 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!
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 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!  It's so hard to believe that seven years ago today, this site and blog were published online for the first time. For those who have been following the blog for a while, you know that every year, I like to do a special post giving a brief overview of everything that has happened with the site in the past year. It's essentially a yearly journal that I'm sharing with the world :)
Going chronologically, starting all the way back last September, just like we're doing again this month, we had a pretty action-packed month, with multiple posts per day between all the 13 fan spotlights and a poll every single day, in addition to all the other news. It's always so fun to do the fan spotlights every year and get to show off all the amazing contributions that people are making to this fandom! In December, I finally published a brand new page on the site that I had been working on for it seemed like forever. I'm referring to the Music page, which lists every song that has appeared in all Scooby episodes and films, as well as providing a guide to all the soundtracks that have been released over the years. I'm super proud of this page and excited it's finally out into the world! Towards the beginning of 2021, I also completely redesigned the home page to include buttons for easier navigation to each of the pages, and changed the site logo. In addition to keeping up the monthly editorial articles, I also really enjoyed doing two themed weeks on the blog during the past year: Guess Who Week on June 13-19, which celebrated the end of the series after the final episodes aired in Canada; and "Knott an Ordinary Week" on July 18-24, a silly week that celebrated the legacy of Don Knotts on what would have been the week of his 97th birthday. It was a lot of fun to provide some closure on Guess Who and celebrate the show, given we all know Warner Brothers hasn't really done a good job doing that themselves with the past two Scooby series. It was also so much fun to see people enjoying the Don Knotts Week, with most commenters even changing their names to something Don Knotts related. It was definitely "Knott an Ordinary Week" here on the blog as the name promised, but it was a lot of quirky fun. The week definitely sticks out in my memory - maybe because I'm writing this post waaaay in advance and we're actually still in the middle of Don Knotts Week at the time of writing this, but that's beside the point lol. One of the most special things that happened in the past year was that I got to talk to one of the writers of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, Roger Eschbacher, who collaborated with me on the 350th fun fact. Roger was so nice, and I'm honored that he was generous enough to do an interview with me. Thank you so, so much to everyone for making this another amazing year for the site. I'm super lucky to have such amazing, kind, lovely people frequenting this site, and I love that this blog has become such a great community for Scooby fans over the years! Here's to another great year of ScoobySnax.com! :)  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!  2019 has been a big year for Scooby! With it being the 50th anniversary of the franchise, we got tons of new Scooby-Doo content, from a couple of new revival films to a brand new series. In this post, I'm going to break down the 10 biggest things (in my opinion) to happen this year in the Scooby-Doo franchise. If it's your first time reading one of these posts (I do one every year!), I only count pieces of media which were actually released, not announcements for media (for example, I wouldn't count the Scoob! trailer as something for this year, since the film isn't released until next May). Without further ado, let's reveal the 10 biggest things of the year! 10. Scooby-Doo! 50 Cartoon Collection  While I'm usually pretty optimistic about things, this set really disappointed me and I thought it was a huge missed opportunity on the part of WB. Given WB's track record for mixing old already-released episodes with new content, I was sure we would be getting some old episodes on this set. I was thinking maybe they could do a mix of fan-selected favorites and new episodes, with around 25 old fan favorites and 25 never-before-released episodes. Instead, we ended up getting very random episodes without really any explanation for why they were on there. Nearly 60% of the set was made up of episodes from Where Are You, What's New, and SDMI. Moreover, we only got 3 new episodes on the set, two of which were Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get A Clue! episodes. Those who know me know I don't mind Get A Clue, but in this case, I feel like it was a bad decision to release 2 new Get A Clue episodes on that set. The majority of Scooby fans dislike that show, so it doesn't make sense to just dump them on a set and leave many fans with just one new episode that they'll like, "The Chiller Diller Movie Thriller." If they're going to release Get A Clue, I feel like it should be on a separate set with just Get A Clue episodes instead of burning them off and forcing people to buy expensive DVDs with 47 repeats on it. They also released the set without any episode list, so people have no idea of which episodes are on what disc. I am placing this one at #10 just because we did get "The Chiller Diller Movie Thriller," "Chefs of Steel," and "Almost Ghosts." However, I feel like the decisions made with this set were all around perplexing, and it was a very big wasted opportunity on WB's part for what could have been a really cool DVD set. 9. 