background (kind of?) as to how Scrappy came to stay with Scooby. I will say though, it's really sad somebody just shoved him with a box with eyeholes and threw him on a train. Poor Scrappy lol.

11. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!
Now we're getting to a theme song I actually like haha. If you've made it this far, thank you for listening to my criticisms. It's just an instrumental, but I think this is a case where it works well. It sort of showcases all the characters through their brief appearances: Velma's using a magnifying glass, Shaggy and Scooby are running from the monster, Fred's acting as the leader driving the Mystery Machine, and you even see Daphne showing off her quirkier personality trying to trick that spider. It's not my favorite theme song since there are other far more nostalgic ones, but it's short, it's effective and it's to the point.

10. Laff-a-Lympics
So there are two different versions of this theme song...one for Laff-a-Lympics and another for the package show Scooby's All Star Laff-a-Lympics, but I'm going to rank the original. I really liked how the theme song gives you a brief explanation for how the games work. It's done in a very simple way where it's just the announcer telling you, but I think it works well. I think it may have come off cringey if it was some person singing the rules to the ​Laff-a-Lympics, so this worked well for what it was. If I were ranking the Scooby's All Star Laff-a-Lympics theme, it would have been much lower, probably between The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show and The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show. The other intro felt more cobbled together and didn't really explain the competition as well, because too much time was spent introducing Scooby and Captain Caveman (I believe they were spotlighted because their shows aired alongside Laff-a-Lympics). The ending also comes off as very lazy, given it's a crowd saying "Ready set let's go" and Scooby just responds "Yeah!" lol. It makes me laugh to think what could have been going on in the writers room that day.

Writer #1: Oh no! It's five minutes to 5 and I need to get home to my family, but we need to finish this theme song! How should we have Scooby conclude this?
Writer #2: Eh, just have him say "yeah" and call it a day.

9. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated
This is a much simpler theme song given it's just another instrumental like Be Cool, Scooby-Doo, but it's definitely effective in showcasing each member of the gang and their personality. Honestly that one sentence is all I have to say about it, which is why this was placed squarely in the middle.

8. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo
This is where it gets a bit hard to rank the rest of them, because they're all good in their own way. I would rank A Pup Named Scooby-Doo next. It's a cute little catchy theme song that's perfect for the kiddy series, and I like the different scenes shown in the intro. The guy who's singing has a very unique voice.

7. The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
I hate ranking this one so low, because as I said, all of the remaining theme songs are so good. I like Vincent Price's monologue at the beginning, though I feel after the beginning the song runs out of steam where it's just instrumental again. I do really like the scenes shown in the intro, though. Zomba running after Shaggy and Scooby looks super creepy! I wish that ghost with multiple eyes and mouths would have been one of the 13 ghosts; it's genuinely one of the creepiest villains of anything in the show. It would have been nice if that ghoul could have gotten a full episode rather than just a brief cameo in the intro. Like with the first Scrappy series, I like how this intro tells a story of how the Demon Chest was opened and gives an overview of the series. That's what I feel was missing from some of the generic 80s themes where it's a bunch of random stuff; it doesn't feel all that representative of the show or the characters.

6. Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue
And here's where you all are probably saying "how did this get so high?!?" I know 95% of people find the theme song intolerable because of the guy's obnoxious voice, but I never really minded this one. In fact, I'd even say I enjoy it. It has an in-your-face feel to it, but it works kind of well with the ridiculousness of the show. It's also pretty catchy and the theme sequence is visually interesting to look at with all the different versions of the characters popping up on screen. I don't know, I guess this song has just always been sort of a guilty pleasure of mine haha.

5. The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries
I've always had a soft spot for this one and consider it to be the best theme song of that 80s era by far. I love how groovy and funky it sounds. It really encapsulates that 80s era, and the song itself flows really smoothly with the scenes in the intro. I really like the incorporation of the monsters doing the Thriller, but since "Thriller" had just come out, I do wonder if it felt cringey to fans at the time. I mean, it'd essentially be the equivalent of having Scooby do the Whip/Nae Nae dance in a theme song lol. Which would actually work if the lyrics were changed to "watch me Scoob, now watch me Shaggy" haha. That being said, I definitely do not want anything like that to ever happen, because a theme song like that would surely beat Guess Who for the worst theme sequence of all time lol.

