I've rewatched some of the older Scooby-Doo films dozens of times, but I haven't returned to many of the newer ones nearly as often. While I liked most of the newer films quite a bit, many of them felt less memorable to me on first watch. If I'm in the mood for a Scooby movie, I usually always seek out the pre-2010s films or one of the highlights of recent years. When I did my film rankings in 2022, I know there were a number of the films that I hadn't rewatched in a few years, so finally rewatching them was long overdue.

It was a really fun project to return to all these films after so long! My overall rankings have changed a lot from rewatching these. There were a few that I remembered liking that I was more middled on, and a couple that I remembered disliking that I ended up loving! Perhaps the most surprising change is that a film I ranked towards the middle is now my third least-favorite of the entire franchise.

The pattern seems to have unintentionally become that I post a reranking of the films every two years. Given it's now 2026, I suppose it's only appropriate to kick the year off with my re-rankings, considering my last ranking was in 2024. I thought it would be fun to bring you all along on my journey revisiting these films! In this post, I'm going to rank all of the films since 2011, since Camp Scare is the final film I'd rewatched semi-regularly. I won't include Daphne & Velma or Scoob!, since they aren't normal DTVs and I have rewatched them several times since release. At the end of this post, I'm going to update my movie rankings based on my thoughts from rewatching all these.

22. Return to Zombie Island
It was so interesting returning to this now that we know the backstory behind it. For those who aren't aware, director Jim Krieg stated in an interview that he does not think real monsters should be in Scooby-Doo. He wrote this film to "re-imagine" Zombie Island within what he feels Scooby-Doo continuity should be.

I've mentioned my thoughts on this in the comment sections a few times, but I'll be upfront: this isn't a mindset I respect. It is totally fine to prefer Scooby-Doo have fake monsters. However, to use a position of power to intentionally retcon one of the franchise's most acclaimed films is disrespectful to the fans. This is especially the case when it's packaged as a "50th anniversary present." From rewatching this, it's clear there was some malice towards the original involved. Besides the interview, the most compelling evidence of this is that one of the characters is named "Alan Smithee," which is an Hollywood industry term for when a director wants to disown a film. However, as I watched the film, there were other jabs towards the original sprinkled all throughout.

Viewing it through this lens, it was so weird to rewatch this film. The opening scenes felt aggressive to me about the "fake monsters" mindset. The film opens with a montage of the gang capturing foes from Where Are You, as a song called "These Are the Good Old Days" plays. There's also a scene where Fred ties several captured monsters' masks to the Mystery Machine, then floors it as hard as he can to rip off all of their masks. Within the context of what we know now, these scenes felt like an over-the-top metaphor to assert that fake monsters are superior. It felt aggressive enough that I wondered if the next scene would be Jim Krieg jumping out of my TV to slap me in the face for liking the original better lol.

Not respecting the film's reason for conception was a huge hindrance to my liking this, but I also just feel the writing was poor and focused in the wrong places. As you'll see later, Curse of the 13th Ghost is higher than it was before (despite being made with a similar mentality), but the writing of this one was just bad imo. The core of my issue with this film is that it feels like it's trying so hard to play defensive against the original Zombie Island that it isn't able to create any unique identity for itself. The plot feels like it's twisting itself in knots to re-do all aspects of the original. As a result, it feels like a disorganized mess that isn't compelling at all by the end.

Setting aside my dislike of the creative mindset, I absolutely believe it would have been possible to write a compelling sequel to Zombie Island that featured fake monsters. Would it have been as good as the original? Probably not, but I do think it was possible for them to creatively interweave their disdain of the original into the film in a way that would have been compelling. However, the plot here feels so bogged down in trying to retcon everything that it isn't able to be anything interesting. This is firmly at the bottom of the barrel for me.

​I will say, I love John Michael Higgins' energy in this. He was hilarious to me in the Saved by the Bell reboot, so it was fun watching him play a Scooby character (I wasn't familiar with him yet on my first watch). His performance here is very good, but it's a shame this film is the one he had to be in.

As a lifelong fan of this franchise, I strongly hope that future Scooby-Doo media isn't made with this intent. One of the things I love most about this fandom is that most fans are so respectful and kind about everyone having different opinions. I feel writers have a duty to cultivate this same sense of respect. It's unnecessary to write films in a way that attempt to divide the fandom with unnecessary "real fans think Scooby should be like this!" type mentalities. I think minor jokes are acceptable, but writing entire films to discredit pieces of media that the fandom loves takes things a big step above that. It's something I have a lot of difficulty respecting.

21. Curse of the Speed Demon
I remembered liking this way more than I did. Upon rewatching, it's an easy second-last. Put simply, my issue with this film is that it just isn't really my vibe. I've never been interested in wrestling, and none of the wrestlers really resonated with me as characters. Much of the movie is spent focusing on Shaggy, Scooby and The Undertaker, who I didn't feel had all that great of chemistry. The rest of the gang feels a bit sidelined, since they're sharing time with the other wrestlers. There is a brief subplot with Daphne trying to become best friends Stephanie McMahon, who behaves coldly to her, making her realize that Velma is her best friend. The subplot is alright, I guess, but given Velma and Daphne's solo dynamic isn't really focused on much in any other piece of media, the subplot feels a bit shallow and unnecessary. The moments of "extreme" and "intense" writing to cater to the wrestling crowd also wasn't appealing I particularly found moments like Mr. McMahon announcing that the audience would "need to change their pants" after the final leg of the race to be cringey. I can totally get the appeal of this for people who might like wrestling, but overall I didn't really love this.

20. WrestleMania Mystery
This was perhaps my biggest surprise in this rewatch. I had remembered liking this one a lot on first watch, but I didn't care for it this time. The wrestling aspects didn't really do it for me in this one either. The gang didn't have good chemistry with the WWE guest stars. That said, I did like the mystery a tiny bit more in this one, but overall I didn't feel the wrestlers contributed much of value. I also wasn't a fan of the Ghost Bear being a real bear who was involved in fighting. I just generally find humans making animals fight for sport to be unpleasant, so it's something I'd prefer not to see explored in Scooby. Overall, I found the mystery to be a little better in this movie, but it still wasn't really my thing.

19. Blowout Beach Bash
I'm sorry to say, but nine years didn't make that awful "Blowout Beach Bingo Bash" song grow on me. I still found it as annoying as ever lol. As for the movie, it's alright, but I think I have a different issue with it than I remembered. The writing just felt kinda off to me, like it was written by someone who wasn't familiar with the vibe of the franchise. The mystery feels like it takes forever to get going. It's nearly halfway through the film before we even see the ghosts! The humor also feels kinda off, and like it leans a bit more towards the style of something like Teen Titans Go!. I also thought the whole subplot of Fred and Velma trying to prove they're "cool" detracts from the plot. Neither of the characters seem like they'd normally have an interest in that sort of thing, so it doesn't feel like there's a reason for it to be suddenly explored here. Overall, the LEGO animation is cute and the mystery is semi-fun for what it is, but it's easily one of the weakest Scooby films in the franchise.

18. Scooby-Doo and KISS: Rock and Roll Mystery
This one was a bit weird for my liking. KISS had decent chemistry with the gang, but it felt like it could have been a bit stronger than it was. I found the mystery with the Crimson Witch really interesting! However, it took a bit of a weird turn once we got to the Destroyer, particularly with the alternate dimension and KISS having magical powers. I also didn't like the subplot of Daphne and Starchild being in love. Considering the massive age difference between them (18 and 63), I just found their romance to be rather creepy. I'd been thinking that Velma's personality being very heavily focused around logic had happened in the 2019 DTVs, but I was surprised to see Velma was rigid around the idea of the supernatural in this film. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of this characterization for her. I feel it undercuts her other attributes, like her warmth and wittiness, to focus so heavily on her being logical to the point of rigidity. That all said, this was still a semi-decent movie, but it's a bit too weird for me to want to return to often. 

17. Sword and the Scoob
I remembered liking this so much more, but upon rewatch, this went way down. I think my main issue comes down to Daphne's characterization being really bad here. It's a shame, because I really liked Daphne's wacky characterization in Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, but it felt like it was a bit too much here. Similarly to my issue with Velma being overly logical, Daphne's randomness isn't balanced out by any other aspect of her personality here. Stuff like her believing reality is all a simulation felt like it was taken too far. The dialogue also felt a bit cringey to me at times, especially stuff like Merlin wearing a piece of jewelry that said "posh king." The time travel aspects were okay, but I also didn't love that it was all rationalized as fake at the end. I thought the mystery was pretty solid for what it was, and I liked the villains, but the dialogue and characterization brought this one down considerably for me.

16. LEGO Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood
​Similarly, I felt like this was a bit undercooked. It has the same off-feeling writing as Blowout Beach Bash did, although it does feel a bit closer to what the franchise typically is than that movie. I did think the incorporation of the LEGO style was cute and creative! I also thought the ghost being an actor who dressed up as different monsters was a creative idea. I couldn't get over that Junior sounded like Get a Clue Shaggy though lol (both were voiced by Scott Menville). The setting and villains were both strong here, but the mystery felt a bit thin compared to many of the other films. Overall, a cute attempt, but it isn't one of my favorites.

15. Curse of the 13th Ghost
This got a pretty significant boost compared to where it was before! For those who don't know, this was also written with the same mentality as Return to Zombie Island. In an interview with the writer, Tim Sheridan, it was shared that a WB exec (who we now know is Jim Krieg) mandated that the film couldn't include Scrappy, and also that the ending couldn't involve the monster being real. Considering Scrappy and real monsters were core elements of this series, this was pretty much doomed from the start to be an unfulfilling conclusion. However, my opinion on this film has changed. I don't like the intent it was made with, but the difference between this and Return to Zombie Island, at least for me, is that this was a good attempt at matching the tone and atmosphere of the original series.

Don't get me wrong, the continuity errors are still a huge issue for me. The rest of the film is actually decently solid, though. There are some cheesy moments with Vincent's "Air Boo and Boo" and Shaggy "losing the Chest in the mail." However, I was surprised how much I liked the tone! I thought it was a pretty good attempt of calling back to the original, and it was clear there was heart put into it. I really liked Asmodeus as the 13th ghost. I also think they did Flim-Flam and Vincent's characters justice. Considering the restrictive mandates, I think Tim did about the best he could. While this film does have a huge wrench thrown in the ending, it's written in a way where you could just choose to ignore Velma's ramblings and believe the 13 ghosts are still real. At the end of the day, this film wasn't ever going to be great because of the mandates, but I feel this is a solid attempt for what it is.

14. Scooby-Doo Adventures: The Mystery Map
I feel this movie gets a bad rep because of the puppets. However, I think the puppets were cute! This was a fun reimagining of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo! Did they hit it out of the park? No. It doesn't feel like a grand sequel to the original show, but it's still an enjoyable homage to the show's unique tone and style. Even if it wasn't quite as zany or off-the-wall as the original, the film did a good job having the same quirky, lighthearted tone. When it was first released, nothing had been announced about it being a return to A Pup Named Scooby-Doo style prior to release. They'd kept it all a surprise, so I remember being shocked that they'd made a movie in the style of Pup when I first watched it! 

The mystery was really good, and felt like it could have easily been in the original show. I thought the film also did a surprisingly great job creating a spooky atmosphere! There were some genuinely creepy moments here, especially towards the end with the scene on the pirate ship, and the moment where Gnarlybeard is watching them from the window. Side note, but I thought it was funny that Gnarlybeard's ghost has Scooby Snacks on hand lol.

I thought it was odd they chose to recycle songs from the 2010 and 2011 DTVs as the chase songs. It wasn't a significant issue to me, but it did feel a bit lazy. I would have liked to see them use original songs, rather than songs with themes that didn't make sense in the context of the film. I also wasn't wowed by Stephanie D'Abruzzo as Velma's voice. I wouldn't go as far as to say she was bad, but I felt she enunciated a bit too much for certain words (i.e. "pizza," "bicycle," etc.) and her lines came off a bit stilted as a result. Overall though, I think she still made a solid attempt at mimicking Christina Lange's Velma voice.

I wouldn't say I'd return to this super often. However, it's still a fun, underrated movie that I think I'd definitely enjoy returning to from time to time.

13. Scooby-Doo and Krypto, Too!
My thoughts haven't changed on this one too much, since it's only been a few years. I thought this was a pretty cute movie! They did an excellent job integrating all the DC characters and villains into the film, without making it feel cluttered or like they overshadowed the gang. Krypto was perhaps one of my favorite superheroes that have teamed up with the gang in recent years. He was so cute! I didn't find the villain to be super memorable here, but the film and mystery were pretty good for what they were.

12. Mask of the Blue Falcon
This was a good movie! I remembered liking this a bit more than I actually did, but this was still solid. I really liked the Comic Con setting, and all the references to different Hanna-Barbera series. At the time, I absolutely loved those references. Besides Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, there wasn't many callbacks to old content like this back in the day, so the Easter Eggs were such fun surprises! However, with the recent influx of callbacks to old content, I have to admit, a bit of the charm of this film was lost for me. With Guess Who and the recent DTVs having consistent Easter Eggs and re-imaginings of previous content, the idea of a plot reimagining Blue Falcon and Dynomutt felt a bit less exciting to me.

On the same token, this film's underlying plot is kind of an interesting time capsule. 2013 was sort of the beginning of the huge push for nostalgia in broader pop culture. It was interesting to see how the movie tackled the pitfalls of reimagining old content from a new angle. Throughout the movie, the viewer is indirectly asked to grapple with the question of what sort of balance a re-imagining should strike in order to stay true to the original. In this film, Dynomutt, Dog Wonder is re-imagined as a gritty, post-apocalyptic crime series. I think the film's intent was to argue that was not an appropriate balance, but as I said, it's interesting to look at now because we have, in fact, recently gotten a gritty re-imagining of Dynomutt in the form of a comic series. We also have gritty Scooby-Doo media like Scooby Apocalypse, which came just a few years later.

I liked how the film grappled with this concept, and without ruining anything, I thought the balance they struck with the film at the end was cute. This movie did a great job re-imagining "Everybody Hyde!," which was the first Scooby-Doo and Dynomutt crossover in 1976. While some creative liberties were taken (such as saying that Mr. Hyde appeared in multiple episodes of the original Dynomutt series, and making the original show seem more after school special-ish), I thought it still was a fun reimagining of the original Dynomutt, Dog Wonder.

My one critique of the movie is that Owen Garrison's character felt exaggerated. Why was 90% of his dialogue literal shouting? 😭 While him strongly disliking this new version of Dynomutt totally makes sense, I didn't feel it was necessary for it to be taken to the point of him screaming that the new actors are "frauds," or yelling that the new movie was all a hoax lol. Also, how is it possible for the company to "unrelease all the original episodes from DVD"? Did they send some corporate thugs to break into people's homes and grab everyone's DVDs? lol Anyway, I get what they were going for here, but Owen's characterization felt unnecessarily outrageous and in-your-face. I think they could have gotten the point that he hated the new show across without exaggerating it to that level lol.

10. Music of the Vampire
This one came as a surprise to me, because this was originally in my bottom 10! I wasn't really a fan of the musical numbers originally, but most of them worked pretty well on rewatch. The only song I didn't like was "Done with Monsters." The gang's singing voices sounded a bit off to me, and I found the song to be a bit grating. That said, I must have projected my dislike of that particular song onto all of the musical numbers in this film lol, because the others were actually pretty solid! I really liked the mystery too. I didn't remember liking him so much, but Lord Valdronya is probably one of my favorite villains of the 2010s DTV era. His design is so scary, and I liked the intricate mystery of him trying to make Daphne his bride through Bram and the others from Fangenschanz. Scooby Goes Hollywood will always be the superior Scooby musical for me, but this is still a solid film that I feel I judged way too harshly in hindsight.

