Five years ago today, I wrote up my Series in Review post for Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?. The series had just finished airing internationally the prior week, several months before it would conclude in the US.

During this lengthy period of no Scooby shows or movies, I've felt inspired to check out some of my less-revisited Scooby content. At the end of last year, I revisited all of the DTV films from 2012 through the present, which I hadn't seen in a long time. After recently revisiting season 1 of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! (which I also hadn't rewatched in full for a while), I was thinking about the fact that I hadn't seen some episodes of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? since they first aired.

Back in March, I decided to do a full rewatch of the series. Since airing, I had soured a bit on the series for its blandness and heavy reliance on guest stars to carry the episodes. I was hesitant to invest the time in rewatching all 52 episodes, but I'm so glad I did!

Throughout my rewatch, my thoughts and feelings on the series became so much clearer.  During its original run, there was something beyond the blandness that I didn't like about the show, but I couldn't quite articulate what it was. Now, my thoughts on the show feel very clear, and I finally feel like I can fully explain precisely what I like and dislike about the show.

I actually hadn't even intended to write a post on here originally. As I got to the end of my rewatch, I decided it would be fun to do a five-year anniversary post sharing how my thoughts have evolved.

Overall, I feel Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? is a below-average series. The show's intention is clearly recapturing the feel of the classic era. However, the writing doesn't consistently take into account all of the aspects that actually made the classic era great.

The writers seem to heavily latch onto the gang's limited characterizations. Objectively, this was a defining aspect of the classic era. The first four series were excellent at creating compelling stories with limited characterizations of each gang member. However, the series seems to latch onto the "limited characterizations" bit without fully understanding how other elements also played a huge role in creating the vibe of the classic series.

​The classic era also had incredible atmospheres. There are literally entire websites dedicated to showcasing the background paintings. Guess Who isn't consistently great at creating those strong atmospheres. There were episodes that stand out as doing it as well as the classic era ("What a Night, for a Dark Knight!", "The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall!," "The Feast of Dr. Frankenfooder!", and "The Legend of the Gold Microphone!" to name a few). However, there are many episodes where the atmosphere is pretty basic. More often than not, the atmospheres lack the charismatic aesthetic needed to make it as appealing as the classic era.

The classic era's mysteries were also almost always strong. In Guess Who, the mysteries often feel underdeveloped. There is minimal focus on the clues, and they are often basic enough where the mystery is very easy to figure out. Personally, I feel the mystery and atmosphere were a bigger part of the classic era's appeal than the Guess Who writers often took into account.

I also found the monsters very unmemorable. So many of them felt like they had the same personality. It seemed like the writers were trying to make all of the monsters feel like one archetype of "the traditional Scooby-Doo monster," which caused a lot of the villains to blend together. In the classic era, all of the monsters arguably had their own personalities. I found it odd the writers tried to extend the "limited characterization" aspect to the monsters as well.

I'd mentioned in my original series in review post that the guest stars were also inconsistent. In that 2021 post, I talked mainly about how I felt the guest stars' performance varied in quality. This was definitely something I still found to be an issue on rewatch. There were guest stars that felt totally checked out. Chris Paul, Halsey, Kacey Musgraves, and Joey Chestnut particularly come to mind as guest stars that felt like they were going through the motions (I'll cover my thoughts on Joey Chestnut later, because omg, his episode was next-level bad lol). Other guest stars felt so charismatic and invested in their roles. Kristen Schaal, Jason Sudeikis, Sean Astin, Terry Bradshaw, Carol Burnett, and many others felt incredibly passionate about their roles, and it made their episodes so fun to watch. The New Scooby-Doo Movies had such a strong roster of guest stars. However, this series struggled to pick guest stars that consistently deliver strong performances.

On rewatch, I realized my issue goes beyond just what the guest star brings to the table. The New Scooby-Doo Movies also did an excellent job balancing the gang's world and the guest star's world. It never felt like we were stepping too far outside of the gang's world, but we also had one foot inside the guest star's world. The series was consistently able to strike a good balance between both worlds ("Mystery in Persia" being the only exception).

I've brought it up before, but a comment someone left on here in 2022 really sticks with me. The comment argued that a big part of The New Scooby-Doo Movies' magic was that it put the guest star in a quirky role or situation. I think this is absolutely true, and Guess Who lacks balance in this area. It often felt like the gang was fully inside the guest star's world, or the guest star was fully coming inside the gang's world. This is just my personal preference, but I think Scooby-Doo crossovers work best when there is a balance struck between both worlds. Usually, my favorite Guess Who episodes were the ones that struck a good balance, and put the guest star in a quirky role. All of the charismatic guest stars I listed above fall into this category.

I think the biggest shortcoming of this series - the aspect I didn't like, but couldn't quite put my finger on before - is that its attention is focused in the wrong places for recapturing that classic era vibe. Besides limited characterizations, I was struck during my rewatch by how much this series focuses on classic tropes. I've used the phrase "forced nostalgia" to describe this series in the past, and I think the tropes are the biggest part of that. The big difference between this series and the classic era is that the tropes flowed more naturally. In Guess Who, they feel obligatory at times. An excellent example of this is that each time Velma loses her glasses in this series, she says "My glasses! My glasses! I can't see without my glasses!" This was something she said in the original series, but it flowed so much more naturally. The writers didn't force her to say that full phrase verbatim every time; it was a trope that naturally occurred alongside whatever was happening in the episode. The door gags are another great example of this. The series frequently feels like it's just checking trope boxes as a quick and easy way to give it a "classic" feel, rather than fully fleshing out that classic tone in the episode.

In trying to use the classic formula, I also feel Guess Who sometimes makes the formula feel overly structured. It was super interesting to rewatch the series, and notice the creative shifts between seasons. I've talked on here before about how it feels like season 3 of The Scooby-Doo Show has a creative shift from the first two seasons. Season 3 feels like it focuses much more on Shaggy and Scooby's antics, pushing Fred, Daphne, and Velma to the background. The first 11 episodes of Guess Who season 2 seem to also have a creative shift like this. And oof, they were rough to get through as a result.

The beginning of season 2 seems to double-down hard on making the formula very structured. In most episodes, act 1 is the gang meeting the guest star, then meeting the suspects. Act 2 involves the monster chasing the gang, Shaggy and Scooby dressing up to fool the monster with a guest star, and someone (usually Velma) finding a clue. Act 3 is mostly taken up by the trap and unmasking.

The worst offender for this was "The Crown Jewel of Boxing!" There is very little meat to the episode at all. Act 2 is almost completely chasing around, and there are literally three "Shaggy and Scooby dress up to fool the monster" gags. Another episode that encapsulates this issue well is "A Moveable Mystery!" Towards the middle of act 1, Fred literally says "Okay gang, let's look for suspects!" This particularly stood out to me as structuring the formula to the extreme. The gang typically encounters suspects naturally throughout the episode. Actually dedicating several minutes of the episode to having the gang seek out suspicious people felt really forced and awkward.

Most of the time, it felt like the overstructuring was to the episode's detriment. "The Internet on Haunted House Hill!" feels like a perfect example of this. Liza Koshy mentions that she's trying to make a viral video at this haunted house. This could have been a super cool premise to shape the episode around. Instead, this plot is completely pushed to the background so that the episode can be structured in the way I outlined above. It's such a bummer, because Liza stood out to me as one of the more charismatic guest stars, but they completely waste the episode's potential on trying to adhere to a formula that doesn't even feel natural.