4. The New Scooby-Doo Movies
Remember when I said it was getting hard to choose at this point a few rankings ago? Here's where it gets really hard to choose. I ultimately went with The New Scooby-Doo Movies because I like the other three better, but at this point, all of the theme songs remaining are iconic. The song itself is super catchy, and the theme sequence flows really well. I've always found it interesting how in the edited version for the DVDs, they not only edit out The Addams Family, they edit out all the guest stars, even ones that they had the rights for. Another thing that fascinates me is that instead of replacing The Addams Family part with the Haunted Horseman, in the end credits for both of the Batman episodes, they replace it with the gunslinger instead. I've always found that very strange and I wonder why those two episodes specifically were different.

3. The Scooby-Doo Show
This is such a catchy song and is honestly pretty much everything I could want in a theme song. At this point, it just comes down to personal preference for the other two. I love that they included Scooby-Dum in the intro. That huge ghost wizard was super-creepy looking and I wish they had included him in the series! Speaking of which, I also find it interesting they included an early design of Mamba Wamba at the end of the intro. Strange they wouldn't have just changed it when they updated the design.

2. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
This is the classic theme song and it was so hard not to put it first, but me not placing it there certainly doesn't mean I don't love it. This is such a catchy, memorable theme song, and the scenes they picked out for the theme sequence were excellent. Although each of the seasons have a different artist singing the theme song, I like both for different reasons. Larry Marks's version is just the classic in my mind, and I like how unique George A. Robertson's voice sounds as well.

1. What's New, Scooby-Doo?
Simple Plan absolutely killed it here. Their vocals sound incredible here, and it was such a cool idea to make a rock version of the theme song. The theme sequence itself flows from scene to scene so nicely, and it didn't even need to use any scene that happened in the show. That huge purple monster is genuinely something out of a nightmare, and I think it would have been cool if the robot were the villain in an episode too. I would say that about the other dinosaur creature, but it feels like we kind of got a version of that in "3-D Struction." I like that an instrumental version of theme song is used for the credits, it works really well IMO.

Those are my rankings for the Scooby-Doo theme songs, but I'd love to see yours as well if you want to share them in the comments! I hope you enjoyed reading this post!

There have been six instances of Scooby-Doo referencing popular songs within a two-year span of their release.

At the end of "The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" from The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Shaggy and Scooby sing the lyrics "when you're hot, you're hot; when you're not, you're not." These lyrics are from Jerry Reed's song "When You're Hot, You're Hot," which was released in 1971 on the album of the same name.

Popular music was referenced twice in the 1980s. ​The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries had the monsters doing the dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller," which had just been released in 1982 on the album of the same name. In the premiere episode of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, a vampire artist named Ghoulio sings his song "To All the Ghouls I've Loved Before." This song is a parody of the song "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" with the first verse being exactly the same (besides the fact that "ghouls" is substituted for "girls"). Although the song was recorded in 1975 by Willie Nelson, it didn't gain popularity until 1984 when a duet version featuring Julio Iglesias was released.

"I'd Do Anything" by Simple Plan was featured in "It's Mean, It's Green, It's the Mystery Machine" is featured in What's New, Scooby-Doo?. The song was released two days after the first episode of What's New, Scooby-Doo? premiered, and was included in the episode less than a month after its initial release. The song would go on to great success, charting at #51 on the Billboard Top 100 in the US, and #15 on U.S. pop radio. Later, their songs "The Worst Day Ever" and "You Don't Mean Anything" from their first studio album would also be featured in the episode "Simple Plan and the Invisible Madman."

The final instance of this is a bit of an odd one, but a song included in Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico was utilized as a chase song, and was not made for the movie. That song is "¿A Donde Vas?" by Carolina Lao. The song was released the same year as the movie came out. Both this and Simple Plan have the likely explanation of being included in Scooby-Doo as a way to help promote their first albums, as that was a strategy frequently used by Warner Brothers Records back in the day (as Lindsay Pagano has mentioned in the fun fact she wrote for this blog).

Note that to keep the number of options in this poll manageable, I only included episodes where the hotel was in a large part of the episode. I did not include every episode that the gang stayed in a hotel. I also included ski lodges, since a lodge is a hotel.