One of the things I noticed about the 2012 and 2013 DTVs was that both of them had sort of a Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated-lite feel to them. Although not quite as intense, the plots felt like they could have easily been featured in that series. The writing feels more serious and less comedy-driven than some of the later 2010s films do. When I was watching this, it made me realize that I kind of miss this style of writing. Even besides Abracadabra Doo and Camp Scare, the early 2010s writing style felt slightly more mature, which I really liked and find to be more memorable than some of the recent stuff. From the limited memories I had before about the 2010s DTVs, I remember thinking they were less cinematic. In hindsight, I feel I may have painted the era to be more similar than it actually is. The 2010-2013 DTVs absolutely still have a level of cinematicness to them, as do a handful of the films after that. If I were to describe the difference, I would say that the What's New era films feel a little more polished to me, but that could also be me wearing rose-colored glasses from childhood nostalgia lol.

9. FrankenCreepy
I liked this one even more than I remembered! What I enjoyed most about this one was how character-driven it was all throughout, and I also thought the setting and atmosphere were very solid. I remembered not liking the transitions, but I actually felt they were kind of fun here. The mystery structure felt especially unique here! It was interesting to have the gang all split off in the middle of the movie, and have all the different character-driven plots that lead to the mystery's solution. The FrankenCreep Monster's design was so cool, and I also thought the baron was a good villain despite being basically a copy of Iron Face.

Previously, I considered all of the 2010-2023 films to be one era. In rewatching this, I feel like there was kind of a shift with WrestleMania Mystery and this movie. The tone doesn't have the same serious feel as the movies airing during Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated's run. To me, the structure of the films begin to feel more laid back and less thoughtfully structured than many of the early films. There's a bit more time dedicated to character dynamics and silly antics, rather than sequential structuring of events like the the previous films did. It definitely like there is a noticeable shift in the films from this point forward. I don't consider this to be a bad thing, though. It's just a slightly different vibe, and it still works well!

8. Big Top
This is one I had very little memory of, but I had such a fun time rewatching it! The setting of the circus was really solid. I would go as far as to say it's one of the best circus/carnival settings in the entire franchise. The atmosphere felt super strong and cinematic, and I thought all of the side characters were more memorable than the average DTV from the group I'm reviewing. I also really liked the twist of there being multiple werewolves, and the surprise at the end. Although it could have been cringey, I thought Shaggy and Scooby's subplot worked pretty well. Shaggy letting the fame go to his head and inadvertently hurting Scooby had a natural evolution, and felt like it supplemented the mystery rather than distracted from it. I also thought the mystery was really challenging to figure out! This was a great rewatch, and was one of my favorite rediscoveries here.

7. Brave and the Bold
This film was one that I remembered being a favorite on first watch, and eight years later, it still is! I don't think anything could ever beat Batman's appearances in The New Scooby-Doo Movies, but this is still such a fun film. I love how the mystery involved the one case Batman couldn't solve. The case involving a very creepy phantom makes this feel like a perfect fit for Scooby-Doo! I absolutely love the ghost's design! It's one of the creepiest villains of the DTVs ranked here, and is another fave villain of mine. Batman unfortunately isn't gentlemanly here like his original appearances lol, but this more serious version of Batman still has excellent chemistry with the Scooby gang. I thought the other Batman characters and villains were well-incorporated into the film. They all felt like the served a purpose for the plot, and none felt out of place or shoehorned in. Plastic Man's comment that he likes to "save up a bunch of unsolved cases and solve them all at once!" gave me a very good laugh, lol.

6. Trick or Treat
Trick or Treat brings us into the top 5! One 2020s film beats this one for me, but this is still one of my favorites in recent years. The ghostly doppelgangers are such unique villains! The film's other villain, Coco Diablo, plays a very interesting anti-hero (and love interest) role, which I thought made for a very interesting dynamic. Velma's crush on her was kept at just the right level to avoid having it overshadow the plot, imo. The choice to make her responsible for creating all the costumes the gang has faced over the years was indeed a bold one. I feel like it could have gone horribly wrong like the 2019 "sequels," but surprisingly, this film works pretty well as a standalone. I was really happy that they finally referenced more obscure villains within the franchise, instead of just the same ones from Where Are You like they already had countless times. What stands out to me most about this film, though, is the wacky humor. The last 30 minutes of the film totally goes off the rails, but in the best way. I loved the random, ridiculous humor of Be Cool, and in a different way, this film sort of felt like a return to that zany style of humor. The quirky tone works so well for this film, and makes it really stand out amongst many of the other recent ones.

5. Moon Monster Madness
This was one of the films I least remembered, so it's a big surprise to see it become one of my favorites. I loved my rewatch of this! I would argue it's one of the most cinematic films of the current era. The whole movie featuring the gang invited on a spaceship destined for the moon felt very cinematic, particularly because of how strong the atmosphere on the ship was. I also thought the film did a great job developing interesting side-characters. U-Boat and Zip Elvin were particularly memorable to me for their quirky personalities. The subplot with Velma being jealous of Daphne was also interesting. It felt well-integrated into the film without feeling like a distraction. The one aspect I wasn't a fan of is that Fred felt oddly dimwitted in this movie. What's New and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated certainly explored his more dopey side, but I felt like they exaggerated his dimwittedness a bit too much here. At times, it was a bit offputting how air-headed he felt. I also felt like the alien could have been a stronger villain. I really liked its design and the mystery around it, but it didn't feel like we saw all that much of the alien in the film. That said, it wasn't a huge deal for me. This is definitely a standout amongst recent films! I liked this so much more than I had remembered.

4. Stage Fright
Speaking of liking something more than I remembered, we now turn to Stage Fright! When this film came up in conversation, my thoughts on it were a bit clouded by the Fred/Daphne romance plot. Considering we'd just gotten two seasons worth of their romance in Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, having Daphne act like she was in love with Fred for the first time felt like "ugh, we're doing this all over again?" lol. However, upon rewatching this, I can see that my thoughts were very much clouded by the abundance of romantic subplots at the time. I didn't mind the romantic plot with Fred and Daphne at all on rewatch, and thought it was cute for what it was. This was a really fun modern reimagining ofThe Phantom of the Opera​!

With that misremembered detail out of the way, I really enjoyed this film. I noticed that I tended to most gravitate towards the films with strong atmospheres and mysteries in my rewatch, and this checked both of those boxed. I loved how many twists and turns this film had, and thought the atmosphere of the TV studio and hotel were top-notch. It's arguably one of the strongest settings we've had in a film in these past 15 years.

3. Shaggy's Showdown
This is one of the few modern films I'd returned to often, because I loved it from the start. I absolutely loved the setting of Shaggy's cousin's ranch! The atmosphere was excellent and felt very cinematic. My favorite part though is easily the mystery! It was neat to have the villain be Shaggy's ancestor, and have there be some uncertainty around his past connected to the mystery. I love Dapper Jack's design too! It's one of my favorite villain designs from the recent films. Besides the recurring "El Kabong Font" joke that got a bit tiresome, there honestly isn't anything I disliked about the film. The setting was extremely strong and the mystery was very well-written. A standout for sure!

2. Gourmet Ghost
I had remembered this being amongst the better films in recent years, but this one stood out right away as a favorite upon rewatch. Every aspect of this film is so strong! I had so much fun rewatching this! It was easily my favorite rediscovery from doing this article.

I love the setting of the resort. All of the American Revolution history they wove into the setting worked so well, and made the atmosphere feel very immersive. Unlike KISS and the WWE superstars, Bobby and Giada fit into the film very naturally. Their roles in the movie as supporting characters felt much more balanced than most other crossover films do. I liked that the gang still had the spotlight, and the celebrity chefs were just there to support the investigation. Their inclusion in each scene felt natural, and it never felt like they were forced in just to have more of the spotlight. Personally, I think this works better than what they did in the WWE and KISS films.

The villain was also excellent here! The design is easily one of the creepiest of any Scooby film imo. I thought the mystery was one of the best of any of the ones I'm ranking. It was very well-written and thought-out, and had lots of twists and turns, and the pacing was great. I didn't remember how much I loved this aspect of the film, but the comedy was on-point here. Skip had me laughing several times. I particularly loved the joke when he says he has to wear a sleep apnea mask, because he unsure if he has the condition due to being asleep (it being followed by "now hand me my sugar pills!" was perfect comedic timing). The movie surprised me with how many witty moments it had from a lot of characters. Giada saying "I swear, the sandwich-making dog told me he'd be here!" when Scooby and Shaggy forget to show up to teach a class also made me laugh pretty hard.

I didn't remember liking this was so much, but I thought this film was strong in every aspect. Before rewatching these, I'd sometimes said that I felt like the later films were a significant dip in quality from the What's New era. After rewatching this, I'd honestly be content if we got more films like this. There are certainly lower-quality films from recent years, but rewatching this one (and several others in my top 10) helped me remember that a decent handful of these later films had a lot of heart.

1. Straight Outta Nowhere
After rewatching all of these, this is still my favorite film since Abracadabra Doo and Camp Scare. This movie perfectly represents how a Scooby-Doo crossover should be done, imo. Although I enjoyed a few of the crossover DTVs, I feel the majority of them felt like they leaned more into Scooby's world than the guest star's. This movie blends Scooby-Doo and Courage in a way that feels balanced between the vibe of both franchises. I really liked the darker tone that this had to align with Courage, but I also feel like they struck a good balance where it wasn't quite as dark as the original series (which I don't think would have fit with Scooby). I also really liked the overarching message about Scooby and Courage discovering what it means to have courage. Although I'm ready to be done with the crossovers for now, if they ever do one again someday, I hope it's something like this.

I had a blast revisiting these movies, even if I didn't enjoy some of them. It was cool to go back and watch some of my most neglected Scooby content, and see how my opinions have changed over the years. I also feel like it helped me better understand what I'd most want as we look towards the next era of DTVs. The movies I gravitated most towards were the ones that felt cinematic with strong atmospheres. There are a handful of recent films that felt like extended episodes that weren't structured as well as they could have been. Having a cinematic-feeling concept that feels worthy of its length is something that I'd like to see them improve upon. I felt they did a great job with this prior to 2014, but after that, the movies have been a bit hit or miss.

That said, it was definitely an overgeneralization on my part to say that most of the post-2014 films were lower quality. Anything that made my top 10 (FrankenCreepy, Moon Monster Madness, Shaggy's Showdown, Brave and the Bold, Gourmet Ghost, Straight Outta Nowhere, and Trick or Treat) were genuinely strong Scooby films imo, and I'd be open to getting more films in this vein. As for the rest, they feel mostly forgettable, and I wouldn't be sad if we didn't get any more films like them. To correct my previous overgeneralization, I don't think 2014 was necessarily the point where the quality of most of the films declined. However, I do think it was the point where the quality became less consistent than it used to be.

My other takeaway from this rewatch is that I'm hoping to get some movies that developed the gang's characterizations in meaningful ways. The gang has had more limited character development to give them a "classic" feel in some of the recent films. While I haven't minded this, I find myself better enjoying the more fleshed-out characterizations of the gang from the What's New, Scooby-Doo? era, or the films that aired during Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. I specifically highlighted exploring the characters in "meaningful" ways because there were a few recent films that chose to explore the characters in gimmicky ways, such as Daphne trying to befriend Stephanie McMahon, or Velma and Fred trying to prove they're "cool" to a bunch of random people they never met. Neither of these stories really feel consistent with the gang. They just felt like shallow subplots to fill time.

Also related to the characters, I'm specifically hoping that Velma is characterized better. I was really disappointed that in a lot of these recent films, she's been characterized as logic-driven to the point of being rigid. As I mentioned in my Rock and Roll Mystery review, I feel this really undercuts her potential and other qualities as a character. Velma is also warm, resourceful, witty, and so many other things that are ignored when she's written as a two-dimensional character who thinks she knows everything. Generally, I've liked the other characters' personalities, but I feel the writing of Velma's character has reached a point of starting to consistently go downhill in these DTVs.

Now that we've finished with the reviews, it's time to reveal my re-ranking of all the Scooby films! Here is my updated rankings:

​1. Ghoul School (=)
2. Boo Brothers (=)
3. Zombie Island (=)
4. Witch’s Ghost (=)
5. Reluctant Werewolf (+2)
6. Alien Invaders (-1)
7. Cyber Chase (-1)
8. Legend of the Vampire (+1)
9. Goblin King (-1)
10. Where’s My Mummy? (=)
11. Abracadabra Doo (+1)
12. Camp Scare (-1)
13. Monster of Mexico (=)
14. Pirates Ahoy (=)
15. Straight Outta Nowhere (+4)
16. Gourmet Ghost (+13)
17. Loch Ness Monster (-2)
18. Scooby Goes Hollywood (-2)
19. Shaggy's Showdown (+2)
20. Stage Fright (+6) 
21. Daphne & Velma (-1)
22. Scoob! (-4)
23. Moon Monster Madness (+12)
24. Trick or Treat (-1)
25. Brave and the Bold (+2)
26. Big Top (+11)
27. Aloha (-10)
28. Legend of the Phantosaur (+3)
29. FrankenCreepy (+1)
30. Music of the Vampire (+13)
31. The Mystery Begins (-9)
32. Happy Halloween (-4)
33. Mask of the Blue Falcon (-9)
34. Chill Out (-9)
35. Monsters Unleashed (-3)
36. Samurai Sword (-2)
37. Mystery Map (+3)
38. Krypto Too (=)
39. Curse of the 13th Ghost (+7)
40. Haunted Hollywood (-1)
41. Scooby-Doo (+1)
42. Sword and the Scoob (-9)
​43. Rock and Roll Mystery (+2)
44. Curse of the Lake Monster (=)
45. Arabian Nights (+3)
46. Blowout Beach Bash (+1)
47. WrestleMania Mystery (-11)
48. Curse of the Speed Demon (-7)
49. Return to Zombie Island (=)

Biggest Gainers:
Music of the Vampire (+13)
Gourmet Ghost (+13)
Moon Monster Madness (+12)
Big Top (+11)
Curse of the 13th Ghost (+7)
Stage Fright (+6) 

Biggest Droppers:
WrestleMania Mystery (-11)
Aloha (-10)
Chill Out (-9)
The Mystery Begins (-9)
Mask of the Blue Falcon (-9)
Sword and the Scoob (-9)

I hope you enjoyed reading this article! I had a lot of fun putting it together and doing this project, after having such a big gap in between watching some of these. As we look towards the next era of DTVs, I'm excited to see what they come up with next! In the meantime, if you'd like to share your faves/least faves, or your full rankings in the comments for these films, I'd love to read other people's lists!

A couple of weeks ago, the Scooby-Doo! Spooky Coaster reopened after being closed for nearly three years. During the closure, extensive upgrades were made to the roller coaster to improve the design and functionality.

Scoobster96 from the ScoobyAddicts forum had the amazing opportunity to go visit the new coaster! He took quite a few pictures of all the different upgrades, which he very kindly shared with me to post for you all on the blog! From looking at the pictures, the updates are so much cooler and more extensive than what was reported in the news. Through looking at Scoobster96's pictures, I thought it would be fun to do a more in-depth post about the upgrades that were made to the coaster these past three years.

The main Spooky Coaster sign was brought back to its original design. I did a side-by-side comparison featuring a picture I found in this Reddit community. The previous design used the movie poster's font. During the upgrades, the main sign was changed to the traditional Scooby-Doo logo. The bloody letters were refurbished and changed back to how it used to look when the park originally opened.

Here's are a couple images of some of the advertisements for the roller coaster as you're coming into the park, as well as a side view of the coaster entrance.

So just how long were the lines to ride the coaster during opening week? Scoobster96 said the lines were super long! The waiting area is divided into three sections. There were some upgrades made to the waiting areas to make it shadier on hot days.

