 This is essentially "part 2" of last week's fun fact. So, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole for this week's fun fact lol. It started off with a conversation with my friend Juan, who pointed out that "Guë Guë Guepa" from What's New had a censored version in the United States. In the US, "dando fuego a mi tabaco" is censored because it means "lighting my tobacco." I remembered another instance of an inappropriate lyric on the SCOOB! soundtrack, so I was inspired to do a bit of a deep dive to see if there were any other less-than-PG lyrics in Scooby soundtracks.
What I found is that...several Scooby movie soundtracks had shockingly little quality control. A number of the songs included featured non-PG lyrics. While there was nothing too bad for the most part, there were some lyrics leaning towards PG-13. So that this fun fact doesn't stray too far from being family friendly, I'm going to approach it like this. I'll list each song and a small tidbit about why the song was inappropriate, but I will provide a separate link to the lyrics for those who want to see them. This way, readers who might be a bit younger don't have to be exposed to the inappropriate lyrics. And just to be clear, none of these are that bad and this is intended in good fun. The lyrics I'll highlight definitely lean towards being PG-13, but I won't link or discuss the one that goes beyond that.
Besides "Land of a Million Drums," there's also "Lil' Romeo's B House" and "Freaks Come Out at Night" that have vague undertones leaning towards PG-13 (although no swears are included).
(The PG version is that like the other WWE song, the lyrics are extremely violent)
I hope you enjoyed this little "ScoobySnax After Dark" fun fact haha. It was surprising to learn that Warner Brothers didn't seem to put sort of any mandates on keeping soundtracks songs PG!
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 Unlike Where Are You, Pup and Be Cool, nearly all of the chase songs used in What's New, Scooby-Doo? were not made specifically for the series. Nearly all the chase songs were pre-existing songs that are available in full on this Spotify playlist. Most songs that were used are rock songs that were released around the same time as What's New Scooby-Doo?.
We know from a previous fun fact that WB featured a few new artists in the show, such as Simple Plan and Lindsay Pagano, to help promote their music. However, some of the chase songs used are several decades old. The three songs from The Ramones and "Shout It Out Loud" by KISS were from the mid-1970s. However, there were a small handful of songs that were made just for the series. It's worth noting though that "Urei" by Puffy AmiYumi is not available on streaming, but it appears to be a pre-existing song that has a Spotify page. However, there were others I found no record of outside of their respective episodes. Three were from established artists, who appear to have written songs specifically for the series. These include:
It's also possible that these songs simply aren't available on streaming. However, given I could find no record of any of them outside of the series, it's likely they were made specifically for the series. At the very least, I know from interviewing Lindsay Pagano in 2020 that "Here I Come Vegas" was written specifically for her episode, so it seems likely that the other two are as well. Besides the three listed above, there were also a handful of songs written by artists that appear to have been made-up just for this series. I found no record of these artists on Spotify or anywhere else. These include:
The major clue seems to be that any song where Rich Dickerson is credited as a writer isn't available on streaming. (He is credited as a co-writer on "Santa Claus, Santa Claus," "It's a Rad, Rad World," "Here I Come Vegas," "Petrified Bride" and "Hong Kong Holiday" as well). Rich was one of the crewmembers on the show, so that the credit likely means he specifically developed these songs for the series (or oversaw the writing for other artists). Either that or he did some terrible, terrible things and all of his songs had to be blacklisted from streaming. #Dickergate Another cool thing I discovered is that in some of the episodes that the gang travels to another country, the chase song is by a band from that country. This isn't super consistent, but it happens enough to note here. Here are the globetrotting episodes that feature a chase song to fit the country:
I hadn't ever listened to most of these before. After listening to the whole playlist, there were a lot of fun discoveries! I would say my favorites were "Man with the Hex," "Play My Game," "Southbound," "A Walk on the Wire," "Something Special," and "Stronger." I would definitely listen to these again outside of their respective episodes! I have to be honest, there were others I found extremely annoying lol. The ending of "Music of America" is pretty next-level awful, considering they're just obnoxiously shouting the title at you for like a minute straight lol. The worst though is easily "Sabre Dance," which I couldn't even get through. For those who didn't like that it was just a basic instrumental in the episode...the song is just that same generic instrumental for 11 and a half minutes. Literally what justified that runtime? 😭 lol I was also quite surprised to discover that "All Twisted" has a surprise f-bomb in the chorus, despite not being labelled as explicit. Quite surprising for a song chosen to be in Scooby-Doo! Just wanted to mention that as a content advisory for younger readers.