To sum up my issue here, this series feels too scripted at times. The writers' attention feels too focused on the limited characterizations and classic tropes. In doing so, creating strong atmospheres, mysteries, and guest star dynamics is not prioritized as much as it should be. The limited characterizations and rigidly scripted writing feel almost confining at times. It makes the series feel hit or miss, because the writing tries to ground the show in a way that lacks balance in several areas.

Another thing I noticed during my rewatch is at points, the series tries to frame the gang as this "legendary group of mystery solvers that everyone knows." This is mentioned a few times by guest stars and the gang. In "The Crown Jewel of Boxing!", Laila Ali mentions that she thought Mystery Inc. was "an urban legend." At numerous points, Velma is also specifically mentioned as one of the smartest people in the world. If I remember correctly, her intellect is said to be on a similar level with Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. In "The Lost Mines of Kilimanjaro!", Velma says she's one of five people to know a lost language.

I have no evidence to base this off of, but I almost wonder if the creative mindset was trying to frame the franchise as this "legendary group of mystery solvers" that everyone knows, in attempt to draw in a new generations of viewers. It doesn't really factor into my opinion of the series much, but I do prefer the canon of the gang being normal teens. Because of how this series is written, having them be "world famous" feels like it indirectly frames the franchise as being so successful because of its adherence to these classic tropes and formula.

This is a perfect segway into my last point. The main reason why this series feels below average is that I think the series is too quick to typecast the franchise as being carried by the classic tropes and limited characterizations. However, the franchise is so much more that. In my opinion, I think the franchise has remained relevant after 50 years because it's continued to slightly evolve the classic formula and explore it in different ways. This series doesn't feel like it has much of a creative identity, beyond trying to recapture the magic of the classic era.

I feel bad that I didn't say all that much positive about the show lol. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? is a cute little series that has its moments. However, it is a very bland show that is tough to come up with highlights for. The show plays it quite safe, but when it's willing to branch outside its bubble, the series demonstrates that it can really shine.

The episodes I enjoyed most during my rewatch were the ones that weren't afraid to mix things up, and create unique, quirky plots. On rewatch, "What a Night, for a Dark Knight!" surged up to the top of my rankings. The episode is much more humorous than any other episode of this series. It felt like a novelty episode of sorts, because it's almost like a parody of a classic episode by giving it a humorous spin. I actually think this would have been a perfect way to approach the series. Be Cool gave us this from an absurdist humor standpoint, but this episode felt more like more of a novelty with its witty comedy. "One Minute Mysteries!" is another great example of this. Y'all know I'm sick to death of recreating classic mysteries, but having short clips of The Flash interfering with all of these mysteries felt like a perfect novelty episode.

It wasn't just the novelty episodes that stuck out to me. Episodes like "Dance Matron of Mayhem!," where the gang has to save Maddie Ziegler's dance academy, and "A Run Cycle Through Time!" where Malcolm McDowell sends the gang to the future, are really fun! The episodes that put the gang in quirky situations almost always worked very well for me. Even the gang becoming firefighters in "Fear of the Fire Beast!" was pretty cool, despite only being for part of the episode.

The other episodes that stood out to me most are the ones that were actually effective at recreating the classic era atmospheres and mysteries. "Too Many Dummies!", "The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall!", "The Feast of Dr. Frankenfooder!", and "The Legend of the Gold Microphone!" did amazing with this. After that rough patch in season 2, I'd forgotten that there did seem to be a stronger effort on the writers' part to make the episodes more well-rounded recreations of the classic era. I was surprised that a number of the episodes like "Falling Star Man!", "Dark Diner of Route 66!" and "The Movieland Monsters!" actually felt pretty close to that The New Scooby-Doo Movies vibe.

And of course, charismatic guest stars were always a huge bonus! Kristen Schaal, Jason Sudeikis, Sean Astin, Terry Bradshaw, and Carol Burnett stood out to me as being so warm and charismatic that they infused a burst of energy into their episodes. Minor side note, but I laughed so hard at Jason Sudeikis saying "The only mystery that matters to me is finding the lost shoes. The rest is all tropes and filler!" It was literally a perfect encapsulation of the issues I was having with the show during my rewatch. I didn't even mention that joke in my original review, but I think it is my favorite joke of the entire series now.

All of this shows that the series had the potential to be quite good. When the writers weren't afraid to break outside the formula and put the gang in a quirky situation, the show shined. However, the show needs a boost beyond its average vibe to reach its full potential, which is a major shortcoming imo.

I was originally thinking about re-reviewing my favorites and least favorites of the series. However, I actually think it'd be more interesting to spotlight the episodes that my opinion changed the most on since my initial watch. We'll start with the eight episodes that grew on me the most!

​Later in the post, when I re-do my rankings, you'll notice this list is slightly out of alignment with the biggest gainers in my rankings. The episodes included in this list are ones where my thoughts notably changed in the sense that I see them in a new way. There were some episodes in my rankings that were boosted merely by other episodes falling below them, but my thoughts didn't significantly change enough to have new things to discuss.

What a Night, for a Dark Knight!
I already talked about this one a bit in the context of the article, but this grew on me so much! It was towards the middle of my series rankings previously. On rewatch, this episode had such a different vibe than the rest of the show. The tone feels like a tongue-in-cheek twist on the classic era, and it works so well. The atmosphere is also one of the strongest of the series. There is that awkward bit where Scooby has a tantrum over breaking his phone (not sure what that's about), but it didn't bother me nearly as much this time. It's a small oddity in an otherwise great episode!

Now You Sia, Now You Don't!
The first time I watched this, I was amongst the sickest I'd been in my life. What I thought was a cold turned out to be pink eye, and it took me weeks to get over it. That said, I wasn't in the best mood when I watched it the first time around lol. (Honestly, this may have applied to "What a Night, for a Dark Knight!" too) This is one I had rewatched since it aired. It popped up in one of the polls we did on here last year, and I remember someone encouraging me to rewatch it. On second (and now third) watch, I like this so much better. Sia brings a lot of energy to this episode. The contrast between her zany house and the creepy doppelgänger works surprisingly well. I love the atmosphere here, and I'd argue that bedroom scene is amongst the creepiest scenes in the entire series. The silly-creepy mix works surprisingly well, and it makes for a great episode.

Space Station Scooby
It was fun to reread my reviews for these the first time around. I remembered not liking Neil very much as a guest star, but it would appear from rereading my original review from 2020, I also thought Bill's performance was phoned in, and I considered it a generally unmemorable episode.

This time around, I really enjoyed this episode. Having the gang go to space with Bill and Neil was a fun switch-up. I actually found the episode quite memorable for mixing it up from the traditional format of the series. I remember watching Bill Nye videos back in school, so I found myself feeling nostalgic about him while watching this episode. Neil was pretty good too. This definitely didn't deserve to be my fourth least-favorite the first time around. This is a really fun one!

The Feast of Dr. Frankenfooder!
This was just inside the top 20 in my original rankings. I liked it a lot even on first watch, but it's now an episode I consider a show highlight. They nail the classic tone and atmosphere here better than 90% of the episodes in this show. Alton's house is very creepy. Alton is one of the most engaged guest stars of the show imo; he seems super into his role. The quirky mystery and villain makes this one works super well. Despite being in that rough patch of the first half of season 2, the plot flows very naturally and is engaging to follow. This comes close to that New Scooby-Doo Movies vibe for me, which is something that very few episodes of this series are able to do.