The results for last week's poll are a bit surprising. I had assumed Ghoul School would win (as did some others in the comments), but it ended up coming in second!
What is your favorite Scooby-Doo episode/film set in a school?
Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase - 16
Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School - 12
The Legend of Alice May - 7
Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra Doo - 3
Mystery 101 - 3
The Spirit Spooked Sports Show - 2
The Creature Came from Chem Lab - 2
Mystery Solvers Club State Finals - 2
Pawn of Shadows - 2
Scooby-Doo and the Sky Town Cool School! - 2
Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too! - 1
The Crazy Carnival Caper - 1
Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins - 1
The Shrieking Madness - 1
Escape from Mystery Manor - 1
Daphne & Velma - 1
The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! - 1
The Sword, the Fox and the Scooby-Doo! - 1
The Computer Walks Among Us - 0
Where Walks Aphrodite - 0
The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament - 0

It's hard to believe that Scooby-Doo has been around for 53 years today! To celebrate, I'd like to look back on a post I did three years ago on this day, ranking each of the series in order. Back then, only a few episodes of Guess Who have aired, and my opinions have changed a bit, so I thought it would be fun to revisit this list and update it a bit.

16. The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Show
​This is still my least favorite series of the franchise. I much prefer the mystery element of Scooby, so given these episodes are all just comedy romps, this series has never really appealed to me. The 7-minute runtime doesn't allow time for any meaningful plot to develop, and the writing often felt rushed.

15. The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour
​This ranking hasn't changed either. Not really much to add here, since it's pretty much the same issue I had with the last one, but this is slightly above The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Show since there's sometimes a recurring plot of them being on cases for Shaggy's Uncle Fearless, which saves the adventures from being completely pointless. The Yabba-Doo shorts are fine, but they run into the same issue of not enough time and mostly just a comedy romp.

14. Scooby's All Star Laff-a-Lympics
I think it was a really cool idea to have the Hanna-Barbera characters compete against one another in a "Battle of the Network Stars" type competition. All of the different event ideas were cool, and it was fun seeing what the characters would do in different scenarios. However, the plot does get kind of "comedy romp"ish, which as I said, isn't quite what I'm looking for in Scooby even if it is entertaining. The repetitive plot does get a bit tiring after a while, in the sense that it's always just the Rottens cheating and the other two teams having to find a way around whatever obstacle the Rottens have put in their way. It's something that I enjoy watching from time to time, but it isn't something I'd rewatch regularly.

13. Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue!
​Unpopular opinion: Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! gets way too much hate. While it's not a traditional Scooby series by any stretch of the imagination, it's a lot of fun for what it is. The theme song never particularly annoyed me like it does for other people, and while Shaggy's voice is a bit jarring at first, you quickly get used to it. The humor is pretty fun at times, the characters are really interesting and well-developed, and the situations they find themselves in are ridiculous, but it's fun. This is one of those series that you kind of have to go into with the expectation it's not going to be like other Scooby series, but I really appreciate this series for what it is. 

12. The Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show
Now we're getting to the series I really enjoy. There are some really solid episodes here, and it sort of feels like a fourth season of The Scooby-Doo Show in some ways. The one issue I have with this series is the portrayal of Scrappy. While I don't hate him, he's very in-your-face here in a way that he isn't in some of the later shows we haven't gotten to yet, and I'm not the biggest fan of it. I also don't like how at times, Fred, Velma and Daphne begin to feel a bit like background characters because Scrappy is being placed front and center. Don't get me wrong, I by no means hate this series and find it quite enjoyable, but this one aspect brought it down from where it could have been.

11. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?
​Up until this point, all of the shows had been in the same order that they were in the original post. However, Guess Who moved a bit down for me. I've talked quite a bit about my opinion of Guess Who in previous posts. At the time of this last ranking, I'd only seen 12 episodes (knowing me, it was actually probably less than that because I likely wrote the post in advance lol), and I was talking about how the nostalgia felt a bit forced. I think I was optimistic the show would find itself when I wrote that post, but I would say my opinion of it has lessened since then. I found the show was very bland, and while I did feel the forced nostalgia got better after the first season, liking episodes was often dependent on your enjoyment of the guest star. "A Mystery Solving Gang Divided!" and "Ollie Ollie In-come Free!" were good examples of that - the guest stars were so in-your-face obnoxious that it made the episodes unenjoyable, at least to me. On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes the guest stars would seem a bit awkward in the role - Jim Gaffigan, Bill Nye, and Neil deGrasse Tyson being examples. That would also make the episodes not as enjoyable as they could be, because certain dialogue would feel awkward or forced. I was really looking forward to the Kacey Musgraves episode, because I love Kacey, but in my opinion it kind of fell flat because she didn't really feel into the role. I would still agree with what I said three years ago that the show didn't ever feel like it brought anything distinct to the table - it felt very safe and like nothing new was really explored. The mysteries sometimes weren't as developed or interesting as they could be because too much focus would be put on the guest star. Don't get me wrong though, there were some amazing episodes here - "I Put a Hex on You!" and "The Legend of the Gold Microphone!" in particular - but overall as a series, there were others I liked better.