6 New Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Issues  I can't really judge this one based on content, as I haven't been keeping up with the Where Are You issues lately due to the overuse of stock art poses. However, it's interestingly become the only comic left now this year, after the cancellations of Scooby Apocalypse in April and Scooby-Doo! Team Up in September (more on this later). Six new issues were released this year (#97-102) and we also finally got the 100th milestone issue of the comic. Notably, with these cancellations, this November was the first month ever since 1995 that a new Scooby-Doo comic was not released. 8. Scooby-Doo! Curse of the 13th Ghost  For the 50th anniversary, we got a brand new film which finally finished The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo series, which ended on a cliffhanger in 1985. However, many fans were left very unsatisfied by this film, due to numerous blatant continuity errors all throughout the film among the semi-false advertising that the mystery would finally be solved, which it really wasn't. I won't ruin the film since I know there are still people out there who haven't seen it, but the blatant continuity errors and poor ending wrecked the film for me. This was explained by Tim Sheridan, the writer of the film, that they wanted to make the film a part of a "rebooted Where Are You exclusive universe." I've really bounced back and forth on whether I like this, but as I've thought about it more, I can't say I'm really on board with it. I totally understand that people love the original, but at the same time, the franchise has changed a lot since then. Not everything they've done has been good, but I feel like it discounts all the progress the franchise has made to just look at everything through a Where Are You lens. This is purely my opinion, and I'm genuinely happy for you if you enjoyed the film. Personally, I just don't feel looking at every single Scooby production every made through a Where Are You lens is an appropriate way to handle the franchise. 7. Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island  I found this movie to be a bit more enjoyable than 13th Ghost, but it still was nowhere near the tone of the original Zombie Island film. There were still a few continuity errors from the original film, but much less than in Curse of the 13th Ghost. I also found Velma's skepticism to be very annoying and borderline in denial, which was frustrating because I felt they made her character too extreme in this film and the last. However, what made this one better than the previous film for me was that I felt it would have been pretty good as just a normal DTV, if one wasn't comparing it to the tone of Zombie Island. It's nowhere near perfect and still a bit disappointing the writers chose to view it from that Where Are You lens, but it was at least not painful to watch like the previous one was. 6. Funko Pops  We got a lot of cool merchandise for the 50th anniversary, but I have to say my opinion is that the Funko Pops are the coolest! We've gotten the gang in previous years, but this year we've gotten many of the villains as well including the Witch Doctor, Captain Cutler, Ghost Clown, Space Kook and Green Ghost! We've also gotten a Scrappy-Doo Funko, which completely sold out within the day on the Funko website! 5. Cartoon Feud  Quite possibly my most controversial placing on this list, but I enjoyed the Teen Titans Go! crossover for what it was. What an interesting turn of events that this would end up being placed higher than the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island films. I felt this stayed more true to the original than either of them did, and there was some very clever meta-humor in this episode about how Teen Titans Go! was constantly on the air, taking up the space of classic cartoons, as well as the joke about Fred not wanting to be voiced by a guy named Frank. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm going to go binge the whole Teen Titans Go! series or anything, or even watch another episode, but it was an enjoyable 10 minutes of entertainment. 4. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?  We also got a new series this year! Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? is a sort of reboot of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, where the gang teams up with various celebrities to solve mysteries. I found the episodes to be sort of hit-or-miss. I loved the Sherlock Holmes, Wonder Woman, Penn and Teller, Urkel, Weird Al, and Batman ones, but others like The Funky Phantom, Jim Gaffigan and Kenan Thompson were not very enjoyable. Overall, I feel like they were trying too hard to make it seem exactly like the original show, which isn't a bit thing, but they tried so hard that many other elements of the show were not done as well as they should have been, and in some cases, it felt forced. We got 13 episodes this year, and the show was ordered for 52 episodes, so I imagine we'll be seeing some of those next year! 3. Scooby Apocalypse  Scooby Apocalypse was one of the best Scooby comics of recent years in my opinion, and we got four new issues this year before it was cancelled in April. I really enjoyed the maturity of this series, and the writing was superb all the way through. I was a bit sad when they chose to cancel it after only 36 issues, but the four issues we did get this year were excellent, which is why this one is #3 on my list! 2. Scooby-Doo! Team Up #50  Similar to Scooby Apocalypse, Scooby-Doo! Team Up was also cancelled after releasing 6 issues this year, #45-50. Honestly, I felt that issue 50 was the type of thing we should have gotten for the 50th anniversary, which is why this is charting higher than Guess Who? and the two reboot films. In this issue, we get to see all the versions of the gang from every incarnation in the past 50 years interact with each other, which was a lot of fun! The only reason why this isn't #1 is because I didn't feel the plot went deep enough in terms of the gangs interacting with each other. Many of the lines were things like just all the versions of Shaggy saying "Zoinks!" together, which didn't go as deep as I feel it should have. It would have been cool for the differences between the versions of the gang to be explored (i.e. What's New Fred acting dimwitted, and the BCSD/Where Are You Fred being irritated by that version of himself). Nonetheless, I also thought it was cool how they brought other recurring characters back and the explanation for the mystery (I won't ruin it by giving spoilers, but those who read it know what I mean!) 1. The New Scooby-Doo Movies Almost Complete Collection DVD and Blu-Ray Set  Having been 14 years since the first "Best of the New Scooby-Doo Movies" set was released, most fans had discounted the 9 missing episodes from that set would ever be released, due to the copyright issues with some guest stars. However, for the 50th anniversary, WB was able to get permission from 8 of the 9 celebrities to release the remainder of the episodes in two different sets, one which had all 23 episodes and another that just had the missing 8, which were Phyllis Diller, Sandy Duncan, Sonny and Cher, Davy Jones, Jerry Reed, Josie and the Pussycats, Jeannie and Babu, and Tim Conway. I thought it was really cool that WB released them in 2 different sets to save the fans who already had the original set money. With so much rereleasing of old episodes along with new episodes on the same set, it was heartwarming to see them think of collectors for once. We still don't have the Addams Family episode released, presumably due to ongoing copyright issues with the creators of the Addams Family. However, they were able to release the 70s Addams Family series from Hanna-Barbera on DVD, but not the 90s series. The 90s series featured John Astin as Gomez, but the 70s series did not. Since the missing episode, "Wednesday is Missing," also featured Astin, I'm believing that he is for some reason preventing the episode from being released for some reason. I'm hoping someday they will be finally able to release that episode, but for now, I was really satisfied and surprised in a good way with this DVD set.
Notably missing from this list is the Complete Where Are You Blu-Ray set, which didn't do anything for me personally not having a Blu-Ray player, and the fact that they've already released the complete series of Where Are You about a zillion different times now. I must say, the design is cool though! Well, that's my list, folks, but I'd love to see other people's lists as well! Does anybody feel something should have been included that wasn't? Let me know in the comments. In addition, I hope you all have a wonderful start to 2020!  Tons of things have happened this year in the Scooby-Doo franchise. We've gotten three new series, 20 new films, 7 new specials, plus three new comics and much, much more! In this post, I wanted to highlight my top 5 best and top 5 worst things that happened in this decade. Let's start with the good stuff!  5. Scooby-Doo! Abracadabra Doo To many fans, these films had a dark feel that was reminiscent of the likes of Zombie Island, Witch's Ghost, and Alien Invaders. I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment, and moreover, I think that this film just had a great plot in general with some well-developed characters and a solid grasp on a genuinely spooky tone. I loved the two villains as well, the gryphon is such a unique choice that has never been used in the franchise. The banshee also had some super cool lore behind her, and her design (both of them) was immaculate! I really enjoyed how she could change from a beautiful woman into a shrieking nightmare. This is the type of DTV I'd like to see from Scooby, and in my opinion, it feels like the quality hasn't been quite as high as this film was in some of the recent DTVs. I'd like to give Camp Scare and Shaggy's Showdown honorable mentions, however, as those two were really enjoyable films for me.  4. Daphne & Velma I know this will be a very controversial placing, but I really loved this film. The casting for this film was perfect, and everyone portrayed their characters in a very believable and interesting way without anything feel stilted. The tone of it is fun and silly, but in my opinion, sometimes you just need films like that. This is the type of film, IMO, that you might watch on a particularly stressful day and just turn your brain off to. The message in it is a very positive and empowering one, and the feminist undertones are in no way overpowering to the plot. I'm really hoping they make a Daphne & Velma 2, because this was truly a wonderful film and in my opinion, the fourth best thing the decade had to offer for Scooby.  