Ten years ago today, I published the ScoobySnax site and blog for the first time. At the time, the blog looked completely different than it is now, and was just intended as a place to post my random thoughts related to Scooby, interspersed with some news about upcoming releases. 10 years later, the site and blog have flourished into something amazing. With today being the 10 year anniversary, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the past decade and how the site has evolved.

The Monday fun facts have become a staple of this site, although I'm not sure if I've ever shared the full backstory behind them. Around the time of creating the site, I was rewatching Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and remember enjoying noticing a few of the Easter Eggs that I'd missed the first time watching it. As I was thinking about different ideas for the blog, I wanted some sort of blog post series that would be a weekly occurrence in times where news was slow, at least to start out with. I had originally published them on Wednesdays, but I moved them to Mondays a few months later, for no other reason than many people dislike Mondays, and I wanted to give people a little something to look forward to on that day.

At the time, I had no idea I'd be doing it the next 520+ weeks lol. It's grown to be something I love, and really look forward to writing up every week. I'm surprised how easily ideas will pop up as I'm rewatching episodes, or in discussion with other friends in the fandom.  It's also always fun when someone else guest-contributes a fun fact that I wasn't previously aware of! On that same note, it's also been amazing to have the opportunity to have some of the Scooby crew members contribute fun facts when I've done interviews with them. In general, it's been such an incredible opportunity to get to speak with people who have worked on the show.

The fun facts have also been really fun outlets for me to do more extensive research if I'm feeling in a creative mood. (Stuff like the Mark of Mormal, the project of which country the gang had traveled to the most, and the Lindsay Pagano career deep dive come to mind). One of the minor worries I had when first starting a blog post series like this is having to potentially scramble to get a post ready on Monday morning, but the amount of times I've had to do that is very few. I typically have them written and saved as drafts a couple weeks before posting them.

Another aspect of the site that I look back on really fondly is the Be Cool and Guess Who reviews. As we all know, the rollout of those shows were pretty messy, with the majority of those episodes airing in various countries with long gaps before they aired elsewhere, especially in the US. One element I loved about the blog during that time was everyone discussing the episodes together in the review threads. While there were obviously good discussions on here before then, that was the first time where I really felt there was a strong sense of community on here, which was amazing to see and I'm so grateful that it's continued throughout the years. Connecting with other Scooby fans has easily been one of my favorite parts of this site, and I'm really grateful for the many friendships I've made through this site.

Another one of my favorite parts of the site has been doing the weekly polls. For those who have joined the site within the past few years, that wasn't something I started until 2019, as an idea for celebrating Scooby's 50th anniversary. I was a little hesitant about continuing them at first, hence the several month gap before doing them every week beginning in 2020, but I'm so glad I stuck with the idea. The polls create a lot of great discussion around the episodes, and I always enjoy seeing people's rankings and choices. I also have a lot of fun revisiting obscure episodes that I haven't seen in forever through the polls, even if it's a Scrappy short that I end up disliking lol. I've particularly enjoyed the few poll series we've done, especially the sports and villains by season polls. That said, I do have an idea for another poll series coming up (not immediately, probably closer to the end of the year) that I'm really excited to start.

Another one of my favorite things I've done on the site were the fan spotlights. I've really enjoyed starting them up again this month! It's been so fun to have the opportunity to get to know different fans and their perspectives. There have even been a few times where I reached out to somebody I didn't know super well, and it led to a friendship.

Sharing Scooby news has been something I've done on the blog now since it started. As I'm reflecting back on these 10 years, I really love how much this blog has become a space for people to share and discuss news with each other, even if I'm not the first one to see the news. I'm not always super quick to see news since I typically only check a few times a day, so I really appreciate how people will sometimes comment on the blog to alert me to news I may have missed.

Having this blog as a creative space to share my thoughts on the franchise, and writing research articles has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of this blog for me. I started writing sporadic articles on here in 2016-2017 (which were mainly reviews and random thoughts), but it wasn't until 2020 where I started writing more structured articles. During the pandemic, I remember really enjoying having the creative outlet of either doing research deep dives or just rewatching episodes to write about a theme. Lately, I've been approaching it by only writing if I have a specific article idea, instead of holding myself to one article a month.

Of all the articles I've done, I have a few favorites, which I wanted to share and talk about a little here.

3. Mission Un-Doo-Able: How the US's Worries of Foreign Invasion Influenced the Writing of The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries
I had been rewatching The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries at the time, and remember being surprised by how many spy episodes there were. I thought about it a bit, and remembered the show was right in the heart of the Cold War. I originally planned to write a fun fact about it, but I quickly found that there was enough content there to do a full article. I was inspired to write an academic-style article on how the sociopolitical context of the Cold War and fears of Communist invasion seemed to influence the writing of the show, through the inclusion of many plots involving foreign spies. I had so much fun writing this article, and it's what inspired me to keep writing other articles of this nature.

