Over the years, many Scooby fans have become frustrated with the fact that there are still so many unreleased episodes. As of writing this article, if you include each short individually and some of the more off-brand specials (i.e. Night of the Living Doo, The Scooby-Doo Project, etc.) there are 167 unreleased episodes in the franchise. For such a popular franchise such as Scooby, that's pretty shocking.

To briefly go over what exactly it is we're still missing, we are missing the Addams Family episode from The New Scooby-Doo Movies. This one makes a lot of sense, because there are some suspected rights issues with Charles Addams or some aspect of The Addams Family show. Moving into the "how has this not been released?" territory, we're still missing four episodes of The Scooby-Doo Show from season 2: "The Curse of the Viking Lake," "The Creepy Heap from the Deep, "The Spooky Case of the Grand Prix Race" (I can't believe this one hasn't been released yet, given there's even an action figure of the Phantom Racer), and "Creepy Cruise." We're also missing the entirety of Laff-a-Lympics season 2 (which is 8 episodes), 46 seven-minute Scrappy-Doo shorts and 24 11-minute Scrappy and Daphne shorts (this is going by US DVD releases). 3 seven-minute Scrappy shorts and 2 Scrappy and Daphne episodes have been released only on rare VHS tapes, but never on DVD.  14 Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! episodes remain unreleased. The entirety of Be Cool Season 2 has not been released, with the exception of "Halloween" (to make up 26 missing episodes from that series, including the two shorts as their own episodes). No episodes from season 2 of Guess Who have been released (currently, 15 have aired in English). We're also missing ten specials (7 have been released on VHS) and 18 LEGO and Playmobil shorts.

My opinion of why these episodes have not been released is because Warner Brothers very much focuses all their efforts on releasing episodes from a marketing standpoint rather than a collector-focused standpoint. They want to sell as many DVDs as possible, while arguably also making as much profit off of already-released content they can. Arguably, I think the other aspect of this is that WB Marketing knows that they can release anything with Scooby's name on it, and there will be a group of more casual fans who will likely buy it. WB could make "Scooby-Doo Makes Some Stew!" and you'd totally have people buying it simply because Scooby's name is on it. I absolutely do not mean for this to come off as a scathing diss of Warner Brothers' marketing strategies, and honestly, I think it's a very good thing that Warner Brothers can do this, because it means Scooby-Doo is so popular that it's become a household name. You can casually reference Scooby-Doo in conversation to someone on the street, and they would almost positively at least have some knowledge of what you're talking about. Nearly everyone knows about Scooby, and that's created some brand loyalty where WB feels that they can keep releasing new DTV films and compilation sets for us fans.

The bummer side of this, though, is that this means much of their marketing strategies are very conservative in terms of releasing new content. Besides The Scooby-Doo Show season 2, which I have no idea why those four episodes haven't been released, all of the remaining episodes are from sort of controversial series. Many people, from a general audience perspective (meaning both Scooby fans and people and/or children who casually watch Scooby), did not like Get A Clue or the Scrappy-Doo shorts, so WB is afraid to release them out of fear it won't be a great seller. The same with Be Cool. Unfortunately,  as most of us know, the animation got a lot of hate, so much so that apparently according to head writer Jon Colton Barry, he was getting death threats (yes, actual death threats, some apparently very elaborate and oddly specific) mailed to his house from angry people saying that he "ruined their childhood." While WB is probably less worried about getting death threats, it goes to show how hated the animation was and that they don't want to take too much of a risk releasing a bunch of Be Cool sets beyond the first season. I think Laff-a-Lympics is just odd and un-Scooby-ish enough that WB doesn't seem to want to take that extra step of releasing the second season.

While it's very cool that WB is able to come up with all these compilation sets that they feel would appeal to the target audience (which is most prominently children), in turn, it means that they don't think of releasing stuff from a collector lens. Personally, I desperately want them to release more season and series sets so we can have all the episodes. I miss those late 2000s-ish days where we were getting a new series set every year (sometimes multiple). We have seen inklings of WB taking a collector approach, like releasing some of the off Scrappy-Doo episodes on those 13 Spooky Tales sets from 2012-2015, or including those two unreleased Get A Clue episodes on the 50 Cartoon Collection set from 2019, but for the most part they really have avoided structuring their releases in a way that would allow collectors to get all the episodes. I really go back and forth on if I like the 13 Spooky Tales method, and I'll absolutely take that if that's what WB is willing to give us, but at the same time, I think a lot of us can agree that we don't want to have to purchase a huge set just to get one or two Scrappy shorts. It's unnecessary costly and it can waste shelf space. If you're like me, I have all my Scooby DVDs in order of series on a shelf, and it feels kind of sloppy sticking a billion 13 Spooky Tales or compilation DVDs in between series sets (which I realize likely sounds super nerdy lol). I will say I feel like it is kind of a waste for them not to release unreleased episodes whenever they can though, especially on the DTV releases. Like, with The Sword and the Scoob, did they really need to release "Hassle in the Castle" for the zillionth time? They missed a gigantic opportunity with "Wizards and Warlocks" or "Renn Scare" here. DTV sets are a great way to burn off some of these missing episodes if they're not willing to do season sets, because collectors will be buying these movies anyway.