Two different title cards were made for the two-part 1983 and 1984 episodes. The episodes originally aired with title cards at the beginning of each part, saying "part 1" and "part 2." On the Cartoon Network VHS releases for "Wedding Bell Boos," "A Halloween Hassle at Dracula's Castle" and "The Nutcracker Scoob," there is just one title card for both parts at the beginning. I'm unsure whether these title cards were recreated specifically for the VHS, or if they were redesigned at some point during syndication.
 Today's fun fact comes from a movie I enjoyed watching over the weekend! Four years prior to his Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? episode, Sean Astin and Kate Micucci worked together on the 2017 film Unleashed. In the film, Sean plays Carl, who is a love interest for Kate's character Emma. The film's plot involves Emma's pet cat and dog being turned into humans by magic. The film is rated PG-13 for some mature humor, but I would highly recommend this film to any older fans. Despite a somewhat odd premise, it ended up being a cute movie! As a "bonus" fun fact about Sean Astin, I found out when writing this up that apparently he played two characters in season 1 of Guess Who prior to being an official guest. He was also the deliveryman and stagehand in "I Put a Hex on You!".   On the languages DVD menu for What's New Scooby-Doo? volume 2: Safari So Goodi, an odd combination of stock art is used. A background of the gang in front of the Mystery Machine from "It's Mean, It's Green, It's the Mystery Machine" is used. Daphne is shown in her classic era outfit, and Fred's design is a combination of his What's New Scooby-Doo? era shirt and orange ascot. Thanks to Juan for suggesting this week's fun fact!
 In the original concept for Mysteries Five, the gang had a fifth teenager named Mike. Originally, Mike was the one to wear the ascot, but it was later given to Fred. Another early version of the show had Shaggy (then named W.W.) as Velma (then named Linda)'s brother.
Thanks to Alexandra Rutt for suggesting this week's fun fact, which was inspired by a post from the Hanna-Barbera Wiki on Bluesky.  Every year on the Monday of Halloween week, my tradition has been to post a Ghoul School-related fun fact in celebration of the holiday. This marks the tenth year of doing so, and we've got a really fun one this year!
John Debney is a famous film composer who has composed scores for dozens of all-time classic films. His resumé includes blockbuster films such as The Princess Diaries, Elf, Passion of the Christ, and The Greatest Showman. On that note, it may be surprising to know that one of John's first ever jobs was writing and composing "Scrappy's Rap" in Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School. For me, learning this was on the same level as discovering the band known for "Whip It" sang the Get a Clue theme song. It is iconic to think that the man who wrote "Scrappy's Rap" is also responsible for composing the scores for Passion of the Christ and The Greatest Showman lol.  I've posted a fun fact before that Banning Junction in "A Scooby-Doo Halloween" is based on a real-life city in Minnesota called Anoka, which is considered the "Halloween Capital of the World." (Banning Junction is just a small area of that town) In "A Scooby-Doo Halloween," the gang visits the town during its 100 year anniversary of Halloween festivities. What did the real-life Anoka do during it's 100th anniversary? Unfortunately, the 100th anniversary was during COVID in 2020. A simple drive-by parade was held from 11 am-3pm that day to commemorate the holiday, but no other events could be held. On a typical year, Anoka's Halloween annual celebrations include a pumpkin-carving event, a Halloween medallion hunt, house decorating competition, a Halloween Ambassador Competition (similar to the "Miss Corn Princess" competition from the episode), and the big Halloween Day parade.  In addition to Batman's counterfeiting speech, there is one more missing scene from "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair." Decades ago, Hanna-Barbera cut the scene to make time for extra commercials. For an unknown reason, despite the episode's popularity, it was not restored on any of its DVD releases.
This second missing scene takes place right when Fred, Velma and Daphne split off from Shaggy and Scooby in the haunted house. It can be slotted right before the sea monster jumps out at them, and provides a little additional context for that scene. Note that this scene was posted on YouTube back in 2021 by Chorake, who found the other two missing scenes from the series. Somehow, I totally missed that this was shared until now! Like the others, this was found in a 1986 recording of the episode, which featured the 43-minute episode broadcast in full.  Several classic Scooby-Doo catchphrases were never used until mid-way through the original series. There's already been one about "Jinkies" never being said until Where Are You, but there are a couple more catchphrases that aren't used much in the first show.
The first instance of Scooby saying his catchphrase, "ruh-roh," happens in "Bedlam in the Big Top." Similarly, the trademark "I would have gotten away with it..." catchphrase is first used in "A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts." However, this episode featured a slight deviation on what would become the classic phrase. The culprit says "pesky kids" in this episode. Technically speaking, it may surprise people to know that "I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids" was never used in the first season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?. The phrase "meddling kids" was never used until "Jeepers, It's the Creeper." The first instance of the full phrase being used didn't happen until the season 2 episode "Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright." |
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