The 7th Inning Scare!
​I ranked this in the bottom half last time, but it was a real standout this time. He's fallen out of popularity in recent years, but I still find some of his hits from back in the day to be fun. I thought he was an amazing guest star here! He seemed so engaged with the role, and I liked how they worked the plot around his real-life love of baseball. This episode felt like the beginning of the creative shift between the rigidly-structured first half of season 2, and when they started actually making quality episodes that understood being "classic" was more than just tropes and limited characterizations. The atmosphere feels quite reminiscent of the classic era to me, and I think they did a great job creating a strong mystery.

Fear of the Fire Beast
Another episode that falls into the "why was this so low?" category. I ranked this in my bottom 10 of the show originally, and really don't understand why lol. From reading my original review, it seems like I thought it was boring. It was funny to see I also complained about the Italian stereotypes. I'd actually just gotten back from a trip to Italy the prior summer, so they must have stuck out to me back then lol. Rewatching it, some of the stereotypes are a tad flamboyant, but I didn't find any of them to be offensive or anything. The only one that stood out to me was Steve assuring the gang that this old man who threatened a curse on him was just "Italian passion." From my experience, Italians definitely speak more passionately than people from other countries might be used to. However, I can assure you that nobody is walking around putting vile curses on each other lol.

I'd actually rewatched this one last year for our countries/continents poll series. The episode has grown on me a lot in my past two rewatches. Steve was a strong guest star! Steve training the gang to be firefighters is a cute little subplot, and it works well to mix up the formula. It goes to show that when this series isn't afraid to switch it up (even if it's just part of the episode), it can be quite fun.

Falling Star Man!
While I was doing the rewatch, I was talking with one of my friends in the fandom, and he highlighted "Falling Star Man!" as a top-tier episode of this show. I remembered liking it well enough, but I had no memory of a strong opinion of it. Rewatching this, I now consider it one of the best episodes of the series. Terry's ranch has an incredibly spooky atmosphere, and I really like the alien design! What makes this one so amazing though is Terry. He has so much charisma here, and shows so much enthusiasm for the role. The atmosphere and cool mystery already gave this one bonus points, but Terry boosts it to feeling on the same level as The New Scooby-Doo Movies.

The Movieland Monsters!
My thoughts on this one are very similar to "Falling Star Man!" Carol was an incredible guest star that has as much charisma as anyone they picked for The New Scooby-Doo Movies. The gang going through a virtual world of classic movies is such a fun novelty plot! The Silver Screen Spectre (I'm not calling him the "Ghost Monster" lol) has one of the best villain designs in this series. I loved Carol's closing song too.

I take back what I said originally about how they should have made "A Haunt of a Thousand Voices!" the series finale. This one is a perfect ending to the series! ​It honestly feels a little weird that this is the most recent Scooby episode we've gotten from a traditional series. It feels so long ago at this point.

We're now moving on to the five episodes that were the biggest droppers in my rankings. Any long-time readers who remember my original Guess Who reviews are in for a big surprise with the last two!

The Hot Dog Dog!
​This was one of my least favorites the first time too, but I wanted to highlight it here because my opinion changed from "boring" to "next-level awful" lol. The mystery feels incredibly thin here. It feels quite rushed, and is one of the worst examples of overstructuring issue I mentioned. I like the Gnarled One's design, but the potential is completely wasted by giving it a very generic personality that's indistinguishable from any other villains in this series.

The worst part of this episode for me was Joey. His role in this episode is so boring. With most of the guest stars that I don't know, I usually have a better sense of who they are after watching the episode. With Joey, I honestly still can't say I know anything about him or his personality after watching this. 90% of his lines are him saying he likes food, or filler lines that only serve as exposition for the plot. It makes it even worse that his delivery is incredibly monotone here. If Joey wasn't in this episode, I don't think it would have changed at all. He contributes almost nothing here and is almost entirely background. Even the random announcer guy has more lines than he does in this episode lol.

Speaking of which, oh god lol. The announcer gag was so irritating here. The joke is essentially that this announcer has an extreme, exaggerative personality. It wasn't really funny the first time, yet they keep calling back to it every few minutes of the episode. It was obnoxious to the point that I actually felt relieved when the episode was over lol, because they stacked three of those jokes in a row at the very end. 

On the positive side, I did enjoy the recurring joke of Scooby and Shaggy accidentally winning the competition by stress-eating while watching the actual contestant, lol.

Hollywood Knights!
This was another one that was already bottom 10, but this was another episode that felt like a whole new level of awful after rewatching it. Unlike the previous two, I basically have one problem with this episode. The gang is written as being super eager-to-please here for George, and it's really strange lol. Much of their dialogue in this episode seems like they're bending over backward to compliment George. Throughout the episode, the gang consistently fawn over his "beautiful voice." At one point, one gang member even gives him a list of random words that they want him to say aloud just to hear how it sounds. There's another scene where they all say something like, "We were just admiring your voice!" at the same time.

Don't get me wrong, George seems like a cool guy who has had a lot of great achievements. I wouldn't have thought this the first time I saw it, but now, I've grown to feel that there's a difference between respecting cool people for their accomplishments, and feeling like you have to bend over backwards to stroke their ego. At the end of the day, we're all just people, and having cool accomplishments doesn't give someone the permission to act superior to others. I don't think I'd fully adopted this mindset yet when I first saw this, but it really bugged me watching this episode now.

This whole episode feels it's tripping over itself to stroke George's ego. George acts in a way that feels haughty and arrogant throughout the episode, which rubs me the wrong way. They could have kept the compliments to a minute and left it at that. It made me wonder if George somehow got a say in the writing process, because the compliments are just so over-the-top compared to any other guest star in this series. The bit with George ripping his shirt off to fight the knight was in this same vein for me. It felt like there was an intentional effort by the writers to write him as this "super cool guy" who could do everything, and it was very weird lol.

The Crown Jewel of Boxing!
This was actually my third time rewatching this episode! The first two times were within a month of each other, because I remember Mr. Neither suggesting I write a fun fact where I counted the number of times the robot said "destroy" (spoilers: it was 66 lol). Laila is a decent (albeit unmemorable) guest star, and there aren't any annoying jokes here. However, this one stood out to me as the episode that suffered the most from that rough patch of early season 2.

As mentioned earlier, what could have been a cool plot feels short-changed by the rigid overstructuring. Act 1 sets the episode up to seem pretty average. However, act 2 and 3 fall off a quality cliff imo. After a brief gag where Laila teaches Shaggy and Scooby about mental strength training, the entire episode becomes - in the immortal words of Jason Sudeikis - "tropes and filler" lol. Most of the second act is chasing around, followed by the door gag, followed by more chasing. We get three "Shaggy and Scooby fool the monster" gags in this episode, which reaches the point of essentially being filler imo. In the last minute of act 2, we get a brief bit of exposition where Velma figures out the mystery, despite very little investigation shown. Act three is entirely comprised of the trap and unmasking. This was an issue I had with several early season 2 episodes. The worst offender was "Scooby on Ice!", where there's nearly a five minute chunk of the episode dedicated to the gang chasing the Snow Devil back and forth on the ice.

There's nothing wrong with the guest star or villain, but there is so little substance to this episode. I latched onto this one as being a textbook example of why Guess Who feels bland. The writing of this one feels like they're trying to achieve a "classic" feel by stacking trope after another, and then wedging all the exposition into like five minutes of the episode. This approach doesn't work for me at all. I think it is a very good example of how Guess Who often looks in the wrong places to achieve that "classic" feeling.