See the lines for yourself:

To expedite the process once people get to the front of the line, a test car has been added midway through the line section. This allows ride attendants to see if people are the correct size for the lap bars to safely secure them inside the cars. Here's what the test seat looks like. You can also see they repainted the castle walls. Previously, the castle walls had been plain gray, but now the gray paint has purple highlights. The purple highlights were a part of the original design of the coaster, but were changed during the previous upgrade in 2018.

One of the major updates made was adding an handicap-accessible ride entry. Notice that it's written in the same font as the main sign on the front entrance.

Here are some images of the second part of the waiting queue! Lights were added to the suit of armor, and there have been some animatronics added to make it look like the suit of armor's eyes are watching your every move. The inside wall detailing was also repainted. There's also a screen that plays the entire 2002 live-action movie. Scoobster96 noticed that they cut off the end credits and added in an advertisement for HBO Max.

In the third and final section of the waiting area, ridegoers wait in a small hallway that leads to the boarding station. Besides being repainted, Scoobster96 said that most of this part of the area has not changed at all. There were some minor changes to the signs so that it used a font similar to the movie poster. Here's another slideshow of the third section:

Obviously, no pictures could be taken on the ride, but Scoobster96 shared that the animation quality of the screens throughout the ride has significantly improved. The screens included a recreation of the buffet from the film, the area where Velma first runs into N' Goo Tuana, and an old animatronic Scooby. The latter two of those features were reintroduced from the original ride. Many changes that were made during the 2018 upgrade were reverted back to the classic version of the ride. The only thing Scoobster96 noticed was removed was the laser lights.

On your way out, there is a recreation of the tiki bar from the film. Customers can order from the bar, which has a "spooky" menu of drinks based on the film. Drinks are served in the recreations of the red skull cups shown in the film. Here's a couple images of the tiki bar and its menu!

A huge thank you to Scoobster96 for sharing his pics of the ride for the blog. It was so fun to see all the different upgrades that have been made to the ride over these past three years! Be sure to check out his full review of the ride on the ScoobyAddicts forum.

Unless by some chance we get news today or tomorrow, this will be the last post of the year. Wishing everybody all the best in the new year! See you in 2026!

It goes without saying that this was not a good year for Scooby. This is the very first year that we've gotten no animated Scooby projects at all. Thankfully, we got some merch and brand collabs, but that's about it beyond the Hex Girls novel and the Lo-Fi album. Admittedly, I'm not that big into collecting merch, so this aspect of the year was unexciting to me. Unlike a lot of fans, I've just never been excited about the prospect of owning a bunch of merch just to say that I own it. I totally understand the appeal that collecting things has, but it isn't something I've ever found a strong interest in. That said, pretty much the only new release I was excited about this year was The Hex Girls: A Rogue Thorn. I really debated about whether to make a year-end post since it'd quite literally be scraping the bottom of the barrel. After a little thought, I decided to keep up the tradition, but with a bit of twist.

On a more personal tangent, the past few years have been a bit rough for me for a number of personal reasons. In fall 2022, I took a job away from family and friends for a couple years that was extremely unfulfilling. Long story short, it was a very bad fit for me, and it didn't help that the work environment leaned towards being toxic. This, amongst a couple other personal factors, put me in a mental space of not really feeling like myself these past few years. Thankfully, I have a much better job now, and am back closer to loved ones, so I have been starting to feel more like myself again. That said, this is completely unrelated to Scooby or anybody in the fandom, so I won't go into it any further than that. I only bring this up because for me, a defining attribute of this year has been choosing to focus my energy on the things that truly bring me joy in life.

Instead of ranking the new releases, I wanted to approach this post as a "what defined this year in the Scooby fandom for me." Usually (at least when I'm feeling like myself) I've never been someone who shrugs and says "well, I guess life sucks" when things aren't great. Finding my own fun, even when it's not out in the open, is something I've realized this year is important to me. Even if there were no new releases to enjoy, there are still so many fun Scooby-related things that I've done this year. In lieu of much actual content to rank, my Year in Review post this year spotlights what I think the highlights of my year inall things Scooby-related are.

5. Fanfiction
Long-time readers of this blog will know that in addition to writing for this blog, I'm also a fanfiction writer! This year, I published three Scooby stories. I wrote a Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! story around the original "one last summer of fun before college" premise. The story was inspired by the country/continent polls we were doing on here, and I think it turned out really well! Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! is such an underrated show, and it was fun to write a fic in that style.

For Halloween, I also published a story giving the never-explored original Red Skull Curse Case from "Happy Birthday, Scooby-Doo." Since it's presented as a "flashback" in the episode, it always bothered me that we never saw the original case. I've been saying for years that I really wanted an episode or DTV to give us the backstory, so it was a lot of fun writing this one. It was a fun challenge to create a story that bridged the Scrappy shorts and The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show.

The fic I most loved writing this year though was easily Shaggy the Influencer. The story features Shaggy and Scooby becoming cooking vloggers, but being challenged by one of their former foes, Redbeard, who's also become an influencer that is in competition with them. It's such a genuinely weird premise, but I am so darn proud of this story lol. It was a blast writing a novelty, tongue-in-cheek style story in the vein "A Scooby-Doo Valentine." Because of the time I put into them, I think Fangs for the Memories and Hexed will always be my top favorites, but Shaggy the Influencer​ still feels like one of the best things I've ever written.

4. Rewatching the Recent DTVs
A few months ago, I was thinking about how I've rarely returned to the more recent DTVs. Legend of the Phantosaur was the last DTV I've returned to regularly, but everything from Music and the Vampire on is not something I tend to watch. I've seen most of them maybe once since they came out, but there were some I don't think I'd seen since my first watch. Not rewatching them in so many years wasn't intentional, but if I'm wanting to rewatch a Scooby film, I've noticed I usually gravitate towards the older films that I have more nostalgia over.

Over the past few months, I've been gradually rewatching all of the DTVs from 2012 and after. I've had a blast revisiting some of these films. It's been wild to see how much my opinion has changed since first rewatch. I still have a few more that I need to rewatch, but I am planning on doing an article in the new year ranking and reviewing all of these films based on my rewatch. Some of my opinions have changed drastically since my 2022 rankings (including one towards the middle that falls all the way to third-last place). This has been a really fun project, and I'm so glad I decided to rewatch these after all this time.

3. Destroyed Cinema + Music Scooby-Doo Zine
This one is maybe a little bit of shameless self-promo, but I don't mean for it to be lol. In October, I had the wonderful opportunity of being asked to help work on a collaboration project with Destroyed Cinema + Zine. For Halloween, they published a special issue that was entirely Scooby-Doo themed. In addition to doing an interview for the first story in the zine, I also contributed the closing article for the issue, Exploring the Creative Directions of the Scooby Franchise. This was such an amazing project to be involved with! I'm honored to have been a part of creating this, and it was absolutely a highlight of my year.

You can check out the Scooby-Doo issue of this zine here.

2. Physical Media
During this time where there's been no new content, I feel like it's a great opportunity to return to some of the older, unappreciated stuff that I've glossed over in the past. Besides just Scooby, a running theme for this year has been watching obscure stuff from franchises I like a lot, but have never seen before. I've been a lifelong fan of The Simpsons, but I'd never seen most of the original Tracey Ullman Show shorts featuring the characters. This year, I finally checked all of them out. Another Hanna-Barbera related series I completed my watch of is The Flintstones. Previously, there wasn't any watch to two of the series (The Flintstone Comedy Hour, The Rubbles), and there was also a couple series I'd never given a chance (Cave Kids, Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs) because they didn't look good. Did I enjoy finally watching these? No, admittedly I thought most of them were pretty bad lol. (I will say Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs was surprisingly good, though) However, being the completist that I am, I feel great fulfillment in finally being able to say I've seen literally every piece of media from these franchises lol.

Back in May, you may remember that we had a Scooby-Doo Physical Media Appreciation Week. I hadn't expected for it to go in this direction, but hosting that week was such a blast that I started getting excited about physical Scooby media, especially in light of HBO Max's sudden removal of nearly all Scooby content from streaming. I loved doing all the different poll series this year related to physical media, but the reason I'm putting this on the list is because of the collection project it inspired me to embark on.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, I've never really been big into collecting things. Because of this, I haven't made it a priority to collect Scooby media beyond the DVDs with new episodes/films that come out. However, all of the physical media polls we did this year got me excited about the idea of collecting rare Scooby VHS tapes and DVDs that feature episodes that are unreleased anywhere else. I already owned the Cartoon Network tapes with "Wedding Bell Boos" and "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle," but there were six other VHS tapes and DVDs that have episodes not released elsewhere. These included:​

• The Flintstones in: Wacky Wayfarers VHS (features "Scooby and the Bandit")
• Scooby-Doo's Puppy Dog Tales VHS (features "Scooby and the Beanstalk")
• Hanna-Barbera's Personal Favorites: Scooby-Doo (features "Wizards and Warlocks")
• Scooby-Doo's Greatest Mysteries VHS (feature 7 of the Behind the Scenes shorts)
• Kellogg's Scooby-Doo and the Tiny Tour of Toon Mysteries disc 1 DVD (features "Bravo Dooby Doo")
• Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue: Exclusive Bonus Disc (features "Operation Dog and Hippy Boy")

Note that there is also the Hanna-Barbera Super Stars: Rompin' Romance VHS that features "Bride and Gloom." However, I consider that episode to be the second-worst of the franchise and actually find it pretty offensive, so I'm going to make an exception for owning that VHS lol.

So far, my journey of collecting these releases has gone super well! I've collected four of the releases. The only ones I'm still looking for are the Hanna-Barbera Personal Favorites  and Puppy Dog Tales VHS tapes. Both seem very difficult to find, but I'm hoping I'll be able to get them in 2026.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, I've never been into collecting, because the prospect of owning something just to own it doesn't excite me. However, given there's actually a practical reason to own these releases, I've been super excited about finding all these and adding them to my collection!

1. The Hex Girls: A Rogue Thorn
It was our only new release this year, and it still makes the top of my list! I loved this book and thought it was a great addition to the Scooby franchise. Before it's release, I know a lot of fans were wondering if this could possibly live up to Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost. After reading the book, I would argue that it didn't need to. This book is very much its own thing: a coming-of-age book intended to explore a different side of The Hex Girls. And despite being its own thing, the book still manages to feel at home with all the other media in the franchise. Between this book and the Daphne & Velma series, it has me really excited for hopefully getting more young adult novels in the future.

If you haven't already, check out my full review of this book.

With the sudden news of the recent Netflix/WB merger, I wanted to devote this final section to talking about my thoughts on the future of the franchise. I think the merger with Netflix will probably lead to a lot of big changes with Scooby. I think it's likely that Netflix will move ahead with Go-Go Mystery Machine and/or Scooby-Doo Gokko, in addition to the live-action series. I also think Netflix will probably start up the tradition of getting two DTVs per year again, although I think Netflix will switch them to direct-to-streaming films instead. I feel it's pretty likely that at the least, Netflix will want to release one new Scooby film per year.

The other big change that I think we're certain to see with Netflix is a switch-up with physical media. Because they want people to keep subscribing and watching content on their streaming service, Netflix rarely releases physical media. I've mentioned in the comment thread of the merger announcement that I hope they switch up their strategy regarding physical media given how many new properties they're acquiring. However, I ultimately don't think it is likely this will happen. Best case scenario, I think we'll maybe get a little bit of physical media as a "nostalgia" type thing for older content, but I don't see them releasing physical media for new series or movies. As a streaming service, the way they make the most money is through getting people to subscribe, so investing in physical media probably in their best interest.

The other big thing I think could happen is an idea that I want to give credit to Scoobylover for, since he posted this theory in the comment section. If Netflix adds most of the Scooby series to their service, I think we may be in for a potential renaissance of Scooby content similar to the 1990s. Maybe not quite to the same level, but I think Netflix is a more universally subscribed-to service than HBO Max is. I can totally see the general public falling in love with Scooby again if a lot of the content is widely available. I really hope something like this ends up happening, but if it does, I think it will immediately prove to Netflix the value in continuing to develop new Scooby-Doo series and movies.

I almost wish the merger had been announced a little earlier than this, so there was more to speculate on in this year-in-review post haha. But ultimately, considering this just happened and isn't 100% guaranteed to go through yet, there are still far more questions than there are answers. I'm very interested to see how the merger evolves and the affect it it has on the Scooby franchise.

Even though it's been a difficult year for Scooby, I'm happy that there's still been so many fun things to explore with the franchise. If you want to share the most memorable Scooby-related things from this year were for you in the comments, I'd love to see some of the things others have been doing this year to keep the spirit of Scooby alive! There's no question that this wasn't the best year for Scooby, but here's hoping 2026 is a much better year!

I've been gradually rewatching The New Scooby-Doo Movies throughout the year. While rewatching, I was thinking about the recent revelation that there were missing scenes from a handful of the episodes. A little background for anybody who doesn't know: when CBS originally reran the season 1 episodes, the episodes were edited from the usual 43 minute runtime down to 41 minutes. This was to make time for additional commercials. These edited versions of the episodes were mostly what aired in syndication. However, in the 1980s, some networks split each episode into a two-part episode, so it would fit in a half-hour timeslot. When they were split, the original 43-minute version was used. Other than "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair," the 2005 DVD The Best of The New Scooby-Doo Movies used the full versions of each episode. However, the six season 1 episodes missing from that set never had their missing scenes recovered. This is evident from that fact that they are all 41 minutes in runtime, whereas all other episodes in the series are 43 minutes. They were not included on The New Scooby-Doo Movies: The (Almost) Complete Collection DVD or Blu-Ray released in 2019. This is the only series in the franchise that has missing footage, and was affected by any sort of issue like this.

Last year, three of these missing segments were found by Chorake. (Credit for all the above info about how the episodes were edited is from a comment they left on this blog last year) The missing segments from "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair" and "The Secret of Shark Island" can be watched below.

I've never watched this series before thinking about where the missing scenes could be from. However, since we know they almost certainly exist, I tried to see if I could spot where a scene might have been taken out of those six episodes. I thought it would be fun to put together a post of my guesses of where the missing scenes are. If we ever get them someday, it will be super fun to refer back to this post and see if I was right!

For "Wednesday Is Missing," Velma mentions they encounter a mummy, but we never see this happen. The mummy is also referred to again later by the culprit. Given this, it seems only logical to guess that the missing scene involves a mummy. There is a choppy transition between Daphne asking Fred "I wonder what's next?" when they are split up, which suddenly shifts to the whole gang being reunited in the next scene. I would guess that there's a missing scene here, where one of the groups encounter a mummy before the gang reunites. It's probably Velma, Shaggy and Scooby, since the previous scene featured Fred and Daphne, and the usual format is to switch back and forth between the groups.

The obvious guess for "A Good Medium Is Rare" would be something related to the gargoyle, who is captured mid-way through the episode but never unmasked or explained. After rewatching the episode, I no longer think the missing scene is anything to do with the part with the gargoyle. In hindsight, this scene is early in the episode. The gang clearly doesn't know who the culprits are until the end, so it wouldn't make sense to have an unmasking be the missing scene. I think it's possible that the missing scene explains who the gargoyle is at a later part in the episode, but I don't think anything's missing right after that chase.

Rewatching the episode, there's another scene where there is a weird jump in the animation. There is a scene where the Masked Men look side to side for Fred and Daphne down the hall. Then, suddenly, they are already standing against the wall when Shaggy and Scooby come up to them. It could be just an animation error, but the music also suddenly changes at that exact moment, leading me to believe there should have been a scene in between. I'm admittedly unsure what exactly the scene would involve. I'll make a wild guess that it's another scene where the Masked Men find Fred, Daphne and Velma, but they manage to escape.