2. An Analysis of Technology's Evolution in Scooby-Doo
This was a super fun article to write. I wanted to explore how technology has evolved over time in the Scooby-Doo franchise, and had a lot of fun rewatching and analyzing the different messages that the technology-centered episodes had. One of the main takeaways from my research was that the older episodes tended to represent technology as something to be feared, through having the villain be a robot that went haywire. In the later episodes begin with What's New, those fears of technology were still there, but were for the most part presented in a more open-ended fashion. The later episodes featured messages of the importance of using technology in a balanced manner (Examples of this of "High Tech House of Horrors," "Me, Myself and AI" and even "E-Scream" to an extent). I really enjoyed exploring this topic in-depth for the article, and it remains one of my favorite articles I've written on here.

1. A History of the Online Scooby-Doo Fandom
This was easily my favorite article I've written on the blog. The article provided a detailed history of the Scooby fandom, discussing how its evolved from the earliest Scooby sites in the 1990s to the present day. While the project was by far the most ambitious and time consuming article I've written on here, I had a ton of fun writing a more journalistic-style article and interviewing so many amazing Scooby content creators!

I had originally planned to close this post by sharing the most commented on posts over these 10 years, but unfortunately, it doesn't appear Weebly has any function to track that. I do know the top 2 though, so I will share those two:

1.  Scooby-Doo Chronological Viewing Order
This was a project posted on April 27, 2017 that currently holds the record for most comments. This was a collaborative project with Dallas Kinard, a Scooby fan who took on the impressive project to mapping out a chronological timeline of Scooby episodes, to remove all of the discontinuities through grouping the series into various continuities. While I did help a little bit with this back in the day, almost all the credit goes to Dallas for this incredible project, and he's continuing to make significant updates to the timeline through doing a full rewatch. As of writing this, the post has 390 comments, and is still commented on pretty regularly.

2. New Images from Guess Who 
​This is a rather random news post featuring new images from Guess Who episodes that were, at the time, only aired in Turkey. The post garnered 338 comments and, surprisingly, it's the second-most commented on post in the blog's history.

​I hope you enjoyed this retrospective post! I'm so happy with how the site has evolved over this past decade, and I honestly wouldn't change a thing about it. I want to end this post off by giving a huge thank you to you, all the readers and commenters. This site wouldn't be what it is without you all, and it makes me so happy that this site has turned into such a great, supportive community for Scooby fans to have discussions and talk about the franchise.

When I started last year's year-in-review post by saying "it's been an unexpectedly light year" for Scooby, I had no idea what we'd be going into this year lol. After a huge renaissance of Scooby content since Zombie Island, this year was arguably one of the strangest years in the past few decades. Besides the normal comics, picture books and assorted merchandise, the only official Scooby content we got was Velma, which was hated by most of the fandom, and Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too!, which was shockingly leaked online in full six months before its release.

Because I usually rank the top 10 things from each year, I considered not even doing a post this year given there was only two things worth ranking. However, I really like the tradition of these year-in-review posts, so I decided to do one even though the ranking is going to be obvious. Unlike previous years, I'm not going to rank the comics, picture books or merch. I haven't kept up on the comics or read the picture books, and while some of the merch definitely looks cool, I don't really have a strong enough opinion on any of it to rank it.

2. Velma
I really wanted to like this series and I went into it with an open mind, but ultimately, the series ended up being the worst show in the franchise IMO. The core of my issues with the show were the poor character development, poor writing, and overfocus on social commentaries.

The characters were written in a way that was very unlikeable, especially Velma. She was written in a way that was very mean and self-centered, and treated those around her like garbage. I felt the last two episodes illustrated this best, as without ruining anything, there's a moment where Norville ends the friendship with Velma. Honestly, I was actually happy that Norville ended the friendship with Velma, because they'd made her such an unlikeable jerk that I felt Norville deserved a way better friend than her. There is another moment in the finale where she finally listens to all Norville's voicemails she had been ignoring for years, which the show tries to present as a sweet moment. By that point, her character had been assassinated so badly that her not behaving terribly for once was not at all compelling. Daphne was also very mean and self-centered throughout the whole show. I will admit that Fred grew on me over the course of the show, but more in a "so stupid it's funny" way (the scene with Fred running through a cave collapsing due to sound, shouting "help, help!" at the top of his lungs, stands out most when thinking of his character lol). Norville was the only likeable character in the bunch.