Now one option that some obscure Hanna-Barbera series have done is to release these "unwanted" episodes through Warner Archive, which is a manufacture-on-demand DVD service that is available only online and are generally only purchased by collectors. My theory though on why this hasn't happened is that WB wants to have their cake and eat it too. I think they're generally conflicted on what to do with these remaining missing episodes. Manufacture-on-demand sets generally aren't very expensive, which means the manufacturers don't get much profit from it either (at least not as much as a DVD you'd buy from the store). I don't think WB wants to give these episodes up quite yet, in case they ever decide the time is right to release them. Scooby is a quite profitable franchise for them, so they don't want to just throw away the episodes completely, but at the same time, they're a bit skittish to release it out of fear of it not selling well.

I really hope someday they do release these episodes, preferably in season set form, but I guess all we can do is wait and see. I hope this article didn't come off as a cold diss of WB or that I'm saying Warner Brothers is screwing us all. Generally speaking, WB is doing an excellent job of keeping the franchise alive. Sometimes, not all their decisions make sense (i.e. recent lack of promotion for Scooby series, lengthy gaps with lack of marketing between new episodes, etc.), but in the end they're doing decent IMO. I really do wish they'd take a collector-oriented lens or challenge themselves to find creative ways to please the adult Scooby fans as well as kids. I'm definitely critical of WB's method of re-releasing the same episodes over and over again, but that's just because I love Scooby so much and always want the best for the franchise. Recent years haven't been the best for releasing missing episodes, but hey, we got Guess Who season 1 earlier this year, so fingers crossed we'll get some other fun new content this year. :)

Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School always manages to bring back tons of good memories and nostalgia from childhood for me. The girl ghouls in the film have arguably acquired a decent-sized following in the fandom over the years, between fan art, fanfiction, and even a random appearance in the Halloween special of OK KO: Let's Be Heroes! in 2018. Since Ghoul School is my favorite Scooby movie to date, I've always wished the girl ghouls would have appeared in more than one Scooby production. While we sadly didn't get that, we did get a TV show that follows the premise of Ghoul School almost exactly. That series is Gravedale High, a TV show from 1990 (two years after Ghoul School) that ran for 13 episodes. In the show, Rick Moranis plays a human teacher named Max Schneider who is hired to work at a school full of ghouls. Sounds pretty familiar, right? Even more familiarly, the series was written by Glenn Leopold, who wrote Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School! In this article, I wanted to highlight and review Gravedale High as sort of a sequel in spirit (there's a bad ghoul pun in there somewhere haha) to Ghoul School.

While there is no danger of supernatural threat like Revolta, I still feel this series is very much like a Ghoul School spin-off show would have been. If you'll forgive the brief plug of my own work, I very much intended my own fanfic about the girl ghouls, titled Fangs for the Memories, to be a coming-of-age style show where the girls have to overcome problems of growing up. This is exactly what we get here: a slice-of-life show about the lives of several monster students. What I really like about this show is that the coming-of-age aspect of it isn't super in-your-face or like a bad after-school special. Most episodes center around a single monster student and the plot is about a problem they face as teenagers.

Sid is an invisible man voiced by Maurice LaMarche, who's perhaps most famous in the Scooby fandom for voicing Vincent Van Ghoul in SDMI and Curse of the 13th Ghost. Sid loves doing impersonations and very much embodies the class clown trope. Sid's episode arc involves him getting sick and going to the hospital, which causes the ghouls to have to venture out into the human world.

Let me start before introducing Cleo that her full name would have likely never been used in today's day and age, due to it potentially being somewhat offensive. Cleo's full name is Cleofatra, and she's a nerdy mummy. She loves soap operas, and in her episode, she becomes pen pals with the star of a monster soap opera, who falls in love with her. However, she has self-esteem issues, which prove problematic in this same episode because she sends a picture of her beautiful best friend, and it ends up being a lesson of sorts about pretending to be someone you're not (in this case, literally). 

Gil Waterman is a California surfer dude sea monster (he even has a surfer accent). He and Frankentyke are best friends. He loves surfing, and in the episode that focuses the most on him, he is discovered by a surfer named Kahuna Bob and drops out of school. This causes Kahuna Bob to have to join the monster class, to convince Gil to come back...which kind of makes no sense as we never see Kahuna Bob in the class ever again.

Blanche is a zombie with a Southern Belle's voice, who likes to shop at the mall. I'm guessing what the writers were going for here was to riff on the phrase "mall zombie," which isn't really a saying anymore (which is basically like a material girl/shopaholic, if you haven't heard of the saying, I guess the closest thing to that now would be the phrase "basic bitch" lol?) Can't say I really loved her character either, but I didn't hate her like I do Frankentyke. She's just very whiney and comes off as completely helpless.