It's pretty clear what the missing scene in "Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hyde" is. There's clearly a scene with King Kong, since he's mentioned multiple times. I'd guess it's cut from the scene right before the gang reunites.

I did also take note of the scene where Sandy and Scooby are looking for clues, and Sandy starts her sentence with "Well, Scooby, you did it again! I don't know what you did, but you did it!" It's not really clear what she's talking about here. If "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair" had two, it's possible that there's another missing scene here too.

The scene from "The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall" seemed quite obvious to me. I'd never thought about it before, but when Creech lets Fred, Shaggy and Scooby into the secret passage, the audience never actually sees them exploring the passage at all. The scene switches to Daphne, Velma and Davy in the cavern, and then jumps back to Fred, Shaggy and Scooby in one of the main parts of the castle again. It seems certain that there's a missing scene where they explore that passage. It would be odd to have the writers set up that they're about to explore it, and then never actually show it. Similarly to "The Secret of Shark Island" scene, it would provide additional context to a scene that something that's mentioned but never shown.

"The Phantom of the Country Music Hall" was a tougher one. There isn't any clear spot for a missing scene, and I have no idea what the content of it would be. I'll make three rough guesses, though.

• I think there could be a missing scene during the first split-up, when Shaggy tells Scooby "Come on now and stay close." The transition between scenes seems a bit abrupt, and it seems like there may have been something that came before that line.
• Similarly, while Fred and Daphne are exploring the stage alone, the scene starts with "Maybe the others had better luck." This also seems slightly abrupt.
• I think this one is the most likely option. The bit where Shaggy and Scooby are looking for the xylophone (where Scooby bumps into the headless statue) seems like it could have been abbreviated in some way. It's very short, and just features Shaggy and Scooby running until they find the xylophone. Watching it from the lens of a potential missing scene, it seems incomplete to me.

A lot of my sleuthing came from the fact that the scene being taken out "The Secret of Shark Island" led to a transition where Shaggy started a scene by saying "However." Anything that seemed abrupt or unexplained was what guided my feelings about there being a potential missing scene here. In actuality, I have nothing to base any of my predictions in, but it was fun to try to see if I could sleuth out where the missing scenes might be.

I think this is a super fun subject, so if anybody else has any guesses on where these missing scenes might be, I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Many of my favorite Scooby episodes as a kid have remained my favorites to this day. I'm a pretty sentimental person, so I usually have a lot of nostalgia over things I loved in childhood! However, there are a handful of my favorites that haven't held up well as I've matured into an adult. I think it's only natural, since our tastes often change as we mature. As a kid, we often like stuff for more surface-level reasons, such as "I love that there's a castle in this episode!" or "The scary monster is really cool!" As we age, we often can better understand the reasons behind why we love different aesthetics, and start developing tastes for different styles of writing. 

I was thinking about this topic recently, and I thought it might be fun to go through some of the episodes that I loved as a kid, but no longer enjoy as much now. I thought about doing this list as a ranking, but this topic feels much more interesting to explore from a qualitative lens of how my tastes have changed. My opinion has changed slightly on lots of episodes as I've grown to understand deeper themes, tone and writing decisions in episodes, so I'm only going to include episodes that I considered my favorites as a kid. At the end of the article, I'll also briefly explore episodes I never cared for as a child that I've grown to love in adulthood.

Jeepers, It's the Creeper!
We're starting off here with a hot take! As a kid, I really liked this one because of The Creeper and the barn dance setting. Something about it was just so cool to me! I remember loving the Creeper's ghoulish green design. As an adult, I've grown to enjoy this one a bit less. It's still decent, but it's on the lower end of Where Are You for me now. I've grown to feel like a bit too much of the episode is spent running around.

The Scary Sky Skeleton
​My childhood favorites from The New Scooby-Doo Movies and The Scooby-Doo Show have remained favorites even in adulthood. We now move on to one of two Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show episodes that I loved as a kid. This is kind of an odd one, because I still like the first half of the episode a lot. When I was younger, I never really noticed that the quality takes a huge dip in the second part. The creepy atmosphere established in the first half feels like it mostly goes away, and the episode begins to feel more silly. I never really thought about things like complexity of tone, or consistency of writing until I was an adult. Little me just really liked the skeleton and airfield lol.

Rocky Mountain Yiiiii!
I remember loving this one for the wintery vibes. I always liked ski lodge settings as a kid (and something about it still appeals to me as an adult lol). The monster's design was also really cool to me! In adulthood, this one doesn't really hold up for me. The ski lodge setting has potential, but the mystery and overall execution of the episode feels kinda meh to me. As an adult, I've grown to realize that the episodes I love most are ones that focus on a compelling mystery. Episodes that focus a lot on running around, or the gang encountering the ghost everywhere are usually not as appealing to me anymore. This and "Jeepers It's the Creeper" are definitely cases of that.

Scooby in Wonderland
When I was younger, this was one of my favorite shorts. I liked Alice in Wonderland, so the idea of Scooby-Doo parodying that was really exciting to me! This is an interesting case because it's not one I realized I disliked until just a couple months ago. As an adult, I never really return to the shorts unless they pop up in a poll. I will pretty much always choose to watch an episode of pretty much any other series over these. The writing of these just isn't on par with the rest of the franchise imo, and even the best episodes only rise to the quality of a mid-level episode of any other Scooby series for me.

I rewatched this one back in August for the VHS Episodes poll series, and oof, it did not hold up well for me lol. The execution just feels really messy . The episode is just a bunch of different Alice in Wonderland scenes crammed together. There's no cohesion to any of it, and it feels like they didn't even attempt to follow the story structure of the film. There are a few "so bad it's funny" moments, like a sea monster attacking Shaggy through one of the doors for no reason lol. I never thought about it much as a kid, but this is another one of those "complexity of tone" cases, where I can better see as an adult what an unmitigated mess this one is haha.

Canine to Five
As a child, sometimes I loved an aesthetic that I've continued loving into adulthood. Other times, I liked episodes for a very simple reason that sort of crumbled when I took the other aspects of the episode into account. This short is an example of the latter. When I was younger, I think I loved the idea of the premise, but didn't consider how subpar the execution was. I still love the idea of the guys' being lab assistants for someone who has created a werewolf potion. Credit where credit is due, the first minute of this short has a really cool setup. However, once we get into the heart of the plot, it's mainly just a chase. We could have gotten a really cool plot about the guys trying to find a way to change the werewolf scientist back (or something like that), but the remaining six minutes are just spent running around, and the guys eventually bumble into the solution of turning him back at the end. It's a really cool premise, but the execution is just so meh to me now.

Me and My Shadow Demon
​As a kid, I couldn't get enough of the house's aesthetic or the Shadow Demon's design! This used to be my second favorite episode of this series, right next to "Scoobra Kadoobra." As I've gotten older, I don't feel like this episode is nearly as strong as young me gave it credit for lol. I certainly still feel that Befuddle Manor is a cool setting, and that the Shadow Demon's design is cool, but it feels like there are some missed opportunities here. I would have really liked to see the Shadow Demon be featured more prominently. The songs also feel kind of unnecessary to me, and detract significantly from the dark tone. This is an example of a favorite that still remains towards the middle of my rankings, but isn't the all-time favorite that it once was.

The Devouring
I'm maybe stretching this one a little since it was 2013, so I wasn't quite as young as I was when the rest of these were my favorites. However, I still think it fits into the overall theme of "episodes you see differently since you've matured." This is an interesting one that I really wanted to include here, because it has to do with understanding life in a more complex way, which is one of the best parts of adulthood imo. When I was younger, I really liked the design of the Gluten Demon. I've always liked the demon from "A Frightened Hound Meets Demons Underground," and the red demon here fit that typical archetype. I also thought it was a cool plot to have a ravenous monster haunting a restaurant, since it ties into Shaggy and Scooby's love of eating.

One of my favorite things about maturing has been growing to be kinder. As an adult, I've gained a better understanding of how everybody's going through different things, which emphasizes the importance of always being thoughtful towards others. In recent years, I've grown weird feelings about this episode. The episode feels framed as sort of a joke about overeating and making fun of people's weight. Not that I thought those types of jokes were funny before or anything like that, but I've grown to see this episode in a way that, at least for me, feels more thoughtful. I'm not a fan of this at all anymore, and would consider it one of the weakest episodes of the series. This could have been executed in a way that didn't feel like one big weight joke. The plot didn't really need to be explored in the way it was.

There are many episodes that my opinion has changed on slightly in adulthood. However, I thought it'd also be fun to take a look at the episodes that I never liked as a child, but now have grown to love today!

The Backstage Rage
This was always my least favorite episode of Where Are You as a kid. I really liked traditional ghosts and monsters as a villain, so a guy in a cloak didn't feel that scary to me. As an adult, I'm happy to report I've realized the cloaked figure is in fact, very scary lol. When we're kids, I think we often don't fully understand all the different  nuances that go into an atmosphere. This one leans heavy into the creepiness all being in the dark tone and setting. I never appreciated that as a kid, but now, this one feels like one of the spookiest episodes of the series. There's an undertone in this episode that feels like something could be lurking around any corner, and I find that extremely creepy now.

The Demon of the Dugout
As a kid, I think my only reason for disliking this was "Don't like sports + mid episode = don't care for this" lol. In recent years, this has grown to be one of my favorites. You may remember it was an honorable mention on my list of most underrated episodes in the entire franchise. Despite still disliking sports, I really love the setting now! The scene where the Dragon Beast follows them to their hotel is super terrifying. This has grown to be one of my favorites of The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show.

Scrappy Shorts
There are a number of Scrappy shorts I used to hate, but now find to be super fun. Since I've grown to enjoy all of my picks for the same reason, I decided to group them together. As kids, I'm not sure how deeply we can understand the idea of something being so bad or ridiculous that it's good. That concept might have been too big for our tiny brains at the time lol. There are a number of these I've enjoyed much more later in life for the campiness factor. These would include:

• Sir Scooby and the Black Knight
• Surprised Spies
• Scooby-Doo 2000
• Hothouse Scooby
• Slippery Dan, the Escape Man
• Up a Crazy River

Scooby's Gold Medal Gambit
I never cared for this as a kid. As I just mentioned, my preferred humor style was comedy that was blatant, whereas the campiness of this episode is more subtly-conveyed through its corniness. My opinion has done a complete 180 on this episode. As I've gotten older, I've grown to appreciate the wonder of campy things haha. I love how camp this is now lol. The Chameleon isn't a particularly threatening villain, but this is fun for how goofy it is. So glad I came around to appreciating the awesomeness that is this episode!

The Scooby-Doo Project
A few people on here have brought up how I used to hate this. Guilty as charged lol. When I was younger, I didn't care for this at all. I just found it to be too weird. Similarly to the last one, I don't think I fully appreciated satire. As I've matured, I've grown to appreciate a good satire, and find both of these to be great now. I love the campy, novelty feel of this special. I absolutely consider this to be a standout for their unique tone!

On the same token, I watched "Night of the Living Doo" not too long ago, and it still doesn't really work for me. I still find the humor to be a bit too weird in that one, but I do understand why it might appeal to some people.

3-D Struction
This is another cool one that I discovered in the past few years. As a kid, I didn't have a strong dislike for this or anything, but it was towards the bottom of What's New for me as one of the few unmemorable episodes. Wow, my opinion has changed sooo much since then! I absolutely love the museum setting now. The Gigantosaur is a really neat villain, and I've also grown to appreciate Melbourne O'Reiley's contributions to the episode much more than I ever did. He makes a really cool side character! I also really love the mystery here. Basically, every aspect of this appeals to me now lol. 

Uncle Scooby and Antarctica
We've arrived at another one from my underrated episodes list! I just found this kinda meh as a kid. As an adult, the dark tone is 100% why I love this one so much. I don't think I fully picked up on that when I was younger, so this one just kinda fell flat for me. The dark atmosphere and being stranded in a deserted area is so cool to me now! I wish I would have appreciated this one more in childhood.

E-Scream
I always thought this one was too weird as a kid. Now that I'm older, I've grown to love that weirdness. The gang disappearing one by one is such a high-stakes plot, and the Osomons manage to be really creepy villains. Once I got past this one being weird, I realized how cool and intense the bizarreness was, because over the course of the episode it begins to feel like anything could happen. This is an amazing episode that's grown to be one of my favorites of What's New (which is a huge feat considering how much I love so many episodes of the show). 

It was so fun much to explore my old childhood favorites through a new lens! It's super neat to look back at what younger me liked, and see how my tastes have changed over the years because of different experiences I've had. I think younger me would be happy to see that I eventually grew to appreciate some of the episodes I used to dislike lol.

This is a really interesting topic to me, so I'd love to hear everyone else's picks as well! I know we have a mix of adult and kid fans on here, but I think there's absolutely space for everyone to participate if they wanted to share! The younger fans can still maybe share episodes that they used to like (or dislike) when they were really young, but have had their opinions change as they've gotten a little older. I'm excited to see what episodes/movies everyone picks in the comments!

Over the five decades and counting of the Scooby-Doo franchise, so many monsters have been used as villains. However, somehow, there's a handful of monsters from famous myths and legends that haven't been utilized in the franchise yet. Becker, who's a frequent commenter here, suggested dedicating an article to ideas for monsters that hadn't been used. I thought this was a really fun idea, and came up with ten different villain ideas that I'd love to see used in Scooby episodes and films. I'll also include images and potential settings that could be used alongside the monsters. Note that a few of these may have been utilized in books and comics, but since I'm less familiar with those, I'm just going off of what hasn't been used in an episode or movie as my criteria for inclusion.

Nymph
A nymph is considered a Greek deity that personifies nature. There are two different types in lore, forest nymphs and water nymphs. In lore, they are said to have magical powers and shapeshifting abilities. I think it could be a really cool episode to have the gang out camping, and running into a forest nymph. Perhaps someone could dress up as one to hide an illegal logging scheme, lol. Similarly, we've had one fairy in the franchise, Princess Fairy Willow, but there's never been one that's used as a villain. Another great villain idea could be an evil fairy!

Hydra
We've had Medusa shown or mentioned in a few different episodes. In "It's All Greek to Scooby" from What's New Scooby-Doo?, Daphne dressed up as Medusa. We also had the Mask of Medusa in The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries episode "The Stoney Glare Stare," and she was originally supposed to be featured in "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle" before being cut for an unknown reason. That being said, I'd like to see a similar multi-headed villain used in the franchise - that being a hydra! Although people turning to stone forever might be a tad intense for Scooby, it could be approached like it was in "Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too" or "Scooby's Chinese Fortune Kooky Caper," where the culprits made shockingly convincing stone statues of their victims, when in reality they'd actually just been kidnapped. I think there could be a lot of settings that would work for a hydra, but a museum feels like an especially good one!

Ogre
This one was featured in a book, but I'd love to see an ogre featured in a Scooby-Doo episode! According to legend, ogres are typically said to live in caves or swamps. I feel like most swamp settings have included swamp monsters or witches, so it could be really fun to switch it up and have a swamp ogre!

Chimera
With all of the hybrid-animal villains we've gotten over the years (Jaguaro, Manticore, Griffin, etc.), a chimera would be a really cool villain! Chimeras have the head of a lion, goat, and snake all attached to one body. The body is made up of a snake tail, goat legs, and lion claws. Chimeras are from Greek legend, and are known for breathing fire. I couldn't find a lot of info on where chimeras live, but I think an underground system of caves (like in "Hairy Scare of the Devil Bear" from The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show) could be a super spooky setting for one!

Pegasus
This is another creature from Greek mythology, which is essentially a horse with wings. Like unicorns, the pegasus are usually known for being benevolent. However, perhaps there could be a ghost pegasus haunting a horse stable or a racetrack. I think this could make for a really unique Scooby episode!