The show did an equally poor job with writing in general. Lots of corners were cut and several plot points were rushed, and the writers seemed weirdly fixated on forcing their social commentaries in, regardless of whether they actually fit into the plot or not. A great example of this was in "Fog Fest," where there was a great atmosphere for the gang to run into the murderer. Instead, the stuff with the murderer was pushed to the last four minutes of the episods, and the rest of the episode was for some reason made into a social commentary about Velma experiencing male privilege when she dresses up as a guy. The pacing of the overarching plot was really off, where they'd do episode-long social commentaries and then cram an important part of the overarching plot into the last few minutes of an episode.

Perhaps the worst part is that the social commentaries weren't even funny most of the time, and came off as one-liners some angry person would post on Twitter. At best, most of the social commentaries oversimplified characters into two-dimensional stereotypes, and at worst, they were painfully try-hard attempts to be edgy and shocking. By the end of the show, the edgy stuff didn't even really shock me anymore, because it quickly became clear the writers were just trying to troll and offend the audience. I found it obnoxious how hard the show was trying to cement their "edgy" image. I have no problem with them wanting to make the show edgy, but it goes to the old saying of "show, don't tell." If the writers wanted to make an edgy show full of social commentaries, it should have been better incorporated into the plot, instead of being so try-hard and forced in every other minute.

Season 2 is now in production and is supposedly coming out next year. I'm not even sure if I plan to watch, as I don't really want to give the show further attention. Honestly, I think a big part of the reason it got renewed is because it was getting so many hate-watches, so I'd rather not support it in hopes it doesn't get a season 3. It's possible I may check it out way down the line, which is unusual for me because I usually watch Scooby content the instant it comes out, but after how awful the first season was, I don't really have a strong desire to watch it right away.

1. Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too!
There was pretty much no competition this year to get the #1 spot, as there was no way I was ranking Velma any higher than last place lol. I really enjoyed this film! I'm not super into the DC fandom and haven't really watched any DC content other than the theatrical movies (although I still have to catch up and watch Blue Beetle), but I thought they did a great job of making this film appealing even to those without a lot of familiarity with the DC universe. I've talked in previous year-in-review posts that I'm ready for them to take a break from the crossovers, especially after most movies have been crossovers and we just finished a whole series of crossovers. However, I really liked how they switched it up with this film, where they had the gang go into the guest stars' universe, rather than vice versa like it usually is. I thought Krypto's friendship with Scooby was adorable, and he fit right in with the gang without overshadowing them. I also liked how they toned down the references a bit here. They felt a lot more subtle and not like we were being hit over the head with them. The villain was also a really interesting and creative idea, and I also thought the Hall of Justice was a great setting with an excellent atmosphere. This was overall a really good film and I'm so glad it wasn't scrapped like a lot of us were worried about. As an aside, I also think it was cool they put out so much merchandise for the film! I imagine it was probably to make up for the losses they were worried about from people seeing the leak, but it was cool to see so much merch and promotion for a Scooby film.

To conclude the year in review articles, I usually talk about what I'd like to see for the franchise moving forward. Of the two hopes for the franchise I mentioned in last year's article, we did get Krypto Too like I'd hoped. I also said I was hoping there wasn't too much backlash to Velma, but honestly, I think the backlash it got was justified given what a shoddy show it was lol.

This was such a weird year for Scooby content that I honestly have no idea what to expect next year. At this point, I'm just hoping we get a DTV. I don't think we'll get any other series besides Velma, since Mystery Pups was supposed to be the show for next year, and it was sadly cancelled by WB. We were also supposed to get another Scooby film, Haunted High Rise, either this year or next year, but this also suffered the same fate of Holiday Haunt and got written off by WB for taxes.

While we may not be getting another series next year, I have been thinking a lot recently about what I'd like to come next in the franchise. In thinking about this, my mind turns to an interview about Return to Zombie Island that a few regular commenters on the blog and I were discussing. In the interview, it was heavily implied that Return to Zombie Island was made with the intent of disowning the original Zombie Island. The reason given for this was essentially that it went against what the co-producer of the film believes to be the message of Scooby-Doo, which is that there's nothing to be afraid of, and monsters being people in masks symbolize that things aren't as scary as they may seem. I definitely think this is a cool takeaway from the franchise, but I don't believe it's all that the franchise is or ever can be. With how safe Guess Who and the recent DTVs have played it, I would really like to see something that is more experimental. By "experimental," I don't mean it has to be anything super risky like Get a Clue, but even something like What's New, which had an updated feel for the 21st century, or SDMI or Be Cool that honed in more on the tone and comedy would be fun. The writers have really seemed to hone in on trying to make the franchise exactly like the classic series, but their main way of executing this seems to be keeping the character development limited like it was in the 60s/70s, and in turn, they haven't really paid as much attention to the tone and atmosphere. All that said, I think my biggest wish for the franchise is that the next new series does something different and experiments with different elements of the franchise.