Cher, Scooby, and the Sargasso Sea!
This was close to top 10 when I first saw it. However, on rewatch, I thought the execution was underwhelming. I think they copied "The Secret of Shark Island" too much. "The Dreaded Remake of Jekyll and Hyde!" works for me because remaking the movie feels like a natural fit with Sandy's career. However, there was no reason to try to recreate the original episode here imo. The attempt to do so felt like it confined the episode from its potential. The episode feels like a forced retread of the original mystery (even down to copying the villains, plan, and motive). Cher, Shaggy and Scooby going around the ship doing different birthday activities for the entire first act also felt like awkward filler. Cher did a great job here, but the writing of the episode felt bland and uninspired. I think it goes to show that reimaginings are best done when a natural idea to expand on the original manifests, instead of trying to force it for the sake of nostalgia.

A Haunt of a Thousand Voices!
This was in my top 3 for the series last time, but it tumbles close to the bottom for me on rewatch. I still think having an episode dedicated to the gang meeting their voice actors is such a fun idea! I really enjoyed all the voice acting jokes, and thought the episode had potential to be enjoyable. Had this episode been released pre-SDMI, I think it would have been a home run. However, having a classic reimagining episode in a series that already feels overly nostalgia-driven is...not the best choice imo.

I found the mystery to be quite forced and poorly written. It was obvious from the start who the culprits would be, and having the Where Are You villains reappear has been done to death at this point. If they wanted to do it again, I think it would have been better to go all in. Having the gang wonder why these classic villains are appearing from their past, and developing the mystery a lot more would have been an improvement. It's approached very topically here and there's just very little substance to this. This one is cute for the voice actor interactions, but otherwise it's a pass for me.

I Put a Hex on You!
I told you it would be a surprise! I remember being super excited about a Hex Girls episode where we got to see more of their normal lives. I can actually vividly remember watching this episode for the first time, because it was the day before everything shut down for the pandemic. However, rewatching it, I think I liked the idea of it, but I looked past the execution being subpar.

The Hex Girls are good guest stars in the sense that they have a lot of personality. I wasn't the biggest fan of their personalities here, though. They come off as kinda caricaturish and out-of-character. Thorn needing her own tranquilizer gun particularly stood out to me this time. It feels like they're characterized as these crazy rockstars, but they're missing the depth that their characters previously had. The idea of them being "cursed" to be girly and so unlike their traditional vibe also stood out to me as such a cool idea on first watch. However, again, the execution feels kinda subpar. Thorn and Luna's girly characterizations feel a bit stiff and one-dimensional. 

It's certainly not a bad episode. I like that the episode shows more of the girls' lives, and the villain is very cool. I think the episode struggles from the typical Guess Who issues though, and I'd consider it to be middle of the road. This is far from the best written episode of the series.

Despite this series being inconsistent quality-wise, I really enjoyed doing this rewatch! It was fun revisiting these episodes that I haven't seen in so long. This series may be below average, but I still found there to be quite a few hidden gems. It was fun to see how my thoughts on this series had changed over the past five years! This rewatch made my thoughts on this series so much clearer, so I'm curious to hear if others' thoughts have changed too!

To conclude this post, it's time to update the Star-Studded Scoreboard for the first time in five years!

Star-Studded Scoreboard
1. Falling Star Man! (+19)
2. The Legend of the Gold Microphone (=)
3. The Movieland Monsters! (+16)
4. One Minute Mysteries! (+6)
5. The Feast of Dr. Frankenfooder! (+13)
6. What a Night, for a Dark Knight! (+16)
7. Returning of the Key Ring! (+5)
8. Lost Soles of Jungle River! (+24)
9. Too Many Dummies! (+7)
10. Dance Matron of Mayhem! (+1)
11. Now You Sia, Now You Don't! (+27)
12. The Wedding Witch of Wainsly Hall! (+16)
13. Dark Diner of Route 66! (-5)
14. The Horrible Haunted Hospital of Phineas Phrag! (-9)
​15. The 7th Inning Scare! (+14)
16. The Dreaded Remake of Jekyll and Hyde! (-9)
17. Total Jeopardy! (-13)
18. Scooby-Doo, Dog Wonder! (-4)
19. Space Station Scooby (+30)
20. The Last Inmate! (-14)
21. A Run Cycle Through Time! (+4)
22. Elementary, My Dear Shaggy! (-7)
23. The Sword, The Fox, and the Scooby-Doo! (-14)
24. Fear of the Fire Beast! (+21)
25. The Tao of Scoob! (+15)
26. Scooby-Doo and the Sky Town Cool School! (+11)
27. The Scooby of a Thousand Faces! (+9)
28. The Internet on Haunted House Hill! (-7)
29. When Urkel-Bots Go Bad! (-12)
30. The Nightmare Ghost of Psychic U! (-4)
31. A Fashion Nightmare! (-4)
32. I Put a Hex on You! (-31)
33. The Cursed Cabinet of Professor Madds Markson! (-7)
34. Attack of the Weird Al-osaurus! (-11)
35. The Fastest Food Fiend! (+16)
36. A Moveable Mystery! (-2)
37. The Lost Mines of Kilimanjaro! (+6)
38. The High School Wolfman's Musical Lament! (+1)
39. Peebles' Pet Shop of Terrible Terrors! (+9)
40. Scooby on Ice! (-9)
41. A Haunt of a Thousand Voices! (-38)
42. Caveman on the Half Pipe! (-9)
43. Revenge of the Swamp Monster! (-8)
44. Cher, Scooby, and the Sargasso Sea! (-31)
45. The Crown Jewel of Boxing! (-15)
46. The Phantom, the Talking Dog, and the Hot Hot Hot Sauce! (-4)
47. The New York Underground! (-6)
48. Quit Clowning! (-1)
49. Ollie Ollie In-Come Free! (+1)
50. The Hot Dog Dog! (-4)
51. Hollywood Knights! (-7)
52. A Mystery Solving Gang Divided (=)

In the past two months, I've published articles about topics that center around my hopes for Scooby-Doo! Gokko and the Netflix live-action series. Given that, I also wanted to do an article loosely inspired by our other upcoming series, Go-Go Mystery Machine. This one was a bit tougher, because there isn't too much to share about my hopes for the show. We've only gotten a very loose premise thus far, and have almost no info about the show beyond this. The info that's been announced gives 13 Ghosts vibes imo. I'm excited to see another series with an overarching plot like this! However, I remain open-minded to whatever format and tone they decide to explore for the series.

My other biggest hope is that I hope they follow "The Curse of Kaniaku" (from Be Cool, Scooby-Doo)'s lead of developing proper representation, given the full show takes place in Japan. I was impressed with how "The Curse of Kaniaku" used accurate Japanese dialogue instead of random gibberish, as we sometimes saw in the classic era with other cultures. I also liked how they developed the Japanese characters to be fully-formed people instead of just stereotypes, like we would also unfortunately see in certain episodes of the classic era. Thankfully, this isn't something I'm significantly worried about. Given it is a full-on anime series, I think it would be very bad press for them if they chose to not do those two things.

Since this is our first anime Scooby series, the related topic that immediately came to mind is animation styles. I was surprised to realize I'd never done an article on this before, but now seems like a great time to share my thoughts and rankings! After sharing my thoughts on each animation style, I'll provide my individual rankings of each gang member's design from least favorite to favorite.

We've gotten twelve distinct animation styles over the years. The classic era had a singular animation style up until 1988. Beginning with A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, every series had its own animation style. The DTV eras also had distinct animation styles, with the exception of the What's New Scooby-Doo? era films. There are some subtle differences within different eras, but I'm keeping it to the 12 styles that had significant differences from each other.