Reggie Moonshroud is a nerdy werewolf. He's shown to be really bad at practical skills in the series finale, which centers around Reggie's fear of learning to drive. While he eventually gets the hang of it, he causes a minor car accident, and the woman in the car he hit (literally the definition of a Karen, if that term would have existed in the 90s lol) pretends to be brutally injured and sues him. 

At last, we get to my favorite character, Vinnie Stoker (his last name being borrowed from the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker). Vinnie is a Fonz-like vampire, who always acts very cool, and constantly begins each sentence with "Ay, yo!" You're probably wondering why I'm okay with this and not Frankentyke saying "man" at the end of every sentence...I'm not really sure myself haha. I guess I find Vinnie being a parody of the Fonz kind of endearing lol.  He generally is the laziest of the students, and always shows up late to class. In his episode arc, he suddenly gains a fear of flying.

Duzer, short for Medusa, is the final student. She's very much a stuck-up Valley girl. Her catchphrase is "get a life!" and she has a crush on Vinnie. I really like Duzer as well, and I'd say she's my second favorite character after Vinnie. She gets two different episodes centered around her: the first being when she borrows money from the class to buy a dress but it gets destroyed, and she has to find a job to pay her friends back. The second episode is about Duzer taking over the school newspaper, and uses it to publish fake news. 

Max Schenider is the teacher of the delinquent class of monsters, made up of the nine students above. He's very level-headed and down-to-Earth, and manages to earn the monsters' respect despite their reluctance to trust him at the beginning of the series. Even though we don't get to see Max's first day teaching the class, the students really do get a lot nicer as the series goes on, which is cool to see them all develop as characters. He's quite shocked and a bit afraid of the monsters' strange habits at first, similar to Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy in Ghoul School, but Max does eventually start warming up.

Besides our main characters, we get a few other students throughout: Suey, a pig, Rover, a dog who speaks like Scooby does, and a human fly named Busby. We also get Headmistress Crone, who's the very strict owner of Gravedale High. Coach Cadaver, a hotheaded sleazy coach, also shows up in several episodes of the series. I actually didn't know this until just now when I looked it up, but he's voiced by Jonathan Winters! Come to think of it, the coach sounds incredibly similar to when Jonathan Winters was pretending to be a general in the barn during "The Frickert Fracas." We also get a chef named Sal, a bad-breathed 5000 year old mummy named Mr. Tuttner (voiced by Tim Curry) and Boneyard, an undertaker-like character who is a driver. I guess there's also Clawford, the pet cat, and a mouse named Bella that he always chases, but any scene with Clawford and Bella just seems like filler to me. 

Overall, I think this series is a great coming-of-age show that deals with issues of growing up such as being yourself, being responsible, letting fame go to your head, fear, jealousy, and much more. Listing out all those lessons probably makes it sound more boring than it is, but seriously, it's a great show that knows how to have fun and be witty/silly along the way.

I wish I could share a place to watch this, but there really isn't any. This show has been kind of forgotten about and has never gotten any releases on DVD and digital. I wanted to review it on here just because it's so much what I've always imagined Ghoul School would be like if it was a series. Hopefully you enjoyed this review and maybe it even provided a blast from the past if you've seen this series before. For those who haven't seen it and want to, I guess the best I can offer is that there are certainly less than legal ways to watch it online, which is all I'll say haha.

I'm not sure how common of knowledge this is to Scooby fans, since it's rarely talked about, but one thing that has always bothered me a ton is that there's quite a bit of debate around the order of many episodes of Scooby-Doo. Certain DVDs and other sources list episodes in one order, yet other sources claim a slightly different order. In this post, I will highlight all the inconsistencies in episode order within the Scooby-Doo franchise.

Perhaps the most controversial of the episodes with uncertain order. Many people believe "A Clue for Scooby-Doo is the second episode of the series, due to the different title card like the first episode had. However, "Hassle in the Castle" is listed as the second episode on several DVD sets. While it is likely "A Clue for Scooby-Doo" was indeed produced first, if I had to guess, "Hassle in the Castle" most likely aired second while "A Clue for Scooby-Doo" aired third, which would explain the confusion. Shows often don't air in the order they are produced in if the show doesn't have any overarching plotline from episode to episode. I want to make clear that "Hassle" being second and "Clue" being third is just my own theory. I have no official confirmation to back this up.

"Spooky Space Kook" and "Go Away Ghost Ship" are two more episodes with uncertain order. Some people believe "Go Away Ghost Ship" aired fourteenth, while others believe "Spooky Space Kook" was the fourteenth. There's also no consistency from the DVD sets either...some sets list "Space Kook" as fourteenth while others list "Ghost Ship" as fourteenth. Personally, I believe "Space Kook" is fourteenth and "Ghost Ship" is fifteenth, just because it's listed that way on the original Where Are You DVD set.