I hope you enjoyed reading this year-in-review post! Next year will be interesting for Scooby, since the only thing we know for sure is coming is Velma season 2, and it remains uncertain whether we'll get another film or series. It will be an interesting road forward with WB cutting back content, but I am hopeful for a great year for Scooby!

It's been an unexpectedly light year for Scooby after we got tons of content last year. I joked with someone in the comments that the Year-in-Review post for this year would be blank; but thankfully it didn't end up being that light thanks to Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo. It will be very slim pickings for this year's list, given there was hardly anything released.

For those of you who are new to the blog this year, I always write up a post at the end of each year ranking my favorite things that happened in the franchise each year. I don't include any announcements of content happening in the future (i.e. the Velma teaser would not count, since the series itself won't be released until 2023), and I also don't typically include any non-official content or trivial stuff (i.e. Tracy Mark Lee sharing the designs for the Dolly Parton and Mel Brooks Guess Who episodes). Since it was a light year, I made one exception this year which I'll explain when I get to it.

We also had a bit of sad news this year, that being Scoob! Holiday Haunt was cancelled by Warner Brothers' new CEO David Zaslav it was supposed to be released around this time. I'm glad this doesn't seem to be affecting any other Scooby content, since we have confirmation that Mystery Pups and Velma are going ahead with production. I'm not really sure on Krypto, though, since there's been speculation that it was cancelled.

I don't really have a lot to say about the first few things up until we get to #4, but I'll quickly go through them just to include everything that's happened this year.

10. Wendy's Scooby-Doo Pop Up Mysteries
Although I won't be getting them myself, I think it was a cool idea for Wendy's to release pop-up mystery playsets based on classic Where Are You episodes!

9. MG Collectibles Figures
Don't have much to say about this, but it's neat we got figures for Captain Cutler, the Space Kook and the Tar Monster (even if they were nearly $400 lol)!

8. Scooby-Doo and Glamlite Makeup
If there was one thing I wasn't expecting in 2022, it was getting an announcement for a Scooby-Doo makeup line lol. I think it's neat they made this, though! I'm a little confused why they didn't have the names correspond with the package designs, though (for example, the "Creeps and Crawls" eyeshadow has a picture of the witch on it rather than the green ghosts).

7. Matthew Lillard Rents Out 2002 Live-Action Mystery Machine on Air BnB
The title says it all, but this was another thing I would have never expected to happen. I thought it was so nice of Matthew to do this!

6. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You and Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries Comics
I guess this is kind of a placeholder, since I haven't read any of them, but six more Where Are You comics were released this year. I'm really happy to hear that some of the comics finally included original art. One of the big reasons I lost interest is because they just used stock art for all of the comics, and the stories weren't all that well-written in my opinion. It's great that they are using original art again.

I enjoyed the few Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries comics I checked out. I haven't read them all yet, but it's neat they rebooted the series after the original run ended in March. Overall, six of these comics were released this year.

5. Multiversus
We've arrived at the last thing that I'm mostly indifferent to lol. While I didn't personally play it, I thought it was really cool they included Scooby in this universe and essentially granted the wishes of all those fans who were wanting to see Ultra Instinct Shaggy in the Mortal Kombat games. Even though it wasn't technically in the Mortal Kombat universe, the fact that it had a connection with the creator of those games was very cool and I'm happy it happened for the thousands of fans who wanted it.

4. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? The Complete Season Two
I'm super happy that we got this season on DVD. Given Be Cool Scooby-Doo season 2 was never released, I was worried Guess Who would suffer the same fate. I would love to have all the Scooby episodes, specials and films on DVD someday, so I'm happy they didn't choose to skip season 2 here like they did with Be Cool.

3. Daphne & Velma Book 3
While I didn't like this quite as much as the other two, I was really happy they finally released the third book in the trilogy after waiting over two years. The book was a very fitting end to the trilogy. It was really cool that the author, Morgan Baden, drew upon previous Scooby-Doo episodes and movies to create her own continuity for this trilogy. She also did a great job building suspense and horror all throughout the book. The villain was excellent, and the culprit was very unexpected. The only things I didn't like were the Fred/Velma romantic stuff, as well as the fact the book ended on a cliffhanger for seemingly no reason. Overall though, I thought Morgan did a great job writing these books and making the plots/characterizations very compelling. This trilogy makes an awesome addition to the Scooby franchise, and I wish these books got more attention than they did because they're great.