12. LEGO Animation (2015-2017)
From a purely corporate perspective, the purpose of the two LEGO films and special was to promote the Scooby-Doo LEGO sets. In that sense, these designs are probably about as good as they could be. However, when compared to the other animation styles, this is a pretty easy last place. The designs look bulky and aren't particularly attractive to me. Obviously, this was an intentional decision to fit with the typical LEGO brand designs. They don't look very good to me, though.

Note that I guess there is technically also the Playmobil shorts. Given there's only two of them, I won't be including them in my rankings. If I did, I'd easily put them last. I like the bulkiness of the facial features even less than these.

Individual Rankings:
5. Velma
4. Shaggy
3. Fred
2. Scooby
1. Daphne

11. Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! (2006-2008)
I'm usually one of the biggest defenders of this series, but the designs don't do it for me. I feel like cleaner, more realistic designs are a much better fit for the franchise. These designs look a bit rough to me. The facial features are really off for Fred and Velma in particular imo. I'm also not a big fan of how Shaggy's hair looks...well...for lack of a better word, too shaggy lol. Scooby and Daphne are probably my faves of the designs. Neither are my preferred designs, but they look a bit nicer and cleaner-cut than the rest of the gang to me. The settings are fine I guess; the backgrounds just seem kinda generic and don't stand out in any way.

​Individual Rankings:
5. Fred
4. Velma
3. Scooby
2. Shaggy
​1. Daphne

10. Velma (2023-2024)
I'm not usually quick to rank things automatically last as a punishment. I'm sure Velma would be last place for most people, but I didn't want to put this last just because it's Velma. The only factor I'm considering in these rankings is how much I like the animation style. Objectively, I do think the Velma designs are a step up from the LEGO and Get a Clue designs, but I still don't particularly like them. The character design features are pretty basic, and the drawings are a bit more crude. The animation style feels very Family Guy-ish in nature, which isn't a fit for Scooby imo.

If I had to pick a favorite, I'd probably go with Daphne! It feels the most similar to the usual designs for me. There are also aspects of Shaggy's that I like. His clothes are decently well-designed, and I like his hairstyle. Fred and Velma's designs don't do it for me at all, though.

Individual Rankings:
4. Velma
3. Fred
2. Shaggy
​1. Daphne

9. SCOOB! (2020)
SCOOB! is the only animation style that's been used in just a single movie. CGI is hit or miss for me, but it's usually a harder sell for me. Of the five designs, I think Shaggy is the best, and stays most true to his typical design. Fred is pretty good too. I like his hairstyle, and the white-to-blue ratio of his shirt! Scooby's somewhere in the middle for me. I have to say, I'm not usually the biggest fan of CGI animals, and Scooby doesn't work too well for me. As an animation fan, there's a certain appeal for having the designs stay a little cartoonish. CGI animal designs often feel realistic in an odd way for me, and Scooby's design here falls into that box for me. I don't really like Daphne or Velma's designs here. The proportions look off to me, especially Velma's facial features. Although I'm not a fan of the characters, I think they did a great job with the setting and visual design of the locations!

Individual Rankings:
5. Velma
4. Daphne
3. Scooby
2. Fred
1. Shaggy

8. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! (2015-2017)
These rankings have been really fun to do, because it mixes up the usual order I'd put these series. Unless you just started reading the blog, you probably know by now that I'm a big defender of Be Cool. I don't think any of the hate towards the show because of the animation style was warranted at all. I found it all to be extremely overblown, and the Family Guy comparison is far more applicable to Velma than it is here. That all said...I'm not opposed to this animation style, but I don't love it compared to the others. I think it comes down to me preferring more refined, down-to-Earth designs. These lean a bit too cartoony for me, particularly with the exaggerated features like Shaggy's nose and Scooby's snout. I'm not really a fan of most of the gang's designs, with the exception of Daphne. I actually think her design is really cute! The proportions aren't as off for her compared to the others. The backgrounds are quite nice, but I'll admit they don't stand out to me a ton compared to other shows.

Individual Rankings:
5. Shaggy
4. Fred
3. Scooby
2. Velma
1. Daphne

7. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (1988-1991)
From this point on, we're getting to the ones that I have nothing but good things to say about. This doesn't hold up to the more standard animation to me, but this works so well for the vibe of this series. The exaggerated reactions work really well to create a goofy, kiddy-feeling vibe for the show. I particularly like Fred, Shaggy and Scooby's designs here. All three of them feel like natural fits with their adult designs, where it feels realistic that they'd grow up to look like their standard designs. Velma and Daphne do to an extent as well! I don't like their designs quite as much as the guys, but I still think they look quite good. The only one I think could have been improved is Daphne's. It looks a bit off, and the comparison between her young and adult self isn't quite as strong imo. The series does a great job with backgrounds as well; they have that same overly cartoonish vibe that works so well to create a zany aesthetic for the show.

​Individual Rankings:
5. Daphne
4. Velma
3. Fred
2. Shaggy
1. Scooby

6. Guess Who (2019-2022)
While Guess Who as a series can be on the blander side at times, these designs are great! They did an awesome job updating the classic designs. While they are quite similar, they feel like just enough of an evolution to have a slightly different feel. These designs were used in both Guess Who and the 2022 DTV Trick or Treat. Honestly, the gang's designs are all pretty even for me here, but if I had to rank them, this is what it would like:

​​Individual Rankings:
5. Velma
4. Daphne
3. Fred
2. Scooby
1. Shaggy

5. Mystery Incorporated (2010-2013)
Mystery Incorporated did an awesome job with redesigning the characters! The style is quite different from the original, but they still look great. I think my favorite part of them is that the gang is wearing the same outfits as they are in most of the classic era. The updated style does a great job balancing difference with familiarity, and I feel like that's what makes it work so well. I really like the detail put into the backgrounds as well! The settings are generally pretty gorgeous here, and you can tell a lot of thought and effort went into the designs.

Individual Rankings:
5. Shaggy
4. Fred
3. Scooby
2. Daphne
1. Velma

4. Current DTV Era (2010-present)
Like the Guess Who designs, the recent DTV era has done a great job of adapting the classic style. It struck the perfect balance between keeping a classic feeling, but having it be ever so slightly different in a way that is appealing. My thoughts on these are pretty much the exact same as the Guess Who ones, but these are two spots up because I like that the designs feel cleaner and more refined.

Individual Rankings:
5. Velma
4. Shaggy
3. Fred
2. Scooby
1. Daphne

3. What's New Scooby-Doo? (2002-2009)
​This animation style was used both in What's New Scooby-Doo? and the 2004-2009 DTVs. Given this was the first series with the gang as adults following a big classic era reboot, What's New absolutely killed it with these designs. They do a great job channeling the vibes of the original, while changing it up enough to create something different. Velma, Daphne and Scooby's designs work so well for me here; they all feel like such natural changes that feel right at home with the characters. All of the characters are great though, and there isn't anything I would change about any of the designs. I really like Daphne and Fred's new outfits! They did a good job picking something close enough to the original that it didn't feel jarring. I feel the same way about the backgrounds here. Everything is designed so well, and the settings create such a cool updated feel that quintessentially channels a 2000s vibe that encapsulates the optimism and wonder people felt towards technology at the time. I found it really cool that they used the same animation style for both the series and the films in that era. I'd love to see them streamline the animation style for both the series and DTVs again.