10. The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show
​The re-addition of Daphne felt like it brought mysteries and structure back to the table, and the added four minutes of runtime made the plots not seem so rushed like they did in the 7-minute shorts. Scrappy also feels a bit more toned down in this series, where he isn't always the center focus and other characters feel like they have time to shine.

9. The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries
​Although it's basically the same series as the above one, I loved that this brought back full-length episodes some of the time. There are some solid episodes here that are among my favorites of the franchise - "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle," "The Nutcracker Scoob," and "Happy Birthday Scooby-Doo!" There were certainly a few duds here, but the majority of the episodes were great.

8. The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo
I love how in the previous article for this, I apparently wrote "I'll probably be surprised when re-reading this article in a year!" I will confirm I was indeed surprised, both that I ranked this so high previously and to see that random note from myself written three years ago lol. I remember that I'd rewatched this series around that time, so that could have been why this got so inflated. I absolutely love the premise of this series. It's such a cool idea to have Scooby and the gang searching for 13 of the most terrifying ghosts in the world, and some of the ghosts were truly amazing (Maldor and Zomba being my two favorites). My main reason for this ranking decreasing from 2019 is because I wish this series would have had a stronger consistency with the tone. At times, I feel like this series couldn't really tell if it wanted to be dark or silly. We'd get really dark premises like the gang trying to stop a witch from destroying the world, but then it would be executed in a really goofy way, like the gang chasing a witch version of the Three Stooges. At times, it sort of feels like there were two different creative visions for the show that got amalgamated into one, and while it worked sometimes, other times it didn't. I feel like the writing got less strong as the series went on as well. Those who know me know how much I dislike Rankor. He was such a cool-looking villain, but if he's one of the thirteen most powerful ghosts in the world, why is he taking orders from some random monster club and going in the chest willingly?!? I'm still not over how flat-out stupid that scene is even 12 years after watching it for the first time lol.

Overall, I really liked the dark and edgy vibe this series was going for, and the comedy was definitely fun at times. Although it went down a bit for me since the last ranking, I still enjoy this series and wish it would have had a second season to wrap things up.

7. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo is such a fun, quirky little show. Although the gang's personalities are quite different from any previous incarnation, I love all the different characterizations of Fred, Velma and Daphne. Fred is super funny, and it's interesting to see Velma in a shier role. While I wouldn't say bossy Daphne is my favorite characterization, Kellie Martin does such a good job with it and I think it fits very naturally with this series. The zaniness of this series can be off the charts at times, but it's so much fun and I have a great appreciation for this show.

6. What's New, Scooby-Doo?
Ugh, I hate that this didn't make top 5, and it was a really difficult choice. I love the updated feel of this show, and it felt like a really natural return to the classic gang adventures, which we hadn't seen in a full series at that point since the 70s. I think a lot of shows introducing technology can be sort of cringey, but this incorporated everything flawlessly in a way that felt consistent with the Scooby-Doo formula. The consistency across seasons in this show is arguably probably the best of any Scooby series, and the mysteries and monsters are top notch.

5. The Scooby-Doo Show
Interestingly given I was just talking about consistency, this is perhaps the show with the most inconsistent tone across seasons, which ironically is kind of part of the appeal of it. Season 1 is such a classic and the writing is solid all throughout. Season 2 is collectively my favorite season in Scooby history. The season had such a dark, eerie tone to it that remains unmatched to date. I personally love darker episodes, so this season was incredible to me. I wish it would have been longer! Season 3 focused more on globetrotting, and many of the episode focused more heavily on the Shaggy and Scooby antics rather than the mystery. While I've mentioned before the heavy focus on antics isn't my favorite (I'm more interested in the mystery aspect of the franchise), I do still really appreciate this series for it introducing us to the gang traveling to different countries on a consistent basis (since them visiting other countries had been much more sporadic previously), which later comes into play more consistently again in What's New, Scooby-Doo?. I liked that we got to meet a lot of the gang's relatives in this season, especially Scooby-Dum, who I have always loved as a character. Although all three seasons are very different, there are so many classics in this series and that makes this series top tier for me.

4. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated
This is where it gets really tough for me, because the remaining four series are all incredible in their own ways. I love the darker tone of this series, and the overarching plot is done so much better here than it was in The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. The format of a mystery-of-the-week along with the gang slowly figuring out the overarching mystery worked so well. I thought the Easter eggs and callbacks to old series were great. The  mature writing (besides the relationship drama) worked really well here, and I would love to see another series like this someday.

3. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!
I know this series has a terrible reputation among some fans, but when you give it a chance beyond the animation, I would argue this series has the most clever writing of any Scooby show to date. The random, absurdist humor is exactly my preferred style of comedy, so this series really resonated with me. I love how this series developed the characters further, particularly Daphne. Daphne's authentically weird, quirky antics were amazing, and it made her such an interesting character. The only thing I wish is that Jon Colton Barry (the head writer) had more creative control over the first season and the last half of season 2. I felt that this series hit its strongest point when JCB was able to exert full creative control over the plots and characters in the first half of season 2. The characters were always on point, and the monsters and mysteries were so well-developed in season 2. That's not to say they weren't in season 1, but I felt the first half of season 2 was the strongest when it came to character development and mysteries. The smart, witty writing fit so well here and I think if you give yourself a chance to get used to the animation, you'll find this show is really enjoyable. The most common complaint I hear is about the animation, and I know it's a bit jarring, but the writing here is far too amazing in my opinion not to give this series a chance. 

2. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?
So, this used to be my favorite series, and it's still very close. This series started it all, and created so many of the tropes we've grown to love. These original adventures are always going to be the classics in my mind. It was very close, but my current favorite series is now...

1. The New Scooby-Doo Movies
I think part of this is driven by nostalgia, because my parents recorded these episodes on VHS tapes, and I would watch these episodes over and over when I was a kid. I loved the addition of the guest stars to the formula, and the extended run time allowed for some great character interactions and engaging mysteries. A lot of my favorite episodes from the franchise come from this series - "The Loch Ness Mess," "The Mystery of Haunted Island," and "Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner" to name a few. I really liked how fluid the tone of this show was. Every episode felt like a new adventure, and the guest stars brought such a variety of different tones to the table. Someone brought this up to me recently and I hadn't really thought about it before, but the episodes also always take the guest star out of their element and put them in a unique situation, and I think that's part of the charm of this series. The two episodes from this series that I'm not as big of a fan of ("The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" and "Mystery in Persia") are the only two episodes that don't really take the guest star out of their element. In his episode, Jerry Reed is just performing a concert in a music hall, and "Mystery in Persia" honestly feels more like a Jeannie episode than a Scooby-Doo episode. The fact that this series puts the guest stars in such quirky situations makes for a ton of fun, and that's ultimately why this series is currently my favorite.

Thank you so much for reading these rankings! If you want to share your own, I'd love to see other people's rankings in the comments, even if it's just an updated version of them if you posted on the original comment thread.

53 years ago today, Scooby-Doo aired on CBS for the very first time. To finish our 13 days of celebrating with fan spotlights here on the blog, I’m super excited to introduce you to the final fan spotlight of this year, Corton! Corton is a regular reader of the ScoobySnax blog, although you may know him better under the username Gibby Norton here on the blog! He also is somewhat active interacting with some Scooby-Doo fans on Twitter.

The picture you see above is a sign Corton made at his college back on September 13, 2019. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise, he handed out Scooby-Doo graham crackers and gummies from the table to anyone who passed by on that day!

Corton is also responsible for a viral tweet on social media related to something involving a rice krispy treat! I’ll let him tell the full story (which is perhaps the most interesting answer any of the fan spotlights have ever had for the “fun fact” question), but without further ado, here is our final fan spotlight!

1. What is your name?
My username that I use on the Scooby Snax blog is “Gibby Norton,” but my real name is Corton Rider.
 
2. How did you get into Scooby-Doo?
I have just always been a Scooby-Doo fan! There is a home video of me somewhere stored at my grandmother’s where I’m barely a year old and playing with toys with my cousin while commercials are playing on the TV in the background. However, when the commercials end I very quickly drop everything I’m doing and rush over to the TV because Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! has resumed on Cartoon Network. Ever since around that age I have had the same continued dedication to the franchise!