The twentieth and twenty-first episode are also highly debated in the Scooby franchise. Some say "Jeepers It's the Creeper" is episode 20, others believe "Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright" is episode 20. Again, I go with the original DVD set, which lists "Creeper" as episode 20 and "Frozen Fright" as episode 21.

The New Scooby-Doo Movies is all in the correct order. There's nothing really debated with that series, so let's move on to The Scooby-Doo Show​.

"The Creepy Heap from the Deep" is a very odd one, because it's not two episodes switched around. "The Creepy Heap from the Deep" is said to be either episode 20 or 24. It's a very random misconception which I'm not sure how it came about, as it's not on any idea. I guess personally, more places seem to say it's episode 20 than 24, so that's my belief. Amazon and Boomerang list it as episode 20, so I trust that. iTunes lists it as episode 24...kind of...they list the airdate as being after "Creepy Cruise," but it and "Creepy Cruise" are switched around creating more confusion. I choose to trust the other two sources, as iTunes's order seems really confused, given they list "Creepy Heap from the Deep" as airing on October 29, 1977 and "Creepy Cruise" as airing October 22, but have those episodes switched around. (I have no idea if I'm making any sense, so if you're confused about the iTunes explanation, look at the page and you'll see what I mean). iTunes also completely spoils "The Curse of the Viking Lake" and has an incorrect description for "Hang in There, Scooby-Doo" about the gang meeting dinosaurs and cavemen.

Skipping over the 1979 Scrappy series which has no issues, we now get to The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour, The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour, and The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show. You may as well just give up trying to decipher the order of this, because every site lists every short in in a different order. For consistency, I go with Amazon and Boomerang's order for everything except episodes 1-21. For those episodes, I go by The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour Volume 1 DVD. The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries is pretty much fine, with the exception of the shorts "The Dooby Dooby Doo Ado" and "Showboat Scooby" being switched around.  I personally choose to go by Amazon and Boomerang's order, which has "Dooby" first and "Showboat" next.

There isn't really too much "debate" among the fandom with this series, more of just an interesting note to point out. For some reason, Boomerang lists these episodes in kind of an odd order on their streaming service, and I also remember they always aired them in this order on the television network as well in reruns. Just quick skimming through this because their order is so convoluted, they first aired episodes 1 and 2, then jumped to episodes 5 and 6, went back to episode 4, then jumped to 8, went back to 7, jumped to 10, went back to 9, went way back to 3, then finally aired the final three in order, episodes 11, 12, and 13. I just thought that was interesting enough to note here.

Now we're getting back into some understandable simple episode switches! "The Schnook Who Took My Comic Book" and "Wanted Cheddar Alive" are the first ones which are commonly debated from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Some people believe "Schnook" is episode 3, others think "Cheddar" is episode 3. The Volume 1 DVD and the Season 1 DVD disagree on this matter. I'm going by the season sets again for this one, which says "Cheddar" is episode 3 and "Schnook" is episode 4.

Another day, another uncertain order. "Snow Place Like Home" and "Now Museum, Now You Don't" are both believed to be episode 7, depending on who you ask. Volume 2 lists them one way, and the Complete Season 1 DVD set lists them another. Personally, I go with the season set again here, which lists "Snow" as episode 7 and "Museum" as episode 8.

There are a lot of uncertainties in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, but there's luckily no confusion within season 2, so we jump right to season 3. "Wrestle Maniacs" is listed as episode 24 on the volume 6 DVD, while "Horror of the Haunted Hairpiece" is listed episode 24 on the season set. Again, I go with the season set on this one.

The end of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo is especially befuddling. "The Were-Doo of Doo Manor" is listed as the 26th episode on the season set (albeit incorrectly as "The Weredog of Doo Manor," while volume 7 lists it as episode 27. I've even seen some sites list it as the series finale, episode 30. This creates more confusion with "Mayhem of the Moving Mollusk," which is episode 26 on the volume 7 set, but the series finale on the season set. To make things more confusing, the three shorts ("Catcher on the Sly," "The Ghost of Mrs. Shusham," and "The Wrath of Waitro") also get wrapped up in this confusion, with volume 7 listing those three episodes as the last of the series. At risk of sounding inconsistent, those three shorts being the last of the series make sense to me, so I choose to go with the volume order on this one: "Mollusk" 26th, "Were-Doo" 27th, and the shorts as 28th, 29th, and 30th.

In What's New, Scooby-Doo?, the only confusion is between episode 2, thought to be both "Space Ape at the Cape" and "3-D Struction" depending on who you ask. Neither the season set nor volume sets, nor any official source that I know of, list "3-D Struction" as episode 2, so "Space Ape at the Cape" is episode 2 in my mind, whereas "3-D Struction" is episode 3. C'mon, it even has 3 in the title lol!