2. Mystery Incorporated
I don't typically include fan content, but I have to admit, I was super impressed by this and didn't want to exclude it. In a year that was extremely light for Scooby-Doo content, this was really nice to get what was basically a piece of Scooby-Doo fanfiction with cinematic quality. I thought the acting was excellent and the plot was super engaging. The common complaint people seem to have about fanfiction is that it doesn't stay true to the characters, but I felt the writing for each of the characters was very compelling here. Like with Daphne & Velma, it was neat how they took bits of pieces of canon from previous Scooby content here and creatively interpreted it to create elements of the gang's characterization. I thought all of the actors and actresses did a great job. The one minor issue I had is that Fred's actor looked like he was much older than high-school age (I'd guess at least 25, possibly 30), as well as that one guy at the party I mentioned in my review that looked like he was 40 lol (I'll add him to the list of characters I stan for, along with Sassy Fred and the Arm-Crossing Gators from Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! haha). That's a pretty common thing in media to have cast people who are much older than the characters they play though, so I don't fault this series for it. The monsters in the series were great and seemed like something straight out of a horror film. I also loved how this series struck a bit of a darker tone. In addition, I thought they did a great job using references. I've complained in posts on here before that I don't like how they sometimes just reference the same things over and over for no reason, so it was very refreshing to see references worked well into the plot. It seems like they've run into a bit of a delay with episode 2 because they didn't quite meet their goal, but I'm really hopeful that episode 2 gets funded, because I can't wait to see what happens next!

1. Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo!
I was beginning to get worried that it was going to be the first year with no new Scooby DTVs since 1997, so I was really excited when we got the trailer for Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! I know this film created a lot of drama within the fandom because of Velma's sexuality, but I absolutely loved the film.

Although Scooby-Doo has not done well with retcons in recent years (looking at you, Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island), I thought they did it well here. The fact that Coco creating all the costumes the gang has ever encountered seemed to be in a separate universe worked quite well. I know that some people thought Velma being romantically interested in a woman was cringey, but I thought it was very well done. It wasn't in-your-face; it felt natural and didn't completely overtake the movie. Honestly, the whole media reaction was the only thing that bothered me. There was one article in particular from a news source that I just thought was awful, in which they say "a Scooby-Doo writer confirmed Velma is a lesbian, so you can't even deny it!" In general, a lot of media sources used "the Scooby-Doo writers" as their source, which I thought didn't make sense, because there is no one entity of "the Scooby-Doo writers." Different people write each series and movies, so one writer is not an authority over the entire franchise. However, my main issue with the media coverage of this is that Velma being interested in one woman does not mean she's uninterested in people of other genders (Velma could be bisexual, for example). I think the movie did a great job representing Velma being interested in women, but I didn't like how the media slapped the "lesbian" label on Velma, since it's not specified what sexuality she is. That's more of a problem with society in general though and is nothing specific to this movie, so I digress.

The mystery was also quite good, and I really enjoyed the villains. I also liked how the animation allowed for characters' expressions to be more emphasized. I thought that was a really interesting touch.

I loved how zany this film was. The fact that the film divulged into random chaos in the last twenty minutes was amazing, because I love that kind of humor lol. I would love if they used this humor style again in the franchise.

My only real complaint about the film is that Daphne's character element felt rushed. It could have been a good character arc, but they only mentioned it once at the beginning and then it was never brought up again until a brief moment before the end of the movie. Overall, it was an amazing movie though and I really enjoyed it.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading this list! In terms of things I'd like to see next year, I'm not going to make a whole post, but all the stuff with WB cutting back on streaming projects made me think big-picture about what I want for next year. I think it would be great if we could get Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too!, but given that was never officially announced, I don't think we'll get an official announcement if it's cancelled either. It would be great if we could go back to getting the two DTVs per year we're accustomed to. However, to be entirely honest, I wouldn't mind switching to getting DTVs once a year if they were all great quality, rather than just pumping out crossover after crossover like they were for quite a few years. It was a breath of fresh air to have a movie that wasn't a crossover this year. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the crossovers, but it gets to be a bit much when we have both a series (Guess Who) and all the movies being crossovers at the same time. I'm hopeful that the WB-Discovery merge doesn't affect anything beyond Scoob! Holiday Haunt, but I also wouldn't mind if they dropped down to one DTV per year if the quality was even better than what they were doing with two DTVs.