3. What is your favorite Scooby-Doo episode and film? Why?
My favorite Scooby-Doo movie has got to be Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost. While Zombie Island is arguably the more memorable Scooby movie overall, I think that Witch’s Ghost has an even better sense of mystery and a wonderful Autumn atmosphere that I just eat up! Not to mention the Hex Girls are great and that climax is absolutely stellar, allowing the movie to deliver two well-rounded adventures, both one of an unmasking villain story and one of a supernatural threat story.
 
My favorite episode is a bit tougher, stuck between two choices: Where Are You!’s A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts and Mystery Incorporated’s All Fear the Freak. A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts is just this perfect episode of classic Scooby to me, featuring what could be seen as the generic monsters and locale that one may expect, but filled with a lot of genuinely funny jokes, tense moments, and spooky settings that make the episode endlessly fun to get lost in every time! All Fear the Freak is my other favorite because I think it has an extremely satisfying conclusion to Mystery Incorporated’s first season and even beyond that it is in its own right an episode that stands out for its legitimately scary villain and very interesting mystery. I can remember seeing the promo for the episode air on Cartoon Network and I wish so badly that I could find it again somewhere online to relive the excitement of anticipating that episode!
 
4. What ways are you involved in the Scooby fandom online?
I’m not super duper involved in things online because I find the large amount of effort that others have already put in online to making the Scooby wiki, message boards, and podcasts and such to be very daunting when trying to think of something I would like to do, so my interaction with Scooby fans remains mostly on my Twitter account! I did eventually gain some courage and now do occasionally comment on posts on this very blog and on the Scooby-Doo subreddit as well! I also joined a Scooby group turned “Hanna-Barbera Wiki Fan Group” on Facebook run by my good friend who had his own fan spotlight on here last year, James Dixon. I interact with him and some others on there, it’s a lowkey environment so I think it feels very friendly and not like a competition of who is the bigger, more involved fan vibe that other groups have. Otherwise, I am mostly an observer and supporter of what everyone else is putting out.
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5. In your opinion, what is the best series or era of Scooby?
My favorite era of Scooby is what I like to call the “Reboot Era” of 2009-2013. I’ve heard the term “Reboot Era” used before by some fans and I am unsure if I somehow got that to catch on with what very few comments I have made or if others just had the same thoughts that I had, but regardless I think it is a fitting title! We had a reboot of the live-action movies with The Mystery Begins, the DC Comics re-started over again from issue #1 with a slight retitling of their monthly releases, we got brand new video games (First Frights and Spooky Swamp) that brought their own style and storyline, the direct-to-video movies got a revamped art style and really cranked out hit after hit with those movies, Matthew Lillard took over as the voice of Shaggy, and on top of all of that we hit a really big reset button with the newest Scooby TV show at that time! This era really packed in a lot of content and it was all for the sake of both renewal and trying something different, or at the very least providing the same ol’ thing with fresher eyes than some of the stuff that had come before maybe had.
 
My favorite series for certain is Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated not just because it has a very interesting overarching mystery, but because it also perfectly matches my sense of humor. It mixes in really fun jabs at culture with sometimes wacky humor, sometimes dry humor, and always very situational humor. I think that show is one of the funniest I have ever seen, and I think that that aspect of the show gets overlooked very often in favor of the more dramatic aspects of the show (which are great, too!)

6. What one Scooby-Doo series or film would you want a sequel to someday?
Haha, can I say the easy answer of “I want SCOOB! Holiday Haunt to get a release”?
 
Outside of returning characters such as the Hex Girls, Crystal and Amber, Googie, and others from various movies and shows, there isn’t really much that I would like to see happen. I think a reboot of 13 Ghosts would be a great idea for a limited series. And I guess by default I’d want an official third Zombie Island movie made by a devoted fan of the original just to at least kind of make up for what Return to Zombie Island did to turn off a lot of fans.
 
I guess if I really had to make a direct sequel, I’d want a third movie with the theatrical live-action cast. I am unsure as to how realistic a live-action movie would be, but I would love for Warner Bros to give it the same treatment that they gave to Batman ‘66, where they made an animated movie that was designed to look like the same world so that the characters wouldn’t have to be aged up too much despite having the original cast return. An animated legacy sequel done by the guys who do the animation for those direct-to-video DC movies would be amazing! Plus I do think this iteration of the gang deserves a little reunion and official send-off story.