3. Scoobynatural Scoobynatural adapted a fan favorite episode, "A Night of Fright is No Delight," and made into a more adult version. I thought they did a great job referencing the old episode, while having more of a mature twist to it. Even not having watched Supernatural before seeing the episode for the first time, I still felt very at home with the characters and I wasn't confused in any way, which I thought was super cool. I also liked how pure they made the gang, it was so cute! They did an amazing job getting down the dark tone, and I thought it still stayed true to the franchise overall very well.  2. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! It still makes me a little sad sometimes, even though I do understand, that people completely boycott this series because of the designs alone. Jon Colton Barry, who has become a dear friend of mine over this past decade, did an ingenious job of getting all the character personalities down, and the absurdist humor of the series is right up my alley. Even if this didn't have an overarching plot like SDMI did, there was still the general plot in the background of the gang's friendship. The gang felt very three-dimensional as characters, and none felt stiff at all. The comedic angle the series took really allowed the gang to shine, and I think purely because of the amazing writing and comedy, everybody should see this series.  1. Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated It was really hard to pick between BCSD and this one, because they were both amazing in very different ways, but SDMI edged this one out just slightly. SDMI felt like a fanfiction come to life, and really fleshed the characters out as well as brought us a more mature take on the gang. While I absolutely hated the romance plots, which felt forced and poorly done, the overarching plot of the series and dark undertones grounded in ancient lore was so cool. The gang felt very three-dimensional, and the stakes felt genuinely high in the series. The villains were super creepy, and I loved the way the plot pieced together in that classic mystery format through the episode-to-episode mysteries. This is truly the best the decade has to offer. Now that we've covered the best, let's get to the worst:  5. Scooby-Doo! Music of the Vampire For a Scooby-Doo DTV, this one was pretty bad. While a musical could have maybe worked, I felt the musical numbers were forced in and didn't fit with the plot whatsoever. The plot was pretty thin in general, and would have worked better as a 22-minute special in my opinion.  4. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? comics When I've heard Scooby fans talk about comics, I've never once heard someone say that the Where Are You comics were their favorites. While not atrocious, the plots in general have been declining throughout the decade, and worst of all, WB has chosen to reuse the same stock art over and over instead of just hiring an artist for the comics. Stories are also republished pretty often, which gets quite old and irritating. I've stopped reading Where Are You comics because of this, and this earns them their spot at #4 on the worst list.  3. Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island While this could have worked as a standalone DTV, the sequel to Zombie Island did not live up to the original even slightly. The tone felt very Where Are You-ish, which simply does not work with the tone of the original Zombie Island. I would have been fine if this were a standalone DTV, but making this a sequel to the original Zombie Island was a very poor move, especially for the 50th anniversary. Numerous continuity errors were made, and Velma was made so off character that she became irritating and genuinely difficult to watch.  2. Scooby-Doo and the Curse of the 13th Ghost This one has pretty much the same gripes as last time, except adding on the fact that there were far more continuity errors in this one, and making the 13th ghost fake and essentially saying the whole 13 Ghosts series never happened felt insulting. Velma was even more irritating in this one, and almost seemed in denial.  1. LEGO Scooby-Doo: Blowout Beach Bash
I wouldn't recommend this film to my worst enemy. The "Blowout Beach Bingo Bash" song at the beginning was painful to listen to, especially since it was just those four words repeated over and over for five full minutes. The plot felt incredibly thin and was just poorly written in general. The writers seemed like they totally just phoned in the plot five minutes before it was released, because it felt like it had no substance whatsoever and was just a complete waste of time to watch. I enjoyed Haunted Hollywood, but this one was very difficult to sit through and felt like a quick cash grab with little to no effort put in. Well folks, that's the list! I would love to hear other people's lists as well, if you want to share in the comments!  Hi everyone!