Basilisk
This is a large serpent that's perhaps best known as being the villain of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Looking directly into the creature's eyes causes immediate death. While that's a bit intense for Scooby lol, I feel like they could alter the legend to be more Medusa-like, where it just turns people to stone to be more kid-friendly. An underground tunnel could be a great setting, but I think an even cooler way to approach the setting would be taking inspiration from Harry Potter. An episode could revolve around the gang investigating a castle, with a secret passage where the basilisk lurks.

Il Gatto Mammone
I've only been to one other country outside the United States - and that country is Italy! I've been there twice and have loved both of my trips. One of my favorite legends I learned about there is Il Gatto Mammone, which is essentially just a gigantic demon cat. The creature is known for attacking its victims without leaving so much as a trace, not even the bones! We've had a few cat creatures in Scooby, but all of them have been werewolf-like. Having it eat people would obviously be too intense for Scooby, but perhaps it could haunt a vineyard and eat all of the crops.

Popobawa
We've had villains from South American, European, Asian and Australian legends, but there are very few from Africa. Popobawas are evil spirits from Africa that can shapeshift into different forms. The legend mentions that the creatures can masquerade as humans by day, and turn into an evil bat-winged demon at night. The myth specifically explains that popobawas can pretend to be humans by possessing them, but I think it could be adapted to make it less scary and just have them pretend to take on a human form. The creature is said to reside on a few different islands and coastal areas, which makes me feel like an island would be a great setting for this monster!

Bunyip
The bunyip is a swamp creature from Australian legend, which to me, almost looks like a boogeyman of sorts. We've not had a boogeyman in the Scooby-Doo franchise (although the Swamp Creature from Reluctant Werewolf kind of looks like an unofficial one to me). That said, I feel like this could make a really cool Scooby-Doo villain! The design is super creepy and nightmarish, but I think the spookiness could be brought down just a little bit to make it appropriate for a Scooby episode. It's crazy to think we've never had a boogeyman in 50 years of the franchise!

Piranha-Goat
This last one is perhaps cheating, but there's one previously-used monster that deserves to be used in more than 30 seconds of a Scooby episode! With all the monster-hybrids in this list, I think having a full episode showing the mystery of the Piranha-Goat would be amazing lol. Perhaps it could involve a mystery on a farm by a lake to appropriately cater to both of the animals haha.

That concludes my list of villain suggestions! As the franchise continues to produce new series and films, I hope they continue mixing it up with unique villains. There are a lot of cool legends from different cultures out there, and I had a lot of fun exploring some of them as research for this post. If you have your own villain suggestions that you'd like to see in a Scooby episode or movie, I'd love to see others' picks in the comments!

Over the years, I've done a lot of different Halloween articles. I've done rankings of all the Halloween episodes and films, reviewed Happy Halloween and Trick or Treat, shared a full list of the Scooby episodes I watch for Halloween, and even given reviews of all the Halloween episodes another Hanna-Barbera show, The Flintstones. This year, I wanted to do something a little different that didn't overlap with what I'd done in past years. Since the "spooky" themes are one of the main elements of the franchise, I figured readers might also enjoy other "spooky" or Halloween-themed animated content. In this post, I'm going to share my list of all the animated content I watch every year at Halloween. This will include both Scooby and some other franchises that Scooby fans might enjoy!

In the past, it's been my tradition to watch all of The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror episodes (which is their yearly Halloween episode). Considering they now have 37 Halloween episodes, doing that has gotten increasingly unmanageable for obvious reasons lol. As a result, I've greatly trimmed down the list of episodes I watch at Halloween. Recently, I've shifted to only watching my all-time favorite Halloween (or spooky) episodes, since that's a much more enjoyable tradition than trying to get through a list of 40+ episodes every year lol.

I've never been a big horror movie fan, so I tend to lean more towards the lightheartedly-spooky stuff around Halloween. As a result, this list features almost entirely family-friendly content (with an explanation by the one show that is slightly adult-leaning). I'll start us off with Scooby, and transition into episodes and movies from other franchises!

The Headless Horseman of Halloween
I really like this one! Not only is the reimagining of the classic Legend of Sleepy Hollow story super neat, but I love the Headless Horseman's design. The goofy humor Scooby-Dum brings to this episode enhances an otherwise dark episode. Despite the contrasting silliness of Dum's antics and the dark tone, they balance out really well. The atmosphere of Crane Manor and the cemetery is also really strong here! In past years, I've mentioned not liking how long the plane scene is, but that's bothered me much less in recent years. This episode has continued to grow on me over the years for its excellent mystery. 

To Switch a Witch
This one is such a classic! It's one of the strongest episodes of The Scooby-Doo Show season 3. Even though she doesn't appear much, I really like Milissa Wilcox's ghost as the villain. The atmosphere of the episode is also very unsettling, between the eerie vibe of Arlene's house and the subplot with the villagers coming after Scooby and Shaggy. Despite how many directions this episode is pulled in, between the mystery and the townspeople accusing Scooby of being a witch, it manages to balance both plots really well. This is a fun episode that I love watching every Halloween.

A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle
Considering this is one of my favorite episodes of the franchise, popping this in the VHS player every Halloween is always a treat. Similarly to Boo Brothers and Ghoul School, I love the lightheartedly spooky vibe to this one. The atmosphere throughout the episode is so strong, and feels quintessentially autumn to me. Even the opening scene with the leaves blowing in the wind does such a great job of setting the tone. I love how many twists and turns the plot has! Scooby and the gang helping the monsters defeat a ghost is such an interesting plot. This is probably my all-time favorite Halloween episode to watch every year.

A Scooby-Doo Halloween
All of the What's New holiday specials are top notch, and this one is no exception. Velma visiting her aunt and uncle in Banning Junction makes for a really fun plot! While some of the gang's relatives can be a bit one-note and unmemorable, Aunt Meg and Uncle Evan are so warm, and feel like a natural fit to be Velma's relatives. Marcy is also an interesting character for her mysteriousness and standoffishness towards Daphne. I also really like the dual-mystery of the mayor's ghost and the scarecrows. On a personal note, I've mentioned it before, but I've always found it cool that they based it on a real place in Minnesota. I haven't been to the Halloween celebration, but I have visited Banning Junction before, and it's really cool to say I've visited an obscure location that a Scooby episode takes place haha.

Halloween
This is such a fun Be Cool episode! The mystery being the one case Fred could never solve as a kid really ups the stakes for this one. This has all the great humor you'd expect from a Be Cool episode. I particularly enjoy Shaggy's pocket costume, and the gag of Fred busting into a Halloween party declaring he'll unmask everyone lol. I like Baba Yaga from Mystery Incorporated a little more, but the one here is still a really strong villain here and feels like a perfect fit for a Halloween episode. The mystery is also excellently written and really interesting to try to figure out. I don't see this one mentioned a lot amongst Scooby fans, but it's an underrated gem imo.

Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School
Long time readers of the blog know that this is my all-time favorite Scooby movie. I've talked about my thoughts on this movie so much over the years, so I'll keep this short lol. Although it's not exclusively Halloween themed, there is a scene that takes place on Halloween. I really like the tradition of rewatching this every Halloween, and it feels like it's an excellent fit with the holiday despite only having one scene take place on the day.

Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King
This is another one I've talked about a lot. It's a polarizing movie amongst the fandom, since many fans dislike how fantastical it is. However, for me, the fantastical feel makes this one perfect for Halloween. It feels like a perfect encapsulation of the whimsical side of the holiday, and there's really no other Scooby film out there like this. I don't really love the how the later 2000s films focus almost entirely on Shaggy and Scooby, but their solo adventure here manages to be really fun. The plot of Shaggy and Scooby traveling through the monster realm is such an interesting plot! This is a perfect watch for when I want to get in the Halloween spirit.

​As an honorable mention, I also watch Witch's Ghost every year! While I don't necessarily do it at Halloween, the cozy fall setting of Oakhaven makes it so fun to watch every autumn!

That marks the end of the Scooby portion of this list! You've probably noticed that "Ghost Who's Coming to Dinner?", Spooky Scarecrow, Happy Halloween and Trick or Treat aren't here. While I do enjoy all of those, I mentioned at the beginning of this post that I made some cuts from my usual watchlist this year. Those four didn't end up making my list, just since I have so much else I want to watch, but they're still all mostly great episodes and films! I'm a little more lukewarm on Spooky Scarecrow, but really the only criticism I have it is that it feels unmemorable compared how iconic the other Halloween episodes are.

We've now moved on to the other Hanna-Barbera franchise featured on this list! Some of my favorite episodes have always been the spooky ones. There are several great spooky episodes in this show, but there's three that have always stood out as my favorites.

A Haunted House Is Not a Home
This season 5 episode was part of a three-episode stretch of Halloween episodes that aired in 1964. This is my favorite episode of the entire Flintstones franchise. The plot is very Scooby-ish in nature. Fred discovers that he has inherited his Uncle Giggles's fortune, but the catch is that he and Barney must stay one night in his uncle's haunted mansion. While there aren't any "ghosts" that are seen, there's still a ton of spooky stuff that happens throughout the episode. Fred begins to question whether the inheritance is worth it when he's attacked by a living suit of armor, and is creeped out by his uncle's cleaning staff, all of whom seem to want to scare Fred out of his fortune. Throughout the night, a creepy laugh can also be heard coming from Uncle Giggles's picture hanging in the dining room. The spooky atmosphere of the mansion is so amazing, and the dark tone and suspense in this episode is tons of fun. I would highly recommend any Scooby fans check this out if you haven't already!

The Gruesomes
This is the third episode in the three-episode stretch of Halloween specials mentioned above. The second episode, "Dr. Sinister," is also one that I love, but I decided to cut it this year due to not feeling as Halloween-ish as these other two. This episode involves Fred and Wilma having The Gruesome Family move next door to them, who are a spooky family living in a creepy house. When Fred and Barney are asked to babysit their kid, they have to try to survive in a house filled with monsters. This is my second-favorite episode of The Flintstones franchise. Season 5 has always stood out to me for its adventure-leaning plots, so the fact that this one channels major Scooby-Doo vibes makes this peak Flintstones for me lol. t's such a cool plot, and I love the lighthearted-spooky tone of the episode. There was one episode that featured The Gruesomes again, "The Hatrocks and the Gruesomes," but the episode didn't really capture the same creepy tone that this original one did.

The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone
The other two Flintstones episodes don't actually take place on Halloween, but this film does! This is a 50-minute film from 1979, involving The Flintstones and Rubbles winning an overnight trip to a Halloween bash at Rockula's castle in Transylvania on a game show. Scooby fans will recognize a familiar voice as the game show host - Casey Kasem! During their trip, The Flintstones and Rubbles encounter the real Rockula and Frankenstone who have woken up after a 500 year slumber. When all the other party guests leave, the Flintstones and Rubbles have to find a way out of the castle to survive the night. The tone of this movie is top-notch and amazingly captures a spooky vibe that feels straight out of a Scooby episode! I'd highly recommend Scooby fans check this one out!

There are two more Halloween episodes of The Flintstones that I've watched in past years from The New Fred and Barney Show. The first of these is "Stone Age Werewolf," which involves Fred and Barney going out fishing during a storm, and having to seek refuge on an island with a creepy house. They soon discover the house they're staying the night in is inhabited by a werewolf. The second episode is "The Flintstones Meet the Frankenstones." In this episode, Fred and Barney check out a new condor-stonium in town, and discover it's run by the creepy Frankenstone family.

The atmosphere of "Stone Age Werewolf" is amazing imo, to the point that achieves the status of timeless classic. I'm not fully convinced the writers understood what they were making, because the quality of this series is extremely inconsistent, but the atmosphere of this episode is so cool to me. "The Flintstones Meet the Frankenstones" isn't as well-written, but it still manages to be weird in a cool way. That all said, these aren't amongst my all-time favorites, so I cut them from my list, but I think a lot of Scooby fans would still enjoy both of these episodes too if you wanted to check them out!

This is the one pick on my list that's maybe a bit more adult-leaning, but most of these episodes are rated PG and I don't think it's overly scary or anything (at least, not the ones I'm recommending). For those that don't know, I'm also a huge Simpsons fan! I've literally watched every episode of all 36 seasons, and continue to check out the new episodes to this day. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I used to watch all 37 Halloween episodes (and counting, since they do a new one each year), but for obvious reasons, it was getting to be a bit much lol.

When I did a rewatch of the first nine seasons a few years back, I realized that they are my favorite seasons of the franchise. Something about those original seasons have such incredible humor and a timeless feel that hasn't quite been achieved in the seasons since then. That said, Treehouse of Horror I - VIII are my all-time favorites, and are the only ones that I now return to every single year. Each episode is a 7-minute creepy short story featuring The Simpsons, that takes place in a separate universe from the rest of the show. Unlike the Scrappy shorts, these shorts manage to be really cool and almost always use their time well! The first eight are timeless classics that I have so much nostalgia over rewatching. 

Although I probably won't rewatch them, a few of the later ones are also pretty good!  Treehouse of Horror XII, XIV, and Treehouse of Horror XXV all stand out to me nearly as much as those original eight. I particularly like the segment in XXV where Bart goes to school in Hell. It's a really cleverly-written segment that feels harkens back to that classic feel of the original series, and I love that.

Since there are 24 stories within these eight episodes, I won't review them all, but I'll list out my favorites!

• "Bad Dream House" (I)
• The unnamed third short in Treehouse of Horror II
• Dial Z for Zombies (III)
• Bart Simpson's Dracula (IV)
• Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace (VI)
• Homer³ (VI)
• The Thing and I (VII)
• The Genesis Tub (VII)
• Citizen Kang (VII)
• Easy Bake Coven (VIII)
• Hex and the City (XII)
• House of Whacks (XII)
• Wiz Kids (XII)
• Homer the Reaper (XIV)
• Stop the World, I Want to Goof Off (XIV)
• School Is Hell (XXV)

I will warn folks that there are some concepts leaning towards PG-13 in many of these, particularly Treehouse of Horror V, "Citizen Kang," "House of Whacks" and "Homer the Reaper."

This 1990 film from Tim Burton has achieved a cult following. Despite being from a famous horror director, this is kid-friendly. The movie follows mayor of Halloween Town, Jack Skellington, as he becomes bored with hosting the annual Halloween celebration. He soon discovers an unexpected source of inspiration when he stumbles upon Christmas Town, which is home to the North Pole and Santa. Jack and his Halloween Town citizens try to create a Christmas-themed Halloween, but it soon turns into a kidnapping when three of his more mischievous citizens capture Santa and try to take over Christmas.

I've got so much nostalgia around this movie! Tim Burton does an amazing job creating a cool universe with interesting characters and animation. I also love the nuance and character development conveyed in a relatively simple plot. It's such a cool vibe, and I have so much fun returning to this every Halloween. 

There is much debate over whether this is a Halloween or a Christmas movie, but I'm firmly on the side that this is a Halloween movie lol. Considering this takes place mostly in Halloween Town and uses mostly Halloween imagery/characters, it makes much more sense to watch this movie at Halloween to me. I do not understand the "let's watch a spooky movie at Christmas" argument of the other side lol.

This year, I also read a novel series serving as an unofficial sequel to the franchise, titled Long Live the Pumpkin Queen. The novel focuses around Sally's backstory, and explores her character in more depth. It was such an amazing read! When I first picked it up, I figured it might be of the same quality as the Scooby young adult novels. However, this was so good that I honestly feel like it could have been made into a sequel film. It's so good that I'm actually considering rereading this every Halloween! There are currently two books in this series, both of which are great, but I liked the first one just a little better for its timeless feeling and how immaculately close it stayed to the tone of the original film.

​I would highly recommend checking this one out. I think a lot of fans of Scooby would really enjoy this one!