7. What direction would you like to see the franchise go in the future?
In the future I would like to see the Scooby-Doo franchise continue to take risks. They’ve been doing that lately I feel by greenlighting both an adult animated series and a preschool animated series- two entirely new territories for the franchise!
 
Even more recently they went a little nuts with their Courage crossover movie and I also appreciate- even if I can’t say that I outright like- that SCOOB! wanted to do more with the property. Try or fail, I always do admire seeing a real effort being made. I think too often we hear people say that they just want Scooby to be the exact same as it was when it first started, which could be great! But I also think that that can be hard to fully recapture without at least even the slightest of a unique spin by the people creating it. There needs to be a personal flair that the creators inject into a Scooby project for it to work, I think.

8. Who is your favorite member of the gang and why?
My favorite member of the gang is Scooby-Doo himself! He is loyal and brave, while also silly and cowardly. I think that Scooby in all his iterations always comes across as lovable and funny, and I think that that is a testament to the power of that character’s simple charms and what he means to the people who write him. I mean, clearly other people out there agree with me on this because it is a literal plot point in Scooby-Doo (2002) that Scooby-Doo himself has one of the purest souls on Earth!

9. What is your favorite villain? Why?
This one makes me feel very conflicted! I love many monsters from across the years, from the Phantom Shadows to Sarah Ravencroft, Gramps the Vamp to the San Franpsycho, and even that green werewolf from Where Are You to the Luna Ghost. However if I had to pick one, I may have to choose the season 1 version of The Freak of Crystal Cove from Mystery Incorporated. His presence is so unbelievably threatening and scary, and yet his rhyming schtick and his poeticness add a lot of mysteriousness and depth to the character. I think this villain was so interesting that they should have had him lurking throughout the entire season!

10. In your opinion, who is the best recurring (non-gang) character in the franchise?
Despite my username I hope no one is expecting me to say Gibby Norton! I am a huge Hex Girl fan, and I think that their music and unique personalities really give them a lot to offer. Beyond them as they are a bit of an easy answer, I have to say that I love the entire supporting cast of 13 Ghosts! 13 Ghosts is such a great series and concept and I think that version of Mystery Inc truly does deserve a chance to shine in a reboot someday!


11. Do you have a Scooby-Doo collection? If so, what’s in it?
I definitely have a large movie collection in general, so there is a special cabinet in my bedroom that houses every Scooby movie and show on DVD and Blu-ray (and one 4K with SCOOB!).
 
Beyond my special Scooby movie cabinet I have every LEGO set and I also have some random knick knack things such as the complete trading card set for Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, a ton of Scooby comics including every issue of Team Up, books, toys, CDs, video games, magnets, board games, keychains, stuffed animals, and just some stuff I stumble upon and happen to like. Where I was born in 1999 and Scooby was around for 30 years before that, trying to collect as much Scooby as possible feels more difficult and so I just try to focus on getting things that I just know I absolutely have to have and I make myself content and happy with those!

12. What do you think has made the franchise so popular that it’s still going strong after 50 years?
I think it is absolutely the characters that have made this franchise last as long as it has. The atmosphere of mystery definitely helps as a good hook, but people come back so much because they want to see these characters. They’ve changed over the years various times, from writing styles to voices. However the core idea of every personality has always been maintained in some capacity and it’s hard to not want to see how these characters evolve next and what adventures they go on! It’s the same reason that things like The Simpsons and SpongeBob go on forever- because even if someone doesn’t like one season (or in Scooby’s case iteration) it is still just so hard to say goodbye to characters you love so much. So they keep on bringing the Scooby gang back!

13. What is one fun fact about you in real life?
Back in November 2016 I was in my senior year of high school. In order to impress the girl I really liked I sprinted into one of her classes and threw her a Rice Krispie Treat (at the time one of her favorite snacks) and ran back out. One of the people in that class tweeted about it. Within 24 hours that tweet got about 200,000 likes and 100,000 retweets! And while I was not actually dating the girl at the time and I was not name-dropped in the tweet, you all just have to take my word on it. I promise it was me. I was the “romantic” inspiration for a trending tweet and people’s failed attempts at starting a Rice Krispie Treat challenge. The person who tweeted it is on private now, but at the time she even got sent boxes from Rice Krispies themselves. She gave me one tiny square treat as a thanks. I assumed Rice Krispie Treats only came in rectangles, but all I got for my efforts was a tiny square one. And now it’s 6 years later and believe it or not, but I’m finally with that girl I liked, haha! So I guess it turned out pretty alright.