Individual Rankings:
5. Shaggy
4. Fred
3. Scooby
2. Velma
1. Daphne

2. Classic Era (1969-1988)
I really debated about putting this #1, but ultimately there's one design I think I like better. Don't get me wrong though, these are absolute classics (no pun intended). Because we had them in all media for nearly 20 years (and the fact that they were the originals), these are the go-to designs that I think of when I think of Scooby. The animation style feels very realistic and balanced, and the vibe of them feels very down-to-Earth.I'm including Scrappy in my character rankings below, since he was a part of the gang for nearly half of the classic era.

Individual Rankings:
6. Scrappy
5. Velma
4. Shaggy
3. Fred
2. Daphne
​1. Scooby

1. Mook Films (1998-2001)
​More often than not, the Scooby franchise has done a great job with animation. There have been a couple misses like Get a Clue and Velma, or the couple one-off movies they tried something different, but there are aspects of pretty much all the designs I like. They absolutely hit it out of the park with this re-imagining, though. The animators did a perfect job giving the gang a more mature look.

I assume it wasn't intentional, but the way the characters are standing in the above Zombie Island poster showcases a big part of the reason why they work. Shaggy and Velma's designs lean towards feeling pretty much the same as their classic designs, while Fred and Daphne's designs are significantly changed. However, the changes all feel very tasteful, and like a natural maturation of the characters. Their outfits are a big part of this, arguably. They just feel a bit more adult and formal than their past designs, but in a way that doesn't feel like it would be out of place in the classic era. Scooby's design is somewhere in the middle. His design is definitely a bit different than in the classic era, but he also feels much the same in any way.

Besides just the gang, the amount of detail put into everything is incredible! It's arguably the best animation the franchise has ever seen. The settings are all immaculate in how they create a scenic, peaceful feel for each of the films. I really hope they use this animation style again someday, because I adore this style!

Individual Rankings:
5. Scooby
4. Shaggy
3. Velma
2. Fred
1. Daphne

If I were forced to rank the Go-Go Mystery Machine​ designs right now, I'd probably put them between Velma and SCOOB!. However, I feel like the reactions to the Be Cool designs taught us not to judge a design too quick based on concept art. In my opinion, the Be Cool designs ended up being much better than the concept art showed, even if they still aren't a favorite of mine. 

That wraps up my rankings! I thought I would have done an article like this long ago, so it was fun to finally write this up and share my thoughts. It's interesting to look back at my rankings and discover that Fred's design is never my favorite in any series. It's not something I ever consciously realized before, so it's funny that it comes out that way.

If you'd like to share your rankings of the animation styles, I'd love to read them in the comments!

Longtime readers of the blog know I'm a huge advocate for unreleased episodes being put out on physical media. I used to get really excited about any new DVD compilations to see if we'd get any new episodes. After the pandemic, Warner Brothers has completely fallen off with putting out any new DVDs. Our last compilation set was the 50 Cartoon Collection in 2019. That's why I'm so excited that they're finally releasing the complete series of Laff-A-Lympics!

My first exposure to the series was owning the four VHS tapes released in 1996. For those that are unaware, Hanna-Barbera released one VHS tape for each of the three teams, plus one generic one titled "Heavens to Hilarity." Each VHS had two episodes. I only saw the eight episodes on the VHS until two volumes came out in 2010. I eventually saw season 2 on Boomerang, although I'm pretty sure it was around 2012 when the Spooky Games DVD came out. It's kinda wild to think I saw half of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated before I ever saw all of Laff-A-Lympics!

Given it's been 14 years since the last set, I'm so excited they've finally released the rest of the series! In celebration of the DVD coming out tomorrow, I wanted to do a special project to celebrate. If you like sports stats, this post is definitely for you lol. This is basically a post highlighting all the basic team stats for the series.

To start, I wanted to calculate how many times each team won the Laff-A-Lympics! Here's how it breaks down:

Scooby Doobies - 14
Yogi Yahooeys - 7
Really Rottens - 2
Tie between all three teams - 1

Oh, but we're not done there! Let's break it down even further to see how many times each team won a competition. The Scooby Doobies won almost double the amount of events of any other team.

Scooby Doobies - 46
Really Rottens - 29
Yogi Yahooeys - 28
Scoobies and Yogis - 6
Scoobies and Rottens - 2

There was also that one episode ("Africa and San Francisco") where the judges were apparently feeling a mean streak and disqualified every team lol. That event is not counted here, hence the odd number of events.

Finally, let's take a look at how many events each team member participated in. It's a four-way-tie for the player in the most events! Yogi, Captain Caveman, Grape Ape and Daisy Mayhem were all in 19 events over the course of the series. Mr. Jinks and Blabber from the Yogi Yahooeys only participated in three events, which is the least number of events of any member.

Yogi Bear - 19
Captain Caveman - 19
Grape Ape - 19
Daisy Mayhem - 19
The Great Fondoo - 18
Dinky Dalton - 18
Dynomutt - 17
Mumbly - 17
Blue Falcon - 16
Dread Baron - 16
Scooby-Doo - 15
Doggie Daddy - 15
Dirty Dalton - 15
Orful Octopus - 15
Tinker - 14
Shaggy - 14
Quick Draw McGraw - 14
Babu - 14
Taffy Dare - 14
Wally Gator - 13
Scooby-Dum - 13
Huckleberry Hound - 12
Speed Buggy - 11
Magic Rabbit - 11
Hokey Wolf - 10
Dee Dee Skyes - 10
Brenda Chance - 9
Mr. Creepley - 9
Dastardly Dalton - 8
Sooey Pig - 8
Boo Boo - 7
Yakky Doodle - 7
Cindy Bear - 6
Augie Doggie - 6
Mrs. Creepley - 6
Pixie - 5
Snooper - 4
Dixie - 4
Hong Kong Phooey - 4
Junior Creepley - 4
Mr. Jinks - 3
Blabber - 3

This took a while to calculate out, although thankfully the spreadsheet from this 2021 collaborative project I did made it a lot easier than it could have been! I hope you enjoyed checking out these stats.

This is our last Laff-A-Lympics themed post for the week (because of the way the release fell, I stacked all the posts at the beginning of this week). However, there's still a lot of other miscellaneous content to look forward to this week! I'll be making a post on other topics every day for the rest of the week.

​Don't forget to pick up your copy of Scooby-Doo! Laff-a-Lympics: The Complete Series, which is out today!

Over the years, we've had a number of Scooby-Doo episodes with shorter runtimes than the average 22 minutes. In my opinion, this has been to middling success. We have shows like Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! and The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show that were able to pull the concept off quite well. We also have lousy attempts like The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour and The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo Puppy Hour, plus a mixed bag of attempts in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. More recently, we've also had a couple series of web shorts, with the LEGO shorts from 2015 and 2016, and the 2020 Playmobil shorts. As we look towards a potential series of shorts with Scooby-Doo! Gokko, I thought it would be fun to provide my thoughts on all of the previous Scooby-Doo shorts.

So what is the right balance for a well-written Scooby short to strike? This article analyzes what I feel the answer to that question is. We'll first go series by series, and conclude with a review of the positive and negative aspects of each style of shorts.

The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour
For those who follow along with the weekly polls, I've been quite vocal about my dislike of these shorts. In the early 1980s, there seemed to be a push at Hanna-Barbera for more comedy-focused cartoons. As a result, the mystery aspect was entirely dropped from the show. Most shorts were run-around antics where the guys inadvertently getting into mischief around town, sometimes with a monster, but other times with a "bully" or someone who's angered by their mischief.