The other thing I'm a bit worried about going forward is the backlash involving Velma. Even now before the show is released, I know there is going to be a ton more backlash over the show, probably even more than we saw with Trick or Treat, which is unfortunate. My hope is that the backlash isn't too bad, and that people remember that this is just one Scooby show separate from the rest of the franchise. No matter how bad it is, isn't going to "ruin" Scooby-Doo. All of the previous shows are still available for everyone's viewing, and it's safe to say it's not going to affect anything else in the franchise and suddenly turn the franchise into Family Guy or anything like that.

This next year is going to be very interesting for the Scooby franchise, both because of Velma and the fact that since it happened pretty late in the year, this will be the first full year that we'll be seeing the affects of WB and Discovery's merge. It will be fascinating to see what happens, but I'm keeping my hopes up for a great year!

Eight years ago today, I published this site and blog to the Internet for the very first time. Every year on this day, I like to look back on the past year and reflect on all the things that have happened on the site.

Perhaps the biggest thing was doing an interview with Suzi Yoonessi, the director of Daphne & Velma, on the four-year anniversary of the film's original release date. It was so cool talking to her and hearing more about the creative process behind making the film. Daphne & Velma is such an underappreciated movie that so many Scooby fans haven't given enough of a chance to even watch, so it was amazing getting to talk to someone involved with the movie in such a prominent role. She was also nice enough to contribute a fun fact in May to celebrate the 400th week in a row of Monday fun facts. I'm incredibly grateful to have had the amazing opportunity to talk to her.

Speaking of interviews, I also really enjoyed talking to Sandy Fries in April. It was amazing getting to hear Sandy's firsthand experience working with Joe Barbera. He and his assistant were so easy to work with and I really appreciated getting to hear about all his experiences working with Hanna-Barbera.

Besides the interviews, one of my favorite things I did on the site this year had to be Voice Talent Appreciation Week. It was so much fun getting to see and discuss everybody's rankings! I also really enjoyed the couple of poll series that we did with the season premieres/finales, best season for villains, and the sports polls. Those were all so much fun, and I always enjoyed doing the averages/rankings in the comments for all of those. A huge thank you to Mr. Neither and Becker for suggesting those!

Thank you so much to everyone on this blog for reading, posting comments, and simply being here. I've loved watching this blog evolve over the years, and I can honestly say it feels like it just continues to get better and better. Arguably, you all are a big part of this blog's success, and I can't thank you all enough for it. Here's to another amazing year of ScoobySnax.com!

From Guess Who wrapping up, two DTVs, some comics, and even a reunion special, a lot has happened for Scooby-Doo in 2021! As I do every year, I wanted to create a post to look back at the year and rank my favorite things that have happened Scooby-wise in the past 365 days. I generally don't include the announcements for things that will happen in the future, although there is one exception to that rule here with #10, since the Ultra Instinct Shaggy petition finally happening was kind of the thing, rather than the game itself which isn't completely Scooby-related.

10. Ultra Instinct Shaggy Added as Character in MultiVersus
While I myself am not a big fan of these particular types of games, this is such a cool thing that they did given how many fans signed the petition to add Ultra Instinct Shaggy as a character to Mortal Kombat. Even as someone who doesn't plan to buy the game when it's released, this felt like a very full-circle moment. The petition went up a few years ago when the Ultra Instinct Shaggy memes starting blowing up, so it's so cool of the creators of this game to answer the petition, particularly given the connection with the Mortal Kombat creator. I'm very happy all those who signed the petition finally get to have this happen.

9. Simple Plan Releases What's New, Scooby-Doo? Studio Version
This was something I never would have expected to happen. Given the theme song was recorded 19 years ago, it was very cool of Simple Plan to release the studio version after all these years, especially given it is probably a relatively obscure song in their discography for them.

8. Funko Pops
Funko has really been cranking out the Scooby-Doo Pops this year! Between the villain sodas for the Space Kook and the Werewolf, the Hex Girls Pops that sold out in nine minutes, and all the other Scooby ones they've put out, the love they've shown Scooby with creating all those Pops is incredible. Hopefully they continue releasing Scooby-Doo Pops!

7. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You (#108-113)
Looking at my past few year end posts, the Where Are You comics have been pretty low. Generally speaking, while I like the comics, I'm not quite as into them as I am the Scooby-Doo TV shows and films. The past few years in particular, the Where Are You comics have really struggled with their overuse of stock art. It's in fact gotten so bad that pretty much entire issues are just recycled stock art. In honesty, I haven't been buying the Where Are You comics at all anymore since this stock art issue started, because I'm just not interested in them. Other than for posting the DC solicitations each month, and looking up info about each comic when they come out to add to the site, I don't really engage with the Where Are You comics at all.