Nothing is switched around in Get A Clue or SDMI. Be Cool doesn't have any ordering issues per se, but in worry of this becoming an issue down the line all the aforementioned episodes have, the two shorts "Pizza O'Possum's" and "The Curse of Half-Beard's Booty" technically did air last in pretty much all countries. Despite this, the two-part "Professor Huh?" is the clear finale that wraps up the series, whereas the two shorts do not do this at all. What specifically happened here is that these two shorts were made as a "test run" for a third season that didn't end up being made. The head writer, Jon Colton Barry, was not involved in the writing of these shorts. In fact, he's publicly said both of these shorts are too off-model, completely disowning "Pizza O'Possum's" for the poor representation of video game addiction in the episode. I think, despite the fact that we know the order it aired in, these shorts can get an exception as they should have clearly been placed 50th, since it has been confirmed by the head writer that "Professor Huh?" was the intended finale.

Let's give a warm welcome to our latest addition to the "confused order" club, which is "Space Station Scooby"! With the reveal of the back cover of the season 1 DVD, "Space Station Scooby" was listed as episode 14, despite being listed on all streaming services as episode 26 and airing as episode 26. Would "The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament!" have been a better finale, like it's listed on the set? Yeah, IMO it would have, given the references to past villains. But with this one, it's not really a "clear" finale. It's an ideal one, but it doesn't need to be last, so I'd say the airing order stands here. I can totally see the order of this one becoming another one where people get confused down the line due to the inconsistency, so that's why I'm adding it to this post here and now, on the day it was announced so there can be no confusion lol.

Hope you enjoyed this fun little post! This makes me wish there was some sort of official guide that could clear up all these ordering issues, but sadly, there is not. There is the two-part Scooby-Doo Character Reference Guide written by Joe Locicero, published in 1995, that lists orders for all these episodes. However, they also put some episodes that no one was confused on the order in a different order than is thought by the general fandom, so I wouldn't really count this as an official, all-knowing source since it confuses things even further that no one had been confused about before. Maybe someday we'll get some official confirmation of the order, but I'd say as the years go on, that chance gets less likely. I think studio records will continue to get confused (as we see now with the Guess Who season 1 DVD), and it will get harder and harder to figure out the orders. I'd say our only chance is if someone has images of old TV Guides that list episode names for each of these weeks we're confused about, but that's a bit slim. Fingers crossed that maybe we'll find information to make all this confusion will become confusing as the years go on!

Scooby aside, I think most of us can agree this has been a pretty crappy year with the pandemic. With the pandemic, my typical year-end list isn't going to be as long as it usually is, since not as much content could be put out. This year, let's break down the top 7 things have happened within the Scooby-Doo franchise.

7. Playmobil Scooby-Doo
This year, Playmobil released 9 new Scooby-Doo sets and bunch of figures, including figures of all the gang and 12 villain figures. While I haven't personally purchased these, I'm really glad that they've been so popular!

6. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Comics
While I haven't really been keeping up-to-date with these as much due to the overuse of stock art, there were five new issues of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? comics released this year (#103-#107). This is considerably less than normal, due to the pandemic delaying several of the comics.

5. Funko Pops
A bunch of new Funko Pop! figures were released this year as collectibles, including ones from the movie SCOOB! I really like these; they're so cute!

4. Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo!
Happy Halloween, Scooby-Doo! was released on DVD at Wal-Mart on September 15, and everywhere else (including digital platforms) on October 6. Despite this being yet another crossover film, I thought this was one of the best DTVs we've gotten in years. It had a very unique vibe to it and truly felt like a Halloween movie. As I said in my review of the film, it felt like SDMI and Be Cool Scooby-Doo had a baby and this was the result. It truly took the best elements of both series and combined them into one great movie.

3. Scooby-Doo & Guess Who: 28 New Episodes
Compared to other years where we haven't gotten much Scooby content at all, we were pretty blessed when it came to new episodes of Guess Who this year. 28 new episodes of Guess Who aired in 2020. The second half of season 1 aired between February and May in most countries, and we finally got it in the US on July 2, 2020. On October 1, Boomerang surprised us all for Scoobtober and posted the first 13 episodes of season 2. On November 13, to honor Alex Trebek after his sudden death, Boomerang posted a fourteenth season 2 episode, "Total Jeopardy!" featuring Trebek as a guest star. Finally, the UK and Poland also aired "Lost Soles of Jungle River!" featuring Jason Sudeikis, which many of us have gotten to see.

2. Daphne & Velma Novels
I know these novels get a lot of hate from fans because Scooby can't talk in them, or people think it's somehow connected to the Daphne & Velma movie (which it's not), but these novels have been amazing in my opinion. We got the first two of them this year (one on March 3 and the other on July 7), with a third already announced for release next year. These novels follow Daphne and Velma trying to solve mysteries in the town of Crystal Cove, and feature tons of fun references to prior Scooby content. These novels have a more mature tone than the series, and are marketed towards young adults rather than the typical G-rated audience of the franchise. If you enjoy reading, I highly recommend these books and I feel like it's exactly what those of us who have wanted a more mature take on Scooby have been looking for. I can't wait for #3 next year!