This 1965 television special is an all-time classic, and my favorite Peanuts cartoon. For those unfamiliar with the franchise, this show revolves around a group of kids and their dog getting in misadventures around their town. This one features Linus trying to convince Lucy to spend Halloween in the pumpkin patch with him, where he believes a fabled Santa Claus-like figure called the Great Pumpkin will appear to deliver candy. The other kids make fun of him for this belief, but Linus is determined to show Sally that he will appear. Meanwhile, we see the other kids trick or treating. There's also kind of a weird subplot of Snoopy imagining that he's the Red Baron, but it's only a couple scenes. I really like the atmosphere of this episode, and have some level of nostalgia from watching this as a kid.

I still watch the specials for the four major holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter), but the others aren't good imo. I didn't think about it too deeply as a kid, but I will acknowledge that some of the Peanuts specials are actually kinda sad. A recurring plot point is that Charlie Brown is a kid who nobody likes, and many hints are dropped that he probably struggles with depression. Some of the other episodes are honestly rough watches for how poor his self-esteem is, a few of them maybe even leaning towards uncomfortable territory. That said, this one is thankfully spared from those weird undertones (other than the sad joke of Charlie Brown getting a rock in his trick-or-treat bag).

All of the franchises and films on this list thus far have been older ones, but there are a couple modern Halloween episodes/films that I enjoy! (and by an odd coincidence, both of them include Selena Gomez lol) Hotel Transylvania is a film franchise that kicked off with its first film in 2012. The film revolves around Dracula running a hotel for monsters. As his daughter Mavis is approaching her big 118th coming-of-age birthday, Dracula fears losing Mavis when she falls in love with a human. Throughout the film, he must learn to get over his fear of humans, as his daughter starts to grow up. This is such a cute concept for a movie. If you know me and how much I love this trope, you can imagine how much I enjoy the Universal Monsters (Dracula, Wolfman, The Mummy and Frankenstein's Monster) being the main characters lol. It's a really sweet, feel-good film that I'd absolutely recommend that any Scooby fans check out!

​There were four films in total in the franchise. The first one will always be my favorite, and is the only one I return to every year. However, the second one was pretty decent as well. The plot of that one revolves around Mavis and Johnny having a kid, and considering moving into a human community. I didn't love the villain, who is Dracula's dad and his vampire-bat (the latter of which I found quite annoying). The movie is still pretty cute though, and mostly stays true to the tone of the original. The bit where Dracula accidentally creates a viral video is still hilarious to me lol.

The third film, on the other hand, was really bad imo. It was basically the film equivalent of this meme, where the film oddly tries to assert that it's still "cool" for young audiences. The plot of the third film has Dracula's friends encouraging him to move on from his departed wife, and start dating again. The plot is mostly him trying to be a "ladies man" and find a girlfriend. In the first film, they set up this beautiful backstory in the first film where his wife tragically died, and how their love is everlasting even after her death. To have it all shrugged off as Dracula being overly nostalgic and needing to date again was just strange. There's also a traumatizingly cringey scene of Dracula doing the Bruno Mars "24K Magic" dance on a cruise ship, and omg, I considered leaving the theater during that scene lol. The film had already been so bad up to that point, and they don't even try to work it into the plot. It's just this random scene where all the monsters start doing this viral dance for literally no reason lol. It perfectly illustrates what I was saying above about how this whole movie felt like an attempt to assert that this franchise was still "cool" for the kids, which made it so cringey.

The fourth film, which came out a few years ago, was much better. It doesn't have any of the cringiness of the third film, and feels like much more in line with the previously established tone of the first two films. The humor was once again pretty funny, and the body-swapping mad scientist plot is pretty enjoyable for what it is. Oddly, what I remember best about this film is Dracula being bitten by a mosquito, and proceeding to slap his own face more and more aggressively, until he slaps himself unconscious lol. The zany humor style of the film was admittedly right up my alley lol. While 2 and 4 are good, I only rewatch the first one every year.

Halloween
This one isn't animated, but I'm including this as a "bonus" on the list since it fits into the family-friendly category. When two of the actors released a rewatch podcast for the series last year, I recently got back into Wizards of Waverly Place. I really enjoyed the show when I was younger! In a nutshell, Wizards of Waverly Place follows the adventures of a wizard family that is training their teenage kids to use magic. The series mostly focuses around Alex Russo, who is a mischievous but well intentioned wizard known for getting into misadventures. Last year, I watched the "Halloween" episode for the first time in many years, and I loved it! The plot of the episode features the Russo family trying to win a "best haunted house" contest. To boost their chances of winning, Alex and her friend Harper go and get real ghosts from the Wizarding World, and Halloween mischief ensues. While it's not a Scooby-ish plot per se, it's still a cute, feel-good episode that's a really fun watch.

I hope you enjoyed checking out my list of Halloween content, and that you maybe found a piece of new Halloween content from it that you're interested in checking out! This post was different from the articles I traditionally write on here, but I had a lot of fun putting it together. Typically I stick to one large article per month, but I'm excited to share I've put a few fun surprises together for Scoobtober. There will be a couple more articles coming a bit closer to Halloween! In the meantime, if you want to share your own lists of Halloween content that you watch every year in the comments, I'd love to see what others are watching this spooky season!

Over the years, Scooby has had a ton of great episodes and films parodying classic stories, whether they be fairy tales or adaptions of all-time classic novels. A couple weeks ago, I published a post ranking all the Scooby episodes that reimagined classic films. I'd originally said this post would be coming next month, but I had some extra time to finish part 2 of this article series early!

Now, I'm going to go through all of Scooby's reimaginings of classic fairy tales and novels For the sake of this post, any fairy tales or stories that were made pre-1950 will be included here. I'm only ranking full re-imaginings of classic stories here, so anything that just includes brief references to classic stories won't be included.

16. A Fright at the Opera
Classic Tale: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1909)
This episode comes in last for not staying true to any aspect of the classic novel, other than having a phantom who is in an opera house. In terms of plot, there's really not much to speak of here, as the whole short is spent running around without any other nuance to the story. The short ends on a baffling note, where Shaggy suggests that since there's no way out, they just have to create one. He and the dogs then proceed to inexplicably jump through a painting of the Eiffel Tower, and successfully escape from the phantom. Unfortunately, the ending doesn't fall in to the "so bad it's funny" category, like Scrappy dropping the lava monster into the volcano in "South Seas Scare." It just feels uninspired and like a huge cop-out making me wish I'd spent those seven minutes doing something else lol.

15. The Ransom of Scooby Chief
Classic Tale: The Ransom of Red Chief (1907)
I really debated about whether to put this or "A Fright at the Opera" last. Both episodes are ones I strongly dislike, but in this ranking, the tiebreaker was that this one has a plot that at least somewhat tries to stay true to the classic story. It's not a plot I particularly like; however, I will take an attempt (even if it's a bad one) over random chaos. I don't think the kidnapping plot is executed in a particularly entertaining way here. The kidnappers are not good villains. They are more annoying than menacing to me. I also don't think Scrappy's dog friends are very fulfilling substitutes for Fred, Daphne and Velma. As a reimagining though, it follows the kidnapping storyline closely. It's followed even down to framing Scooby and Shaggy as being famous enough for them to call Hollywood demanding a ransom. However, this episode feels like a wasted opportunity where no element is executed in a way that's particularly interesting.

14. Scooby in Wonderland
Classic Tale: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
In the past, I've had a little bit of a soft spot for this one, just because I really like Alice in Wonderland and thought it was cool that there was a Scooby episode re-imagining the story. For this post, I rewatched the episode for the first time in nearly a decade, and it was surprisingly so much worse than I remembered. The pacing feels really poor here imo. There's not any attempt at a story structure, so the episode is just 15 second scenes reimagining various parts of the story one after another, without any cohesion to it. The constant random chaos makes it feel like the writers weren't really sure what they wanted this to be. While I appreciated the attempt to re-imagine as many different Alice in Wonderland scenes as possible, there are also a number of scenes that don't make any sense, such as Shaggy opening one of the wacky doors and having a sea monster jump out at him. I can't really say I'm sure what the writers were trying to do here, but this is a disorganized mess that left me feeling confused.

13. Scooby and the Beanstalk
Classic Tale: Jack and the Beanstalk (1734)
​While the plot is at least not as chaotic as "Scooby in Wonderland," this is another episode that feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity. The episode features Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy eating beans in a field (oddly lol). When a rainstorm causes the beans to get soggy, they dump everything out, and go to sleep. In the morning, a huge beanstalk has grown, as seen in the classic tale. The episode is pretty decent up to this point, but when they meet the giant, the episode turns into the same "aimless running around" type plot that many of these other shorts have. There isn't really much of an attempt to do anything creative with the plot here. While it may not be as chaotic as the previous one, this similarly feels like a wasted opportunity that doesn't go anywhere interesting.

12. Scooby Nocchio
Classic Tale: Pinocchio by Carl Collodi (1883)
Unlike the previous three shorts parodying classic stories, this one is actually pretty good! The plot revolves around the guys being at the movies. When Scooby goes to get more popcorn, he's given tickets to an amusement park by a shady-looking guy. However, the catch is that Scooby can't tell his friends who gave him the tickets. Scooby takes the tickets anyway, and takes Shaggy and Scrappy to the amusement park. At the park, Scooby's nose begins to grow whenever he lies, and they soon discover the man's sinister intent to turn them into donkeys. Compared to the previous two, this one feels refreshing for how it uses the classic premise well in a way that's interesting. ​While nothing groundbreaking, this episode is really fun for what it is.

11. Scooby's Trip to Ahz
Classic Tale: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum (1900)
This is one that I still have a soft spot for. Similarly to Scooby in Wonderland, the plot features Scooby falling asleep and dreaming he's in Oz. However, the premise is so much better executed this time, and the classic The Wizard of Oz tale is retold in sequence. The way the film was shortened also feels natural. It's not overly rushed or chaotic like "Scooby in Wonderland" was. I liked how some of the parts of that had to be shortened were interpreted in a quirky way, such as the Yellow Brick Toad and the witch's singular flying monkey (the latter of which who I stan, btw lol) It's really nice to see one of these shorts parodying classic tales take full advantage of its premise.

10. The Hound of the Scoobyvilles
Classic Tale: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)
This is a really good episode! While I've never read the classic Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Barkervilles, I liked this one quite a bit. The episode centers around a monstrous hound stealing sheep while the gang visits Scotland. The hound's coming was foretold in legend, which has the townspeople spooked. However, Scooby is blamed for the sheep stealing, and the gang has to clear his name. While nothing transformative, the episode has a neat spooky vibe that does a great job establishing the tone of this series (as this is the premiere episode). I really liked the villain's design here, and the strange hand holding the ring makes the setting feel even more spooky and mysterious. Overall, this is a really solid episode that I would recommend checking out if you haven't.

9. Scooby-Doo! FrankenCreepy
Classic Tale: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
I love how they reworked the classic Frankenstein tale around Velma's ancestry. The references to old villains have gotten a little played out at this point, but back then, I remember really enjoying the mystery centering around four of the gang's classic foes. Besides beating the long line of future DTV films to use classic villains, I also felt they were well-incorporated into the story here, and not forced in just for the sake of a quick reference. I will say that I wasn't a huge fan of the transitions in this film, but otherwise, the references to old content and cheeky use of "Pennsylvania" instead of Transylvania is pretty fun here! I haven't returned to this one in a while, but honestly, maybe I should because it's a pretty solid film.

8. The Dreaded Remake of Jekyll and Hyde!
Classic Tale: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
I've talked before on here about how some of Guess Who's nostalgia feels a bit bland and forced at times. This episode, on the other hand, does a pretty good job capturing the vibe of The New Scooby-Doo Movies. Of course, it isn't exact, but the general vibe of the set and the multiple monsters make this episode feel about as close as this series gets to pulling off nostalgia in an appealing way, at least for me. It is a good episode, and it was really fun seeing Sandy again!

7. Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright
Classic Tale: The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1909)
This is a really solid movie that's not even in the same galaxy of quality as "A Fright at the Opera." The plot involves the gang trying to solve the mystery of a phantom's appearance while participating in an American Idol style talent show. The film reimagines The Phantom of the Opera​ in a really cool way that feels updated and modern. The twist at the end is really well-executed, and the mystery is super interesting to follow. The only aspect of the film I don't love is the Fred and Daphne drama. The film frames it as Daphne realizing she has feelings for Fred for the first time. It feels a bit rehashed to me, especially since it was originally released where there was a plethora of Fraphne content with Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated. Otherwise, this movie is great and the re-imagining is really well done here!

6. Sandy Duncan's Jekyll and Hydes
​Classic Tale: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
This is a fun episode! Despite my nostalgia for The New Scooby-Doo Movies, I'd put it on the lower end of the series, but that doesn't mean it still isn't a great episode. Since I'm ranking these based on how they interpret classic literature, this one does lose a few points in the sense that its storytelling is pretty surface-level compared to "Nowhere to Hyde." The plot basically just is about Sandy Duncan and her remake of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but we don't really see any detailed scenes filmed, and beyond Mr. Hyde being here, there aren't very many elements of the story featured. Despite this, this is a pretty cool episode and I really like all the different villains here. Sandy is also a great guest star!

5. Scoo-Be or Not Scoo-Be?
Classic Tale: Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599-1601)
This is one of my favorite New Scooby-Doo Mysteries episodes. As recently mentioned in the honorable mentions for my underrated episodes list, I think this one is super underrated for the cool double (or triple?) mystery. I love the creepy atmosphere that the hotel has! While I enjoy both villains, the Ghost of Hamlet particularly stands out to me as having a really cool design and spooky voice. We also have the classic Hamlet character of the sea demon here lol. Kidding of course, but despite that there were creative liberties taken with interpreting the story, it works surprisingly well here! The twist that there is a second sea demon is also really neat.

4. That's Monstertainment!
Classic Tale: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
This is an iconic episode that is a standout for its series. This episode has the gang being sucked into The Ghost of the Son of the Bride of Frankenstein by one of the 13 ghosts, Zomba. Despite the fancy title, it is essentially a re-imagining of Frankenstein. While I really love this series, I feel it does struggle a little at times to balance the more comedic moments with its extremely dark premise. However, I feel this episode does a great job of it, and feels genuinely very creepy all throughout the episode. A big part of that is Zomba, who is in my opinion the scariest of the 13 ghosts by far. The re-imagining of Mary Shelley's classic tale fits super well into the episode here. The Frankenstein universe is perhaps one of the most atmospheric settings in the entire series. This is a really cool interpretation of a classic novel, and it fits into the plot of the series perfectly.

3. The Headless Horseman of Halloween
Classic Novel: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (1820)
This is an awesome episode that has only continued to grow on me over the years. The classic Sleepy Hollow tale makes a perfect Halloween episode here, with an extremely strong setting and villain that has rightfully achieved its classic status in the Scooby franchise. I love how all the different elements of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are worked into this episode so flawlessly, in a way that feels like exactly like any other Scooby-Doo mystery. While I used to feel the plane scene went on a little long, it doesn't really bother anymore, and this episode continues to grow on me more and more. Of course, Scooby-Dum also brings some wonderful comedy relief to an otherwise very dark episode (he's always a joy in any episode he's in lol). This is a fantastic retelling of the classic novel, but two episodes rise above it for me.

2. Nowhere to Hyde
​​Classic Tale: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
This is one of my favorite Where Are You episodes, and one of the best episodes of the franchise in my opinion. This is another example of a classic story being perfectly translated into a Scooby-Doo mystery. Dr. Jekyll's house feels like a quintessential Scooby-Doo haunted house, and it's so atmospheric. The ghost of Mr. Hyde is an amazing villain that has achieved iconic status for good reason. His design is super creepy, and he feels like he fits right in with the other classic Scooby-Doo villains from this series imo. Without providing spoilers, I also love the twist of how the episode makes you wonder whether to suspect a certain person, and then sykes you out at the end. This is an all-time classic.