All that being said, I was very happy to hear that one recent comic, #111, used new art for the first time in years. It switched back to the stock art in #112, so I'm not sure if it was a one-time thing. I had pretty much lost faith that those comics would be anything other than stock art, so I'm eager to see if they start transitioning back to making new art. That's the only reason why it didn't get ranked low again.

6. Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries
A brand new monthly comic series, Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries, began being published on March 27 digitally and April 13 in print. So far, 9 comics have been published. There will be 12 comics overall in the series. The last three will be published next year, and the series will conclude in March. When they first announced this series, I was admittedly a little skeptical that this was just going to be Scooby-Doo! Team Up part 2. Not that I hate Scooby-Doo! Team Up or anything, but my philosophy is that each series should bring something new to the table or explore a new concept/element, not just rehash something that's already been done. I've been pleasantly surprised with this series, and it's been nice to see they've done some fun things like the A Pup Named Scooby-Doo​ reboot in issue 6. 

5. Scoobtober
This might be a bit of a surprise to see so high in the list, but I was very impressed with how they handled Scoobtober this year. It felt like they really put a lot of effort into planning a lot of different things out, from concluding the Guess Who series with the last 11 episodes, airing Scooby movies on Cartoon Network, and adding 28 movies to HBO Max. Not that they've done a horrible job in the past, but I feel like in past years, they've just added a couple movies to Boomerang and called it good. Posting 28 new films and concluding a series, in addition to the extra touch of airing stuff on Cartoon Network, felt very special. I really hope they continue doing stuff like this in future years, because you could really tell how much they cared and thought out something fun to do.

As a side note, I do think the transition to HBO Max is interesting. I can't remember if I've talked about it in a post like this or just said it in responding to people's comments, but I feel like it may be the latter. I think in the coming year, they will probably shut down the Boomerang streaming service and app and move all the Scooby content on there to HBO Max. They've pretty much abandoned it and aren't posting any new content anymore. It also seems very odd they're just leaving Guess Who incomplete on the Boomerang app, as the last 11 episodes never made it on there.

4. Scooby-Doo! The Sword and the Scoob
​This was a really good film. The concept of time traveling was a fun idea, and the villain was super cool. It was fun how they dove into Shaggy's ancestry with this one and built off of "Scared a Lot in Camelot" by having his ancestors be from Camelot. I also thought Velma was an improvement in this one. They did a decent job with her in Happy Halloween, but this felt like almost a full redemption of her character. I really disliked them making her an insufferable skeptic in the 2019 sequel films, and I'm happy they're leaving that character development behind. I know some people didn't enjoy them taking Daphne's quirky personality from Be Cool for this film, but I thought it was cute and enjoyed it to an extent. I'll admit, when I first watched it, I felt the quirkiness felt a little forced in this movie as compared to Be Cool and Happy Halloween. The "reality is a simulation" remarks felt a little much, but as the movie has had a little time to sit, I don't quite mind it as much as I did initially. I still don't like it quite as much as I did in Be Cool or Happy Halloween, however. The references to previous Scooby material were fun, and Thundarr was an interesting addition. You can read my full review of the film here.

3. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now?
I know the reunion special was very hit or miss for most people. While it wasn't perfect, I enjoyed it for what it was. The irreverent humor was hilarious to me, particularly the "Please, Snagglepuss is very litigious!" and Scooby being a nudist comments. I usually hate live action and animation hybrids, but I didn't really mind it in this. It felt like it worked with the quirky style, as did the goofy Snow Ghost. The guest stars all fit quite well and no one felt forced. I still think it's odd Iain Armitage didn't appear, particularly since we never got an explanation as to why. The flashbacks were all fun, but I didn't care for the splicing of new audio over old scenes. It would be very strange not to have the rights to their own content, so I'm not really sure what happened. The other aspects of the special I didn't like were the bodily humor jokes during the trap. It was completely unnecessary to include that Scooby peed in his costume, and given this seems more intended for adult audiences, it's very weird of them to include childish bodily humor like that. The main thing I didn't like, however, was the Scrappy bashing. There was no reason to bash him so harshly in this, and it felt out of place. It's very clear from an interview with the writer of this special that the inclusion of this was fully based on his own hatred of Scrappy, which is unfortunate. Many of the comments he has made demonstrates a very one-dimensional view of the franchise on his part, which doesn't take into account that many fans don't blindly hate Scrappy. Good writing takes all perspectives into account, and doesn't make the assumption that simply because that every single fan feels a certain way just because the writer has a strong opinion on something. I did enjoy the special as a whole and I'm not saying the writing of the entire thing was bad, but I feel that not a lot of thought was put into writing that Scrappy scene beyond blind hatred. Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable special and a cute little celebration of the franchise, even if there were some aspects that could have been a bit better. You can read my full review of the special here.

2. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who: The Final 11 Episodes
The final 11 episodes of Guess Who finally aired this year, though the rollout was quite interesting as has been the case for the past several Scooby series. Note that I am not including "Lost Soles of Jungle River!" in this, because it aired in the UK in 2020 and the recording was available for fans to watch if they wanted to. "Dark Diner of Route 66!" aired on February 25, 2021. At first, many of us thought it would lead to us getting the remaining Guess Who episodes on a weekly basis, but that didn't happen. I still feel that them posting the Axl Rose episode was a publicity stunt of sorts, in the sense that WB considered it as an episode that could get them a lot of press coverage because Axl Rose was such a famous musician. The reason I feel this way is that if you look it up, there are tons of articles on the episode and interviews with Axl about the episode, whereas we didn't get that with any other episode in this series. Anyway, new episodes began airing in Canada on March 7, which allowed some of us to see them via recordings. Those lasted for five episodes through April 4, and then they stopped for a little while in Canada. The episodes continued to air in Australia, but no recordings were available. The episodes lasted until May 9, when the last five episodes aired in Canada. Because WB's rollout of episodes with these last few series has been so weird, the remaining 11 episodes did not air in the US until October 1, 2021, exactly a one-year hiatus since the first half of season 2 aired on October 1, 2020. You can view my full review of the series here.

That explanation aside, I really enjoyed the last few episodes. I thought some of them were the best the series had to offer, "A Haunt of a Thousand Voices!", "The Legend of the Gold Microphone!", "Cher, Scooby and the Sargasso Sea!" and "The Movieland Monsters!" particularly standing out. Specifically "A Haunt of a Thousand Voices!" was such a fun meta episode and you could tell the voice actors were super into their roles. It was also fun they got Cher back. Even though I still would have preferred "A Haunt of a Thousand Voices!" as the last episode, I think the Carol Burnett one was a pretty good choice as well, since it was an ode to classic films and this series featured guest stars from popular films and TV.

1. Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo and Courage the Cowardly Dog
​I really enjoyed this film and it was my favorite thing of the year. They really did an amazing job combining both franchises where it didn't feel like one was overshadowing the other. Even as someone who hadn't grown up with Courage, I felt they did an excellent job introducing us to it without overdoing the background info. The dark tone of the film was incredible and something I'd love to see in future films. All the little Easter eggs to both franchises throughout the film were so fun! Most of all, I think I loved the message this movie had about courage. Not only because it was a pun on Courage's name lol, but because they are such prominent parts of both Scooby and Courage's characters. It's a very important message for people of all ages IMO. Without fear, there is no courage, and to get courage, you need to be brave and overcome your fears. I was very happy with this crossover and thought they did an excellent job with it. You can read my full review for the film here.

I hope everyone has a happy new year!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hi everyone!

So every year, on the site's anniversary, I like to write up a brief post about everything that's happened in the past year, almost like a journal of my thoughts that I'm publishing out to the world. And sure enough, six years ago today, the site went live for the very first time. I can't believe it's been this long already, nor all the cool things that happened this year!

Perhaps the coolest is my collab with pop singer Lindsay Pagano on the 300th fun fact. Lindsay was so down-to-Earth and sweet! I'm always worried about potentially bothering people who've worked on the show when asking them to collaborate, but Lindsay seemed genuinely excited to contribute and it was so cool to get to meet her! She also posted it not once, but three times, on her Instagram story that day! (1, 2, 3)

Some other really cool things I started this year include the weekly polls, which have been so fun to see what everyone's opinions on stuff is! I really enjoyed doing them as an experiment last September during Scooby's 50th anniversary month, and I knew I wanted to keep doing them! I also began writing monthly editorial articles, something I've been wanting to do now forever, and I finally lived up to my word this year haha. It only took a global pandemic to get me motivated lol!

Another thing I'm super proud of is the comics page, which provides a listing of every Scooby-Doo comic series and all the individual titles within each issue. It was initially going to be a 2020 project, but I buckled down before decade's end, and two days before 2020 (December 30, 2019), I wrote it all up and published it!

Lastly, I also redesigned all the site graphics, with the help of my wonderful friend Bradford N. Smith, who created all of these to help me out. I think they look amazing! On a related note, I actually don't think I've ever talked about this, but I also created some brand colors for the site, which is that blue and yellow. I really like the theme, honestly!

Thank you so much to everyone for making this an amazing 6 years of ScoobySnax.com! I'm so lucky to have such kind, awesome people frequent my site, and it's really cool that this has become a community for Scooby fans.

​Here's to another great year of ScoobySnax.com!