1. SCOOB!
Sadly, this movie got a lot of hate. Fans were pretty devastated when it was announced that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the theatrical release of the film on May 15 was cancelled. However, the film was not held back, and was turned into a direct-to-video film so it could still release as planned on May 15. I loved SCOOB! personally and found it to be a very sweet, entertaining origin story for the gang. Though it didn't really have the gang chasing monsters, I liked the direction they took it in. I thought all the voice actors did a very good job as well. This was a very feel-good movie, and it was fun to finally watch what we had been hearing about since August 2013!

Looking ahead to 2021, I'm hoping it will be a better year in general as we all are, but I'm hoping it will be especially good for Scooby-Doo content. Here are a couple things I'm looking forward to in the upcoming year:

1. Scooby-Doo DTVs: Sword and the Scoob & Courage the Cowardly Dog Crossover
I can't wait to see these two DTVs, especially the rumored Courage crossover! I know a lot of people are worried about it staying true to the tone of Courage, so I hope they've learned their lesson from Return to Zombie Island and Curse of the 13th Ghost. The Sword and the Scoob seems like it will be a lot of fun as well, especially since we'll get to learn a bit more about Shaggy's relatives.

2. Scooby-Doo and the Lost City of Gold
While this play was supposed to happen this year, very few shows were able to happen due to COVID-19. I feel bad for the actors as I'm sure they all worked super hard on this, so I'm really hoping they'll be able to make up the majority of those shows that were cancelled!

3. The Final 11 Guess Who Episodes
It's hard to believe we're already down to the final 11 episodes of Guess Who. I'm really excited to see the rest of these and I hope they're as good as many of the recent episodes have been! So far, we know 7 of the 11 guest stars - Dynomutt & Blue Falcon, Lucy Liu, Sean Astin, Jessica Biel, KISS, Cher and the voice actors themselves. We also know a football episode will happen sometime in these 11 episodes.

I hope everyone has a wonderful start to 2021, and let's all hope it's a better year than 2020 has been!

When it comes to Scooby, there's a lot of great scores (otherwise known as background music for those not familiar with the term) within the various series and films over the years. To me, there have always been five that have stand out and I'd like to break them down in this article.

The score for Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is top notch, in my opinion. It creates such a creepy vibe for the episodes, and supplements the mysteries by setting the mood. I personally love the reveal music when the gang is breaking down the villains' plans each episode. Clearly, WB liked it too, as they continued using it in several DTVs to explain the villain's plan, even as recently as 2017's LEGO Scooby-Doo: Blowout Beach Bash, four years after the finale of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated.

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?'s score is such a classic that I can't imagine anyone not liking it. It sets a creepy, yet sometimes upbeat mood that fits perfectly with the tone of the episode and adds to it. While all the different background music in Where Are You seems very tailored to fit the scene, I feel like The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo's use of the Where Are You score highlights just how well the score fit in the original series. 13 Ghosts did have its own score, but they also incorporated some of the Where Are You score within some of the episodes. This may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like the Where Are You score just didn't fit in 13 Ghosts and shouldn't have been included. 13 Ghosts should have stayed with the darker score, because the more whimsical upbeatness of some of the Where Are You background music doesn't fit with Scooby trying to escape Maldor the Malevolent's castle or the gang running away from Zomba. I feel like this demonstrates how much Where Are You's score was created to match the scenes in the show, because it being repurposed in a different show has always felt off to me.

In comparison, I do like the updated version of the Where Are You music worked in the two 2003 DTVs (Legend of the Vampire and Monster of Mexico) where the old cast returned to voice their characters. It was updated in a way that was tasteful and consistent with the original, but it also felt like was updated enough where it didn't feel like they were trying to force the Where Are You tone on those films.

Ghoul School has a wonderful score that is super fitting for the atmosphere of Grimwood's. It's always been one of my favorites because of it being spooky, but kind of a playful spooky, which works so well with the plot point of Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy discovering that despite that the students are all ghouls, they're still friendly and not a threat that needs running away from.

My favorite Scooby-Doo score is hands down Boo Brothers, no competition. It creates such a fun spooky environment for the film to take place in, but also isn't afraid to get really dark when something frightening happens. This type of fluid score is exactly what I want in Scooby-Doo background music, and is arguably part of what makes this film so amazing (in my opinion). I wish they'd publicly release the full scores for this one (and maybe Ghoul School) on a CD or digitally, because it's so amazing that I'd honestly listen to it on its own!