20. Scooby-Doo and Cyclops, Too!
Reimagined Show: Paradise Island (1977-1984)
Unlike the next post will be, the bottom entries of this ranking aren't full of low-quality Scrappy shorts. This is the only episode here that I find to be not all that good. The plot revolves around the gang visiting Paradise Island (a reimagining of Fantasy Island, which was a famous TV show airing at the time). While on their vacation, they're asked to help a man named Barney rescue his sister from a zombie-like trance. As the gang investigates the mystery, they discover that a cyclops is luring people into his mines to turn them into zombies. This isn't bad in the same way that any of the Scrappy shorts from the previous ranking are. Honestly, the only thing I didn't like about this one is that the execution felt rather weird, and the plot felt a bit thin compared to other episodes. 

19. The Wild Brood
Reimagined Film: The Wild One (1953)
There aren't many rankings where I'd place two 11-minute Scrappy episodes above a Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episode, but we still have one remaining even after "The Wild Brood" goes out. This has always been one of my least favorite Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episodes. While the alien motorcycle gang coming to town is a cool plot, this episode has always felt a little weird to me and like it doesn't quite fit with the tone of the show. Velma and Daphne just agreeing to go with a random motorcycle gang also feels a bit odd and out of character for them. I feel like this episode got a bit bogged down by all the relationship stuff, which makes me like it a bit less than other episodes. I've never seen The Wild One so I can't really speak to how good of a parody it is, but this is near the bottom for me in terms of Mystery Incorporated episodes.

18. Mission Un-Doo-Able
Reimagined Series: Mission Impossible (1966)
I know a lot of people enjoy this one, but it's never been a favorite of mine. This episode parodies Mission: Impossible by throwing the gang into an action-packed spy plot. The gang is framed as secret agents in this episode, who are out to stop the evil criminal Mastermind. He has taken over the Statue of Liberty, and plans to use his transponder beam to control the world. While this sounds like a cute plot in theory, the execution is kinda meh for me. It probably would have worked better if there weren't so many spy plots in this series, causing this one to blend in with the rest of the bunch. The bit with the robot also was sort of cute, but ultimately feels like a bit of an unnecessary diversion from the main plot.

17. The Maltese Mackerel
Reimagined Film: The Maltese Falcon (1941)
This parody of the noir film The Maltese Falcon has one of the best atmospheres of any Scrappy short. It isn't anything on the level of next episode, which is another reason why I put this one below it, but it is pretty spooky and well-crafted for one of these shorts. The plot revolves around Shaggy and the dogs being tasked by Uncle Fearless to deliver a golden statue to the docks. However, they soon discover they're being followed by somebody else who wants the statue for their own. I haven't seen The Maltese Falcon to compare, but for once, this short has a great storyline and a solid atmosphere. 

16. Howl of the Fright Hound
Reimagined Film: Terminator (1984)
I have seen the Terminator films and think they're decent, but this episode is another one that's just okay. A big part of this is that much of the episode is spent with Shaggy, Velma and Scooby drama, which is by far my least favorite overarching plotline of Mystery Incorporated. Despite this, the episode does have some aspects that I like. The Fright Hound was a really cool villain, and that scene meeting Pericles in the Animal Asylum is super well done! Overall though, the heavy emphasis on the relationship drama overshadows the episode for me. It also probably doesn't help that the Terminator films aren't a go-to film for me, even if I did enjoy them a fair amount.

15. The Fall Dog
Reimagined Show: The Fall Guy (1982)
This episode reimagines the film The Fall Guy, which is about a stuntman who becomes involved with a spy plot. This episode has the gang visiting Hollywood so that Daphne can interview a famous Hollywood director for her journalist job. However, when they arrive, they find out the stuntman on the director's current film has quit due to a gremlin sabotaging his stunts. The gang offer to take the stuntman's job, so that they can get to the bottom of the mystery. The plot of the episode is really fun, and works perfectly with the vibe of the series. Despite parodying an un-Scooby-like show, the execution doesn't feel weird or off like "Scooby-Doo and Cyclops, Too!" did. The gang being stuntpeople is a lot of fun here, and the plot is really engaging to follow.

14. The Movieland Monsters!
Reimagined Films: The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Searchers (1956), Casablanca (1942), and A Night at the Opera (1935)
This episode reimagines so many different films, but I feel like it does a great job balancing them. I've not seen any of the films here except The Wizard of Oz, but I liked how it uses the time to provide a cute little sampling of all of them since the focus is split between so many. Design-wise, the villain is one of my favorites of this entire series. However, the name is perhaps my least favorite of the whole series, as "Ghost Monster" feels rather uninspired as a villain name lol. Carol was also a really good guest star who felt passionate about the role. The series ending with her trademark "end of show" song was also sweet. While it isn't my favorite reimagining here, it was cool to see this episode take on a different format to pay homage to so many classic films.

13. Doom Service
Reimagined Film: The Shining (1980)
This isn't the only reimagining of The Shining to be in this article. Despite it not being my favorite of the two, this is still really fun! The plot involves the gang staying at Overview Hotel, but discover the owner's ghost is haunting the place. Although the ghost just looks like a regular guy, his voice and overall vibe is creepy enough to make him an excellent villain. I also really like how strong the hotel setting is. However, my favorite part is the mystery! The mystery is really-written here, and there are a lot of great suspects.

12. Battle of the Humungonauts
Reimagined Film: War of the Gargantuas (1966)
​This episode reimagines the 60s Japanese film War of the Gargantuas, featuring two huge monsters destroying a city. This is another film I haven't seen, but I like the episode quite a bit! The villains' designs were really neat. I also liked that they used the same song from the movie as a reference! The team outfits were also very cute haha. The aspect that drags this episode down a bit for me is the Shaggy, Velma and Scooby love triangle, which I already mentioned a couple rankings ago that I didn't care for. I don't feel like the emphasis on that plotline is quite as heavy as in "Howl of the Fright Hound," which gave this one a few more points, but it still does drag the episode down a bit from where it could have been.

11. It's a Wonderful Scoob
Reimagined Film: It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
This 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo episode shows us what life for the gang would be like without Scooby-Doo! When Scooby is shown traumatic memories of Zomba, Marcella and opening the Demon Chest, he decides to quit the gang. This leads the gang to hire his replacement, who is a lazy sheepdog named Bernie Gumpshire. We even get a cameo appearance from Ronald Reagan haha. This is a super fun novelty episode, and arguably one of the best of the series. Unlike many of these films, I saw It's a Wonderful Life several years ago with a friend, and I feel this episode did a fantastic job of parodying it. It hits all the major plot points of the film, in a way that still feels true to the franchise. This episode captures the spirit of the original film very well.

10. Total Jeopardy!
Reimagined Show: Jeopardy! (1964-present)
This is a bit of a different type of parody than the rest of the list in the sense that it's a game show, but I wanted to still include it here. This was a really good episode. I'm so glad they put it out the week of Alex Trebek's passing to honor him. He was a really good guest star! I also liked the episode's unique structure, where the plot focused partially on the gang playing actual game show, and the other parts had the villain chasing the gang. I thought it was cool that the villain was a robot that was the gang's competitor! Having the robot sometimes be calm and collected, but going crazy at other times, created a really interesting dynamic for the episode.

9. The Night Ghoul of Wonderworld
Reimagined Film: Westworld (1973)
In terms of the classic 70s era, this is my least favorite show that is fully Scooby (not including Laff-a-Lympics), because of how the show placed emphasis on Scooby, Shaggy and Scrappy and pushed Fred, Daphne and Velma to the background as a result. Personally, my favorite shows are the ones where there's a balance between all gang members contributing to the episode, instead of just focusing on Shaggy and Scooby. Despite this, this is one of my favorite episodes of The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show. The mystery feels really strong here, and I love the twist near the middle. The Night Ghoul is an awesome villain, who is probably one of my favorites of the series. I also really love the creepy, dark vibe of this episode! The episode has a really strong atmosphere and does a great job parodying Westworld​. Amazing episode!

8. Scoobygeist
Reimagined Film: Poltergeist (1982)
Despite being an 11-minute Scrappy short, this is one I hold in really high esteem. The episode, which parodies Poltergeist, has Daphne daring the guys to spend the night in a haunted house. The house has such a creepy atmosphere, and despite there being a lot going on, the tone is super strong. Throughout the episode, Shaggy and Scooby discover that the house is more haunted than they could have ever imagined, with the house being full of restless spirits. The fact that this scenario is Shaggy and Scooby's worst nightmare makes this episode have such a cool vibe, especially since it's all framed around the dare that Daphne is confident the house is not haunted. Some of the villain designs are really cool as well! One of the best parts of this episode is that it does an excellent job with pacing. It doesn't feel too rushed or anything, and feels like it uses its length well to advance the story. This is my favorite 11-minute episode in the entire franchise.

7. Go West, Young Scoob
Reimagined Film: Westworld (1973)
​It was a bit challenging to pick which episode didn't make the top 5, but I'm going to go with this one. ​This is the second episode in the franchise to reimagine Westworld. The episode involves the gang traveling to Cyber Gulch, which is a Western ghost town with robot residents. After they arrive, the robots suddenly gain minds of their own, and begin capturing humans to drain them of their energy. I really like the dark tone that this episode has, and how high-stakes the situation feels compared to the average Scooby episode. The mystery is also really interesting and complex with lots of twists and turns. The suspiciousness of the sheriff and unclearness of his motivations also adds a really interesting element to this episode. Perhaps what I love most though is how atmospheric the setting feels. Despite this being the second episode to parody Westworld, this plot feels unique and not at all like a retread of what happened in "The Night Ghoul of Wonderworld." This is such a good episode, and the fact there are four other episodes above it only goes to show how strong the rest of this list is.

6. Web of the Dreamweaver
Reimagined Film: Labyrinth (1986)
This is one of my favorite Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated episodes. The Labyrinth-inspired mystery of a villain coming to people in their dream mazes is such a neat idea for a Scooby episode. Despite that the plot is a bit dark for a Scooby episode, I feel like it fits perfectly with the mature tone of this series. The Dreamweaver is one of my favorite villains of season 2, and I love how he takes inspiration from Freddy Krueger. Considering the villain can seemingly enter people's dreams, this episode feels super high stakes. I love the connection to Dungeons and Dragons, and how Shaggy and Sheriff Stone are closeted players. This episode is such a blast, and is a highlight of season 2 for me. Despite "Wizards and Warlocks" (which was a Scrappy era episode parodying the game) growing on me, I feel like this episode reimagines the game so much better, and is super well-rounded despite the plethora of media inspirations it pulls from.

5. In Space
Reimagined Film: Alien (1979)
I can't say I ever expected an episode parodying Ridley Scott's Alien, but I am totally here for a Scooby-ish take on it with the Space Kook as the villain. The episode feels like it fits right in with Be Cool's other reimaginings of classic Where Are You episodes. I love how this episode is essentially a classic Scooby episode reimagined through the lens of a classic film. For whatever reason, this episode took some time to grow on me, but once it did, it has steadily risen in my series rankings for Be Cool. Despite parodying a very serious film with a dark alien contagion plot, the episode does an amazing job fitting with the series' goofier style and tone. Fred accidentally parking the Mystery Machine on a space station kicks the episode off to a hilarious start, and I feel like the gang's characters are still really able to shine as themselves, despite the reimagining of this film perhaps sounding un-Scooby-like on paper. This is a great episode and I would highly recommend checking it out if you haven't!

4. Doo Not Disturb
Reimagined Film: Psycho (1960)
This is one of the best episodes of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! Not only is it a really interesting interpretation of Psycho that feels Scooby friendly, but it also accentuates this series strengths. This episode is the darkest of the entire series, and The Ghost of Mother has to be the creepiest villain of this series. Despite this, the episode still does a fantastic job blending in this series's signature brand of comedy. The ghost of a mother coming back from the grave to scold someone is so Be Cool-core that it hurts lol, but it is executed in such a spooky way. There are still lots of laughs here, despite a very unsettling premise and setting. I go back and forth between this and "Some Fred Time" being my favorite of this series.

3. Escape from Mystery Manor
Reimagined Film: Saw (2004)
​Given how incredible my top 3 are, it was so tough choosing between them! This episode is an incredible parody of Saw, which was never a movie I would have expected to see parodied in the Scooby franchise. Despite how extremely frightening the film is, this episodes manages to do an amazing job converting the plot into an episode that isn't too scary for Scooby, but is still pretty scary. The atmosphere of Darrow Mansion is absolutely terrifying in this episode, and all of the various traps around every corner creates a ton of suspense! Despite not being a ghost or monster, Danny Darrow is one of the creepiest villains of the show imo. It's easily one of the darkest, most high stakes episode of this series.

2. A Haunting in Crystal Cove
​Reimagined Film: Poltergeist (1982)
"A Haunting in Crystal Cove" is another really cool episode that reimagines the movie Poltergeist. Despite "Scoobygeist" already parodying the film, this episode still feels really fresh, and like it's able to touch on all the main aspects of the film without repeating anything from the 1983 episode. This episode feels even more high-stakes and terrifying in tone than "Scoobygeist" did, and a big part of that is that the ghost is completely invisible for most of the episode. The plot about Mayor Jones acting suspicious also adds an extra layer of creepiness to the story, as the viewer is prompted to wonder what he has done for this spirit to be haunting him. Given the gang's uncertainty about Fred's dad was part of the overarching plot, this episode feels like it perfectly fits into the overarching story, and is able to move it along in a significant way. Towards the end, we see the ghost is a creepy cloaked figure. The Shadowy Figure may be one of my favorite villains of the series for how creepy and sinister it manages to feel, despite the generic design. Also, this episode also features a character I stan: Tyler, who is Fred's moose head on the wall that he talks to sometimes lol.

1. Night Terrors
Reimagined Movie: The Shining (1980)
"Night Terrors is an all-time classic. The episode features the gang visiting the Burlington Library, where they stay the night and begin having wild hallucinations about monsters. When I first saw the episode in 2012, I honestly found it to be a bit weird. However, when I rewatched it, the episode steadily grew on me, and is now one of my favorite episodes of the entire series. The library has such a spooky atmosphere that is almost unparalleled, despite how many amazing settings this series had. And while very weird, the hallucinations the gang have throughout the night are the best kind of weird, because they're so terrifying, and make you wonder what in the world is going on in this bizarre library. The villain designs in this episode are also super cool, especially the banshee and the fiend. This is such an incredible episode, and is the best reimaginings in the entire franchise.

I hope you enjoyed reading my list! For the most part, the Scooby franchise has done a great job reimagining films over the years. I really enjoyed revisiting each of these episodes through the lens of the films they reimagined. As always, if you have your own rankings you'd like to share, feel free to share them in the comments!

In the 2000s and early 2010s, Cartoon Network and WB released a number of online Scooby-Doo games made with Flash animation. In the mid-2010s, WB mostly stopped making online games for the franchise, and in the late-2010s, they began removing the games from their site. I've written a couple previous articles on these games, but since they were deleted, I haven't been able to play the majority of them since their heyday in the early 2010s.

Recently, I was lucky enough to discover a program called Flashpoint that archived all of these games. After over a decade, I finally got to play all of these games again, and I had an absolute blast. I have crazy levels of nostalgia over all of these games from when I was younger, and it was so much fun getting to play (almost) all of them again after all these years. Even though the era of getting Scooby online games has passed, I wanted to reflect back on these and share my ranking of what I feel the best ones are.