My issues with a lot of these shorts can be boiled down to two factors: the characterizations and the lack of substance. These types of antics-heavy plots often led to the guys doing something ridiculous, then not taking any responsibility for it. At their worst, we see Shaggy and Scooby catfishing a girl, being racist at the Taj Mahal, and taking no responsibility after ignoring all rules and insulting people.

​Do I believe the writers intended to shift the direction of Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy's characters here? No. It seems more like the writers were so focused on trying to create comedy moments that they didn't think about how the guys' characters would come off. Unfortunately, this means the characters are essentially empty plot vessels, who are seen as malleable to whatever the situation requires to create comedy.

This wasn't an issue specific to Scooby. Other Hanna-Barbera shows airing at the time had similar creative mindsets, such as The Flintstones Comedy Show and the Richie Rich segments. I actually recently rewatched Richie Rich for the first time since I was younger, and was surprised how bad they were. The writing had the same "we're not gonna think this out more than 30 seconds ahead" energy that I dislike in the Scrappy shorts. The short I watched, "Mischief Movie," involved a prankster friend of Richie's being kidnapped by the hidden nation of "Obscuria," who have suddenly come out of hiding. When they arrive, Richie discovers that the leader rules through pulling pranks on his citizens. The leader is revealed to be scaring everyone by making the townspeople think he is a giant jack-in-the-box, who they are all terrified of. The plot is genuinely one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen lol. It comes off like the writers approached it as a roleplay where different writers wrote 15 second intervals at a time, without reading what any of the previous writers had written. It was truly up there with the Yabba-Doo short "Law and Disorder" for how little thought was put into making the writing even the slightest bit cohesive lol.

This example perfectly represents one of my biggest issues with these shorts. In essence, the writing often feels like a random stream-of-consciousness, where the writers are just building the plot direction from scene-to-scene without looking at the big picture of making sure the episode is cohesive.

This perfectly segways into discussing my other issue. What I love about the Scooby-Doo formula is that the mysteries are compelling, the characters are well-developed and interesting, and the situations the gang finds themselves in keep you on the edge of your seat. These shorts...have none of that imo lol. The characters aren't really likable here, and the plot has very little substance to it. The plots are often mindless mess-around style antics with no depth. To me, most of these shorts have some major "we're making everything up as we go" energy lol.

Despite not liking most of this series, there are a few shorts that are appealing to me. I feel like "A Fit Night Out for Bats" is a perfect example of what these shorts could have been. There's no "mystery," but the short pulls in so many elements of the classic Scooby-Doo formula. The short begins with the Mystery Machine getting a flat tire, just as it did in so many of the more traditional series. They go into a spooky house for help, and are chased around by a vampire. The house has a similar atmosphere to many of the mysteries, which is really cool and notable for these shorts. Although it's just a simple chase, the presence of the monster and the atmosphere makes the episode feel like a shortened version of a classic Scooby episode. It's balanced in a way that's really fun, and even has some comedy moments with Sylvester being a rather quirky vampire. This feels like a bite-sized version of a Scooby episode that has all of the fun of any other classic episode, and could have been a great direction for these shorts. Many of the other shorts that have a decent atmosphere, a good monster, and a plot with a logical structure are my favorites.

The Scooby & Scrappy-Doo / Puppy Hour shorts featuring Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy are pretty much in the same vein. There is the added elements of the guys working for Fearless Detective Agency, and an emphasis on Shaggy being a teenager. Ultimately, these elements don't really change how the shorts are written. While the occasional short has some level of atmosphere, most of them don't. It's mainly the same mess-around style antics that The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Hour was riddled with.

The Yabba-Doo shorts were written the same way. It's a cool effort as a spin-off, but the formula is a bit of a mess. The plots of these are all so similar, both to each other and previous Hanna-Barbera shows about stopping bad guys. There's nothing that really stands out about these. The same issue with characters being used as plot vessels is present here. (see: Deputy Dusty's inexplicable angry tirade against Scrappy so they could have a "runaway episode" lol) In most of these, the comedy isn't all that funny. These episodes feel repetitive and unmemorable when watching several at a time.

That said, there are episodes that manage to be so badly written that they're funny. "Slippery Dan, the Escape Man" and "Up a Crazy River" both fall into this category for me. Both feature delightfully quirky villains, which helps the poorly thought out writing be more amusing than it would have otherwise been. There are some of the Richie Rich Hour shorts that fall into this category for me too (most prominently "Sir Scooby and the Black Knight," "Surprised Spies," "Scooby-Doo 2000," and "Hothouse Scooby"). I think a campy show of Scooby shorts like these would be awesome, and there's absolutely a place for something like that to be explored in the Scooby franchise. That said, based on the writing style of the rest of these, it feels more like the writers accidentally stumbled into making campy gold, rather than intending to approach these episodes with a different tone.

The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show is a breath of fresh air for many fans. The chaos of the 1980-1982 shorts is thankfully not present here, and the writing feels like a return to form for the franchise. This series features Daphne (who is reintroduced), Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy solving mysteries together. It's framed under the loose premise of Daphne being a reporter looking for mystery stories. The spooky atmospheres are back. The gang's dynamic feels like a return to how it was portrayed in the first four series. Thankfully, the weird malleability of the characters for the purposes of plot is dropped. Shaggy and Scooby are back to their traditional dynamic. Although Fred and Velma aren't here, Daphne and Scrappy seem to take on the role of being the investigators. The one pronounced difference here is that the mysteries are written to be simpler. The clues are much more overt and easy to figure out. Overall, this feels like an adaption that stays faithful to the main formula, while tweaking it just enough for the series to have its own identity.

A Pup Named Scooby-Doo had just five shorts, but this is what makes it so interesting to analyze! The five attempts at adapting the series into shorts are such a mixed bag, because arguably, they were written with different approaches. The three 11-minute shorts include "Night of the Boogey Biker," "Dawn of the Spooky Shuttle Scare," and "The Ghost of Mrs. Shusham." These shorts are approached as shortened versions of regular episodes. They have almost all the same tropes and structure as the 22-minute episodes. The episodes all start with the gang discovering the mystery, meeting the suspects, finding clues, and of course, lots of silliness along the way. The episodes arguably manage their time very well. The plots are written in a way where they don't feel rushed, and are consistent with the vibe of the rest of the series.

There were two other shorts towards the end of the series. "The Wrath of Waitro" is a seven-minute short, and "Catcher on the Sly" clocks in at only three minutes. With "Catcher on the Sly," it feels like the writers threw in the towel immediately on trying to make it faithful to the show's tone. The short is essentially a Tom and Jerry romp, where Scooby is chased around Shaggy's yard by Buster Mcmuttmauler on his bath day. Although it is silly, it doesn't really feel faithful to the rest of the series. The tone is completely different, and it doesn't even make an attempt to approach the writing in a way that's consistent with the rest of its series.

"The Wrath of Waitro" is better, but to me, it still feels oddly off from the rest of the show. To me, this is mainly the result of the different characterizations. Shaggy and Scooby are uncharacteristically brave as Commander Cool and Mellow Mutt, and Fred and Daphne's appearances feel a bit obligatory. Moreover, the writing attempts to establish a different vibe that feels like it's loosely inspired by the show's tone, but it doesn't feel super connected to the rest of the series. It's a fun one-off, but I'm not disappointed that we didn't get other episodes in this vein.

Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! had two 11-minute shorts towards the very end. The head writer, Jon Colton Barry, has stated that these shorts were a "backdoor pilot" of sorts, to see if a third season comprised of 11-minute episodes would work. However, JCB had no involvement in one of the shorts, and very little involvement in the other. Because of this, these two shorts make for really interesting analysis!