I wrote about this article topic for a reason. I've got a little surprise for you all...I've been working these past few weeks on a "Music of Scooby-Doo" page that provides a listing of all the soundtracks, as well as a reference list of all the songs that have appeared in Scooby episodes and films. I thought this reference list would be helpful for if people are watching Scooby episodes/films and want to know the name of a certain song that appears. There were quite a few songs not credited, however (especially the chase songs for Pup and Be Cool), and I didn't want to guess on the names and get it wrong, so those are not included in the list. You can check out the new page here.

Amazingly, Guess Who has nearly come to a close and we're just waiting for the final 13 episodes (or 12 if you're lucky enough to have seen the Jason Sudeikis episode in the UK) at this point. Besides the obvious of wanting to see cool guest stars and spooky mysteries, I wanted to dive deeper and write this month's short editorial article on a few specific things I'd like to see in the final few Guess Who episodes.

One thing that has been somewhat inconsistent, but getting better, in the Guess Who episodes is the over-focus on the guest star. Sometimes, it feels like the writers focus so much on making the episode about the guest star that the actual mystery is neglected, and one's enjoyment of the episode is almost entirely dependent on their like or dislike of the guest star. Personally, this is why I did not enjoy the Ricky Gervais episode, among some others where the guest star was overbearingly present in the episode. They've been doing better with it in the second half of season 1 and season 2, but certain episodes were still "meh" to me because of not enough mystery development. 

Looking at the other side of it, I think the guest star should at least have a decent amount of presence in the episode, so they can contribute something. The Joey Chestnut episode felt like he was a side character because he was written so blandly, for example. I hope in the second half of season 2, that there is a consistent better balance of guest star presence, so they at least have a role to play but not so much of a role that it takes away time from the mystery or other members of the gang.

Overall though, I think the episodes are really improving from where we were at the beginning of season 1. We got some great episodes in the first half of season 2, especially Kristen Schaal and Morgan Freeman in which I felt the guest stars fit in perfectly with the plots of the episode. Which brings me to my last point: the guest star should actually seem interested in their role. In some episodes, the line delivery of guest stars seems very bland and forced, with episodes like Kacey Musgraves, Bill Nye & Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Jim Gaffigan being the ones coming to mind. It makes the episode less fun IMO if the guest star is just going through the motions or just there for the sake of claiming they have a guest star on the show.

I can't wait for the second half of season 2, and I'm hoping we get it soon!

While I don't think it's a super unpopular opinion, I argue the 1980s Scooby-Doo movies are pretty underrated. These three films, Boo Brothers, Ghoul School and Reluctant Werewolf, are generally pretty well-liked among most Scooby fans, but I definitely have gotten some surprised remarks from some fans for calling these three among the best of the best that Scooby films have to offer. Something about these three films has remained pretty much unparalleled (except the 1998-2001 films) throughout the entire franchise. In this article, I will share my opinion as to why these films remain at the top of my favorites list despite several new Scooby films coming out each year.

In general, I think Scrappy is more toned down in these films, which puts them as a lot of people's favorite Scrappy material in the franchise. Specifically with Boo Brothers, it brought the franchise back to the mystery-solving roots that it had been lacking with previous 80s content featuring just Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy. One could also argue that the large amount of villains in Boo Brothers makes it not focused enough, but honestly, I feel the numerous villains makes it better. I look at it as "you can't begin to imagine the horrors around this house" kind of way. We also really have no idea which of the ghouls are real, and which are fake, even at the end of the film, and this provides room for some deeper thinking/analysis when trying to determine which of the ghosts' appearances were real and which were fake. I still believe that the Skull Ghost was real that first appearance he showed up, and that many of Uncle Beauregard's appearances were his real ghost.

One thing I really appreciate about Boo Brothers is its soundtrack. Even if you hate the movie, I feel you have to admit that this movie has top-notch background music all throughout. Lastly, I think the plot point of the scavenger hunt also provides almost a mystery-within-a-mystery, because we don't really realize that the ghosts have something to do with the scavenger hunt (and they may not have, if they were real some of the time) until towards the end of the film.

Moving on to Ghoul School, which is my favorite Scooby film to date. Hands down. Nothing compares to it. I think the amazing thing about Ghoul School is how well they integrate new characters into the plot and make us warm up to them quickly. All 5 ghouls, in my opinion, are very sweet, likable characters who many of us find adorable (especially Tanis). Though the first half of the film mainly focuses on the girl ghouls, the second half causes a questioning of everything Shaggy and Scooby have ever believed: that not all monsters are bad when Revolta and the Grim Creeper ends up capturing the girls for her evil plans, and they realize that the girl ghouls actually are the "good guys." It's a really neat plot point IMO, that I explore a bit in my fanfic Fangs for the Memories (shameless plug alert), that not all monsters are necessarily bad. In my opinion, this would have been even cooler if this was the first time Shaggy and Scooby met real monsters, as it would have caused a crisis of beliefs of sorts for them realizing that some real monsters are good. All in all, this film just has a really fun, spooky vibe to it with very relatable new characters in an intriguing situation.