Before I start my list, I have a couple Honorable Mentions to share! They won't make my list, but I found The Curse of Anubis and Scooby-Doo! Frozen Frights to be pretty fun games! The Curse of Anubis is a puzzle game that involves walking Shaggy and Scooby a creepy tomb while navigating obstacles. Similarly, Frozen Frights involves helping Scooby over obstacles in a frozen cave. Neither are particularly groundbreaking, and the animation on Frozen Frights is pretty rough, but both games were cute for what they were.

I also want to give shoutouts to two other games! Ghosts of Pirate Beach was the other game I have a lot of nostalgia over playing, but sadly, the copy on the software I found doesn't work. My second honorable mention goes to a piece of media that is really lost, to the point of me not even remembering the name of it lol. In 2009, there was a Flash game released alongside Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins that involved walking around the haunted halls of the gang's high school. I remember there were lots of ghosts in the hallway, but that's literally all I remember about the game. I did some research and could find no other mention of this game anywhere. At least I know I'm not imagining it, since someone else did post about this game on ScoobyAddicts (and similarly didn't remember much about it). Crazy to think there is a piece of Scooby media out there that is so lost.

Between the Cartoon Network and Warner Brothers sites, there were probably nearly 100 games like this released, but some of them weren't particularly great quality and/or weren't memorable enough to revisit. To keep this list at a reasonable level, I'm only going to rank my 15 favorites here.

15. The Pirates of the North
Year: 1999
This game was a part of the Haunted World 4-Pack, which was a series of arcade-style games released by Cartoon Network in 1999. Before looking it up for this article, I had no idea this game was released in the 20th century! Each game was based around a specific direction (North, South, East and West), and involved having to rescue a different gang member who was kidnapped by the villain. The premise of this game is that Shaggy has been captured by Redbeard, and the gang has to beat Redbeard's pirate ship in a race across a river. The graphics are super basic in all of these (see the second pic above), but they're still fun in the sense that they're representative of their time.

I ranked this one at the bottom just because it seems unnecessarily hard lol. There are so many sharp turns you have to navigate, and the boat is extremely difficult to turn given your only controls are the left and right arrows. There is a strategy to beating this game, which is taking shortcuts to get past Redbeard, but it's still ridiculously hard even when knowing that haha. I was able to beat this after like 20 tries, but yeah, this isn't the fun kind of difficult lol.

14. Hollywood Horror
Year: 2000
Returning to this as an adult, I see it way differently than I did as a kid. The game involves moving Shaggy and Scooby around to find clues, with the objective of solving the mystery of the Hollywood Horror. The Hollywood Horror is just a greener version of one of the Green Ghosts from "A Night of Fright Is No Delight." Another cool aspect of this one is that Daphne's Uncle Maxwell from "Never Ape an Ape Man" appears in this game! I always thought it was cool that they picked such an obscure relative to make another appearance in this game. The graphics scream "1990s Nintendo Game" in how generic they are, but like Pirates of the North, it's a fun little capsule of its time. The creepy remix of Where Are You for the background music is also pretty fun! For some reason, this is divided into two parts, despite there not being that much content in either part to justify splitting it.

This game has the opposite problem of Pirates of the North in the sense that it's just really, really easy. There is literally no way you can lose this game besides giving up or having your computer implode. The only objective of this game is to find clues. Even when it comes time to get the villain, you just have to go get the sheriff, so the rest of the gang can capture the villain off-screen lol. I still have nostalgia over this, but I don't think I thought much about how easy this game was as a kid. It was interesting to play this again as an adult and see it from a different perspective.

13. Yum Yum Go!
Release Year: 2009
We now move to a WB game which was released to promote Scooby-Doo and the Samurai Sword. I don't think I've seen this talked about in the fandom ever, but upon replaying it, I feel I've underappreciated this one in the past. The game involves completing various tasks, like finding Velma's glasses, biking away from ninjas, rolling sushi, and many more. Once you get through a handful of levels, the tasks begin repeating. The game may have an infinite number of levels, considering I've gotten to around level 45 and it just keeps going. While that may sound repetitive, what I enjoy about it is that the tasks get progressively tougher each time. The concept isn't anything groundbreaking, but the puzzles are pretty fun for what they are.

12. The Haunting of the East
Release Year: 1999
This is another fun Haunted World 4-Pack game that is far less difficult than the Pirates of the North. The game's premise involves Zen Tuo (called "The Mysterious Monk" here for whatever reason) capturing Fred and Daphne. Velma, Shaggy and Scooby have to navigate a maze of snakes, and find the keys to let Fred and Daphne out of the cage. The graphics are again super basic, considering it's just the gang's heads with no body attached haha. This is the least challenging of the Haunted World 4-Pack imo, but not in an overly easy way like Hollywood Horror is. The maze setting is kind of a vibe, in the sense that it feels like a quintessential arcade game from that time. I also thought it was cool that they used a more obscure Where Are You villain here!

11. Attack of the Vampire Pumpkinheads
Release Year: Unknown
Quality-wise, this doesn't hold a candle to most other games, but this is another one that's a fun capsule of its time. The objective is incredibly simple: dodge the pumpkins and open doors to save the gang from The Vampire Pumpkinhead (literally a vampire with a pumpkin on its head lol). Albeit simple, it was still a blast to play even if it is objectively pretty low-quality. This game also marks the start of the Scrappy-bashing era, as to save a gang member, you have to slam the door on Scrappy. It's kind of an unfortunately mean-spirited part of the game, but it's definitely representative of the anti-Scrappy backlash that was growing from the franchise's revival at the time, due to many people thinking he "ruined" the franchise and caused the lull in content after the 1980s. It was not the worst example of a Scrappy-bashing game from that era, though...that honor goes to Scrappy Stinks!, a game where the only objective is to throw things at Scrappy. I never thought about it too deeply when I was younger, but looking back as an adult, it's an extremely childish premise for a game. It's not one I will replay or rank here.

10. Scooby-Doo and the Creepy Castle
Release Year: ​2003
This is another Cartoon Network game where the player has to navigate Scooby through a haunted castle. The objective of the game is to set traps for the Ghost King, so that he can't jump out and frighten you. I haven't played this in 15+ years, but I was so amazed that I literally had every trap committed to memory. It's so funny to me to think about the important facts that have faded from my memory over time, yet my brain had the "don't forget to open the trap door so the Ghost King can't scare you!" memories saved for these past 15 years haha. Guess I'll be prepared if a ghost king ever tries to jumpscare me in real-life lol!

What brings this game down in my rankings is that because of the concept, the game is only fun to play a few times, since the traps never change and can be easily memorized. The music is honestly a vibe though, whoever decided on the music for this picked a banger of a soundtrack! lol

It also may be worth noting that this game has the most violent trap in the franchise's history. At one point, you have to make a tower attract lightning so the Ghost King will be electrocuted. Given it's revealed the Ghost King is a human at the end, that is quite an intense trap for a piece of Scooby-Doo media lol.

9. The Zombies of the South
Release Year: 1999
When I was younger, I remember wanting to play this game so bad, but there was some glitch on Cartoon Network's website that didn't allow you to play it. I didn't play this one until a couple years later than the other games. To me, this is the most arcade-y of the four Haunted World 4-Pack games. The premise has Scooby being captured by zombies in a haunted house (the design from "Which Witch Is Which?" is the one used here), and Shaggy has to rescue him by dodging the zombies. It took me a little while to realize it, but it's essentially a game of timing rather than strategy. The zombies all move in a pattern, and once you figure it out, you can navigate the mansion and get past them all. It's a simple game, but a fun one that requires quick hand-eye coordination to make your move at precise moments.

8. Bayou Scooby-Doo
Release Year: Unknown
This was such a fun game! The premise involves Shaggy having to drive a boat through a haunted bayou, where he has to rescue Fred, Velma and Daphne one by one from a swamp witch. The game has four levels. At the end of each level, a gang member is rescued, and the final level involves turning switches to set a trap for the swamp witch. I couldn't find any info on the release year for this one, but it was definitely early 2000s.

This game strikes the perfect balance between fun and challenging. As Shaggy's driving the boat, you have to try to jump over obstacles, and protect Scooby (who is on a rope with an umbrella) from bats, vultures, trees, and the monsters that are lurking underwater. For an Internet game, the zombie in level 2 (pictured above) is honestly pretty creepy for how desiccated he looks!

7. Ghosts of the West
​Release Year: 1999
This was the one Scooby game I could never beat as a kid. This is why it brought me so much joy that when playing it for the first time in 20 years, I finally beat the game! My 20-year grudge against the Phantom Cowboy has finally been ended lol. My opinion on this game has changed so much in adulthood. I always was bothered by the difficulty of it as a kid, but replaying was honestly really fun lol. Like the other Haunted World 4-Pack games, the game involves a gang member (this time Velma) being kidnapped by a Ghost Cowboy. The objective of the game is to navigate a treacherous road with many obstacles, and catch up with the ghost. This is the only game in the series to use a new villain not from previous media. I won't ruin it for anyone else, but once you figure out the strategy, this one is a really fun challenge!

6. Scooby-Doo and the Goblin King
Release Year: 2008
Released on WB's website to promote the movie, this is one of the more challenging Scooby-Doo games. The game's premise involves trying to navigate Scooby or Shaggy through the Halloween world on Broomy (the magical broom from the movie). Along the way, you have to shoot goblins out of the sky with magical pumpkins. In the final level, you have to defeat Krudsky. Even as an adult, this game is pretty challenging, but in a really fun and engaging way. I love the background of the sky at sundown! The graphics in this one are also really cool. A standout for sure.

5. Scooby-Doo! Magic Mystery Mansion
Release Year: 2010
This game was released to promote the Abracadabra Doo movie. The game is relatively simple, and involves finding clues around various parts of the castle to set a trap for the villain. The original game included seven levels. The first level required you capture the lion. If you had a special codes that came with the DVD, you could unlock seven levels. The second level featured the banshee, the third featured the griffin, and levels 4-7 required that you capture some combination of both the banshee and the griffin, or sometimes multiple of each villain as the levels went on. Unfortunately, the archived version only has the first two levels unlocked. Levels 3-7 are unplayable, which really sucks because I would have loved to play them again! I remember later levels having a really cool atmosphere where you could go inside abandoned classrooms, and walk through spooky hallways and such. I have no idea if those last five levels are lost to time now, but I really hope somebody archived them! While the game is pretty simple, I like the concept a lot and find it to be really enjoyable for what it is. The game seems to be hardly talked about either! Most of the results that came up when searching for it were the past couple posts I'd done about it on this blog lol.

4. Scooby-Doo: Run for Your Rife!
Release Year: 2010
This is another game available on the WB site to promote Camp Scare. The game is essentially a Scooby-Doo style Temple Run, where you have to run away from each monster and dodge obstacles in your path. There is a camp level featuring the Woodsman, followed by a lake level with the Fishman, and finally, a Shadow Canyon level with the Spectre. Once you complete all three levels, the three-level cycle continues to repeat in order, except the challenge gets increasingly hard with each level. As you get further into the levels, the game begins to speed up when you collect snacks, to the point where you have to start avoiding those too or it becomes unmanageable. I don't know how many levels there are in total, but the levels may just repeat on an infinite loop. I've played this a few times in the past week, and had one epic play where I made it to level 76!

This is totally based on memory, but I believe there was also a code you could enter that threw a fourth level into the cycle, where you had to outrun the camp flooding. Despite looking up the code that came with the DVD, it didn't work, so that part of the game file may not have been saved similarly to levels 3-7 of the Abracadabra Doo game.

In the mid-2010s, Temple Run was my go-to phone game. I don't really play games on my phone anymore since around the time of pandemic (I think?), but I love how this is essentially a Scooby-Doo version of Temple Run. This is a really fun game that is super engaging even after playing it a lot. It's easily my favorite rediscovery from doing this article. If this were an app, I honestly might get back into playing games on my phone lol.

Later, a lesser-quality version of this game would be remade to promote WrestleMania Mystery, titled Scooby-Doo! Race to WrestleMania. They basically just took the idea for this game and remade it with the Ghost Bear, but the quality of the graphics was less and it wasn't memorable or original enough for me to want to return to. The WrestleMania Mystery game was the final instance of a game being made to promote a movie.

Side note, but around the time of the game's release, I briefly remember the Wikipedia page getting vandalized to say that there was a new game called "Scooby-Doo: Run for Your Rifle!" I don't usually find people messing up Wikipedia pages all that funny, but that one admittedly still lives rent-free in my head lol.

3. Horror on the High Seas / Mayan Monster Mayhem / Haunts for the Holidays
Release Year: 2004-2006
Between 2004-2006, WB put out three new adventure games which included cutscenes with What's New Scooby-Doo? style animation. Shaggy and Scooby were voiced by Scott Innes. The rest of the gang did not appear in these games. The game's premise involves you completing various puzzles and quests to solve the mystery. Each game is divided into four parts, and there are generally 2-3 parts per game. The first game's premise involved Shaggy and Scooby being trapped on a cruise after pirates hijack the ship. The premise of the second game has Shaggy and Scooby searching for the world's hottest pepper to make chili, but they run across an ancient monster. The third game is a Christmas-themed game, involving Shaggy and Scooby attending a production of A Christmas Carol, which is interrupted by the real ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. 

These games are amazing! The cutscenes are so cool, and each of the quest are just the right balance of challenging and fun. The villains in each game were also really great, and I liked how they weaved clues into the different quests to allow the player to solve the mystery along with Shaggy and Scooby. Notably, the tone of the second game (particularly Part 2: Creepy Cave Cave-In) felt considerably darker to me, which was also cool. These are such an underrated piece of Scooby media that deserve to be talked about way more than they are.

Horror on the High Seas and Mayan Monster Mayhem were way easier than I remembered. I'm not sure if it was a Creepy Castle-like situation where I subconsciously remembered most of what you had to do, but I found most of the stuff to be self-explanatory. It didn't take me longer than five minutes to complete any of the challenges, and most of them were less than that. Haunts for the Holidays was much more of a challenge, though! I did complete all the levels, but it took me a few tries on some of them. As I remember it, I don't think I ever got past the first challenge of level 1 except one time when I was younger, so the second theater stage was more unfamiliar to me.

Because of the similar structure of all of these, I grouped all of them together in my rankings. If I was forced to, I'd probably go:

1. Haunts for the Holidays
2. Mayan Monster Mayhem
​3. Horror on the High Seas

1. Crystal Cove Online
My favorite Scooby game ever released is Crystal Cove Online, and I don't see it ever being dethroned. I absolutely love how they adapted the entirety of Mystery Incorporated season 1 into a video game, where you get to guide Shaggy and Scooby through each of the mysteries. You can tell that so much heart went into making the mysteries detailed and accurate to how they were in the episodes. I've given my thoughts on this game in detail in several previous posts, so I will just link you to them here rather than repeating myself.

There continues to be a few online Scooby games being made (mostly outside of the US and posted on the Boomerang UK website), but they are nowhere near the quality of the ones highlighted in this post. This was happening to an extent towards the end of the time WB was releasing new Scooby games to post on their site. Around 2012, they were increasingly releasing games like Bubble Banquet and Jinkies Jelly Factory, which were super basic games that had pretty much no substance to them (the objectives of those two I mentioned were to pop bubbles, and stack jelly in a Candy Crush Saga-like way). Shortly afterwards, the release of new online games almost entirely stopped, which represented the cultural shift of most games becoming apps.

I had so much fun looking back on these games. They feel like a time capsule of sorts, that represented the style of games that were super common online pre-smartphone era. Now with AI and all the other technological advances of the past decade, we've moved way past the days of these games ever being popular again, but I still enjoy looking back on them every now and then. They're really cool pieces of media that I don't see talked about hardly at all anymore.

Since these games are pretty rare, I'm guessing most people won't have their own rankings to share like usual, but I hope you enjoyed this post regardless! If anyone does happen to have fond memories of playing these like me, I'd be curious to see others' favorites of these!