"Pizza O'Possum's" is a short I don't particularly like, but it objectively does pretty well with adapting the Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! formula for a shorter length. Like the A Pup Named Scooby-Doo shorts, it takes a balanced approach to remaining faithful to the previously established tone of the series, while trimming the plot details down to fit an 11-minute length. My issues with the episode stem from the characterization of the gang, and the different humor style. Daphne is characterized as being a bit sadistic at one point, taunting Velma with her video game addiction, so that she'll be the bait. Considering Daphne is characterized in every other episode of this series to be kind and thoughtful, this comes off as a bit jarring, to say the least. The humor also feels like a pivot back towards the campy '70s style humor. I like this style of humor in their respective shows, but it doesn't feel like a fit with the tone of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!. Besides these two issues, "Pizza O'Possum's" otherwise has an excellent atmosphere, one of the season's creepiest monsters, and a solid mystery. There's a lot of good in this episode, but the rest of the series is so high quality that the issues here make this one stand out in a negative way for me.

On the other hand, "The Curse of Half-Beard's Booty" has grown to be one of the best shorts in the franchise. The goofy premise of Captain Cutler asking the gang for help with a mystery is really fun, and I think it fits well into the quirky, ridiculous tone. The villain and atmosphere are both excellent. This feels like a very faithful adaptation of the series' vibe that uses its length well.

In 2015 and 2016, WB released 16 Scooby-Doo web shorts using LEGO animation. Rather than featuring full mysteries, these shorts feature the gang getting into different situations. Most of the shorts show a part of mystery in-progress, but some show the unmasking. A few of the shorts feature the gang merely getting into non-monster related situations, such as building a food machine, getting into a confrontation with a bully, and building the Mystery Machine out of bricks.

From a corporate sense, the goal of producing these shorts was to showcase different fictional scenarios you could imagine while playing with the Scooby-Doo LEGO sets. Every LEGO short featured some aspect of one of the five LEGO playsets released in 2015, whether it be one of the villains, or an object like the Mystery Machine. In that sense, these shorts are fun, but the one-minute runtime does not allow them to be much more than a fun little snippet. As somebody who prefers longer-form content, these shorts aren't something I return to, but I think they did a good job with the runtime they had.

​The same goes for the two Playmobil shorts in 2020. These shorts use the same writing style as the LEGO shorts, by showing a brief snippet of a situation the gang has gotten themselves into. One short has the gang review a line-up of monsters to discover who "the popcorn thief" is, only to discover that it's Scooby. The other short features Shaggy and Scooby trying to pick out a monster movie to watch, which is full of references to Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? villains. I like the LEGO shorts a bit better for staying truer to the tone of the franchise. While somewhat cute, the Playmobil shorts feel a bit too cheesy for my tastes.

Having reviewed all the shorts in the franchise, there are some common themes in the shorts I found to be good. I'm usually a strong advocate for Scooby media that tries something new, but I don't think shorts are the best place to radically reinvent the formula. My favorite shorts were the bite-sized adaptations of the franchise's core formula, that were tweaked to feel balanced despite the shortened runtime. In my opinion, the Richie Rich Hour shorts, the Yabba-Doo shorts, and the non-11 minute Pup shorts didn't have enough time to experiment with something totally new. The short runtime didn't allow for an opportunity to create something both different and compelling in a way that felt true to the franchise. As a result, none of them felt in alignment with the typical tone of the franchise.

The few Richie Rich Hour shorts I liked were all because they felt like an interesting and logical reimagining of the Scooby franchise for a seven-minute format. Shorts like "A Fit Night for Bats" and "Moonlight Madness" were so excellent because they felt like bite-sized adaptations of the classic Scooby formula. This is why The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show was such a step up from the seven-minute shorts. They took a formula that worked and felt consistent what had been previously established in the franchise, and slightly adapted it in a balanced way for an 11-minute format. Although it dabbled more into spy plots, The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries also felt like a great adaptation. The quirky tone and spooky premises still felt like a logical extension of the franchise's core formula.

Similarly, I preferred the LEGO shorts to the Playmobil ones in the sense that they built something interesting from what the franchise had previously established. The Playmobil shorts were cute, but the premises felt far more corny than something we'd see in a traditional Scooby-Doo mystery.

The most enjoyable shorts also approached the shorter runtime in a balanced way. At times, some of the Richie Rich Hour and Yabba-Doo shorts felt like they were padded for time. In most of the shorts, it didn't feel like the writers thought about the big picture of where the plot was going. It felt like they viewed the runtime as a hindrance, and an excuse to pad the plot with random chaos. The difference between A Pup Named Scooby-Doo's shorts perhaps best represents the point I'm trying to make. I enjoyed the 11-minute shorts, because it seemed the writers thought of the shorter runtime as something that could be approached with balance. There was clearly significant thought put into how to make a shorter episode that remained consistent with the general vibe of the series.

"Catcher on the Sly" and "The Wrath of Waitro" feel like the writers didn't see any possibility to make a typical episode with the runtime they had. While there's absolutely a place for novelty episodes, "The Wrath of Waitro" feels oddly disconnected from the rest of the series in many ways. In my opinion, the shorts that were most successful viewed the runtime as an opportunity to be approached with balance, rather than a difficulty that couldn't stay consistent with the franchise's formula. 

All of that said, what am I hoping for with Scooby-Doo! Gokko? I'm not a Tom and Jerry fan, but I watched a few of the Tom and Jerry Gokko shorts in research for this article. From the three shorts I saw, they seem to be approached as brief snippets of situations. If Scooby-Doo! Gokko is going to have a one-minute runtime, I think showing a part of a mystery like the LEGO shorts did is probably the best direction. I will admit, the LEGO shorts aren't super memorable to me, but I think it's all that a one-minute runtime allows for. Showing a full mystery at 20x speed and having all the gang's voices chipmunked wouldn't work so well lol.

If for some reason Scooby-Doo! Gokko has a longer runtime, I'd love to see it approached as a simplified mystery like The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show. The show does a wonderful job adapting mysteries for a shorter runtime, and is a great example that demonstrates that there is potential in a shortened runtime. Having Scooby-Doo! Gokko be like "A Fit Night Out for Bats" or "Moonlight Madness" also feels like a good option. If the 1980-1982 shorts were more like that, I feel it would fix most of my issues with them. It's a shame that they went another direction, and tried to pivot towards something that felt devoid of the heart of the franchise.

That said, I may not be the best person to speak to this. I'm not the biggest fan of the cultural shift towards short-form content, and have never fully understood TikTok lol. I also don't have any level of interest of heavily antics-based cartoons like Tom and Jerry. My dislike of the 1980-1982 shorts and "Catcher on the Sly" isn't meant to say that type of cartoon is inferior or anything like that. However, I do feel that those types of antics aren't a good fit with the Scooby franchise.

If we are indeed getting full series of Scooby-Doo shorts with Scooby-Doo! Gokko, I don't think it's something that I'll be super excited about if it's in the vein of the Playmobil and LEGO shorts. That said, I'm glad to see them continually adapting Scooby for new audiences and societal changes in media consumption. I'm not as excited for this as I am the live-action series or Go-Go Mystery Machine, but I'm interested to see what they come up with!

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.

Update 4/27/26: A group of fans on Reddit have been searching for the missing scenes from Fox-owned broadcasts of the episodes between 1972-1992. Through this effort, they've discovered the missing footage from "The Haunted Horseman of Hagglethorn Hall."

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!