Reluctant Werewolf seems to get the least attention of these three. I'll admit, Dracula turning Shaggy into a werewolf to participate in a car race is a very wacky plot, but once it gets going, I find myself really enjoying this one almost as much as the others. It's a very fun, different comedy romp that isn't afraid to be a bit dark and spooky at times (particularly in the scenes with Dracula's castle, and the escape at the end). I'd say this one is probably the least memorable of the three, and Zombie Island and Witch's Ghost for sure overtake it. As for whether Zombie Island and Witch's Ghost overtake Boo Brothers and Ghoul School, I would say no. They don't overtake them, they're just like 0.0000001% below Boo Brothers and Ghoul School personally for me.

A common theme within these three films is that they are a bit scarier in tone, and the stakes are far more real because the gang is literally dealing with real ghosts and monsters. Boo Brothers in particular has a very scary, dark tone to it I think, especially since most of the film is the gang walking around outside in the middle of the night, but Ghoul School kind of gets dark too in the second half with Revolta. Reluctant Werewolf is more silly, but the scenes within Dracula's Castle (especially when they wake up from their trance, the part where they're going through the secret passage, and their escape from Dracula at the end) are pretty spooky in tone.

It would be amiss not to say that some of this is personal nostalgia. These three were the first ever Scooby movies I saw as a kid, so I have very fond memories of watching these when I was little. I think Reluctant Werewolf is especially nostalgia-driven for me, as it's definitely a bit more of a zany plot than the other two.

In this age of sequels coming out like Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island, would I like to see sequels to these? If they could stay true to the source material, sure. I don't think Boo Brothers particularly needs a sequel since most of it's wrapped up (and I think it arguably makes it spookier to not know whether the ghosts were real in certain instances or not), but I'd be down for one if they could come up with a compelling, non-forced plot and kept it true to the original. In terms of Ghoul School, I think a sequel where Revolta returned, since we don't really know what happened to her, could be fun. Reluctant Werewolf is an absolute yes for a sequel, because it ends on a cliffhanger where Dracula and the Hunch Bunch appear at Shaggy's window saying that they're back. Again though, all of these would need to stay true to the source material. I don't want anything like Return to Zombie Island or Curse of the 13th Ghost done with these three movies, as IMO these two direct sequels have done enough damage already.

I hope you enjoyed this article, and that it maybe took you on a trip down memory lane! I try to watch these three every Halloween, even though they're not specifically Halloween themed (2 of them at least, I guess Ghoul School has a Halloween scene), so I thought this would be a fun one to do given the time period. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts on this, so if you have any, feel free to share in the comments!

Last October, I wrote an article titled "The Forgotten Scooby Clone Show," which highlighted how The Flintstones actually attempted to mirror Scooby's formula in the 1979 series The New Fred and Barney Show. At the end of this article, I briefly mentioned how The Flintstone Comedy Show had a segment that included Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm solving mysteries, but how I hadn't seen it yet. Now, I have a subscription to the Boomerang app, and with some extra time during the pandemic, I've finally gotten to check these out! This is the subject of "part 2" of this article.

There are a lot of "rare" Scooby-Doo VHS tapes out there, but some are so expensive that they're simply not worth buying anymore given that they have episodes that have already been released on them. So, which Scooby VHS tapes do you need to both have rare yet practical tapes that have never-before released episodes?

The first of these is titled Hanna-Barbera Super Stars: Rompin' Romance. It was released in 1989, and while it does have episodes from other cartoons like The Flintstones and Yogi Bear on it, there is one never-before-released Yabba-Doo short from The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour, "Bride and Gloom," on the VHS tape.

Scooby-Doo's Puppy Dog Tales, also released in 1989, features "Scooby and the Beanstalk" from The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour which has not been released on any other piece of Scooby-Doo home media to this date.

Scooby-Doo in Swamp Witch features another Scrappy short that has never made it to DVD, "Scooby at the Center of the World." I remember always wanting this one as a kid, but I could never find it!

These next two were both released in 1996 and have "Wedding Bell Boos" and "A Halloween Hassle in Dracula's Castle" on them, respectively, which have never been released on DVD. I actually own both of these! The Halloween Hassle one oddly has the back cover mention "Scooby-Dum" instead of Scrappy-Doo, which is probably one of the hugest typos I've ever seen on a piece of Scooby media haha.

And lastly, if you want to get something really rare, this Hanna-Barbera Personal Favorites: Scooby-Doo​ laserdisc includes four episodes: "What a Night for a Knight," "The Secret of Shark Island," "Scooby Gumbo" and "Wizards and Warlocks," the last of which has shockingly never been released on any other medium except laserdisc. This is nearly impossible to find though, much less to be lucky enough to have a laserdisc player, so you're truly a super Scooby fan if you're ever able to find this one!

Edit: I just realized this laserdisc compilation is also available on VHS!

I hope this brief article was both helpful and interesting for you all, regardless of where you are in Scooby collecting journey! :)