Five years ago today, on September 3, 2014, ScoobySnax.com was first published on the Internet. I can't believe it's already been that long! Firstly, I want to thank each and every one of you who visit this site! You all are wonderful, and I'm so happy that the site has helped so many people. I wanted to create this site as a resource for Scooby-Doo fans, as well as a place for Scooby fans to find out info about the latest news and discuss the franchise. That goal has definitely been more than met at this point! This year marked some exciting milestones for this site! The weekly blog series, Fun Fact of the Week hit the 250th week milestone back on July 15. Moreover, it featured Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated producer and writer Victor Cook. It was amazing to get to talk with Victor, and I want to thank him again for taking time out of his busy schedule to co-write the 250th fun fact. As of currently, I've posted a fun fact now for 258 weeks in a row with yesterday's fact. I truly hope you've enjoyed them, and learned as much from them as I have researching them! Make sure to keep an eye out for the 300th fun fact, which will presumably be coming on June 29, 2020! I say presumably as in last year's post I was off by one week for the 250th fun fact (I said July 22, but it ended up being posted on July 15), but only because the all-powerful Shaggy made me post two in one week lol. In addition, for the franchise's 50th anniversary, I've begun posting fan spotlights, introducing a new awesome Scooby-Doo fan each day so people can get to know new fans! One huge project I completed for the site is adding trivia bits for every single episode in the episode guide. This includes any interesting facts I saw while watching the episodes, animation errors or any other observations. This is a project I had been wanting to do since first starting the site, so it was really great to finally complete that back in October 2018! That's about all for this year, which admittedly isn't too much! It was mainly business as usual in terms of the site this year, which I apologize for. I've made a ton of updates to the site over the past year, which you can always find on the updates page, but mostly very little maintenance stuff! Looking at last year's post, I said that I wanted to post more articles and create some new pages on the site, as well as do something special for the 50th anniversary. I've achieved one of those goals for sure, as I've got tons planned on the blog for the 50th anniversary, including guest writers for all five fun facts for the month of September, a fan profile every day, a special new article every Friday and possibly more! As for new articles, that's a goal that remains on my list for things I want to improve on in this coming year. I post a lot of news here, but I really enjoy writing the editorial articles and want to try to make time to write more of those! I also want to work on making some new pages on the site! I mentioned making comics and fan art pages last year and never quite got around to it, so I'd like to get on doing that sometime in this next year. Until then, thanks so much everyone for making this another amazing year for ScoobySnax.com. Here's to another great one!  We've already had a lot of exciting announcements for what's to come for Scooby's 50th anniversary next year. Sometime next year, there will be a brand new series, Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?, as well as a Zombie Island revival film, and another DTV film which will conclude The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. In connection with this, the following are five things I would like to see happen next year for Scooby's 50th.  1. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? As mentioned above, this new series will be airing sometime in 2019. The series will essentially be a revival of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, and will feature the gang solving a mystery with a new guest star in every episode. While the series has obviously been confirmed to be happening, I hope that the series actually takes us in a somewhat new direction instead of just regurgitating what we've already seen in the recent crossovers like the WWE and KISS films. While I don't hate those films, I feel like the plots are a bit shallow and focus overly much on the guest stars, at the expense of focusing on Fred, Velma and Daphne. I did, however, really enjoy this most recent Gourmet Ghost film with the Celebrity Chefs. In this particular film, I thought they did a nice job balancing the guest stars and working them into the plot so they weren't obtrusive. Additionally, I love how they worked the history aspect into the mystery. If they could do this series like the Gourmet Ghost, I think I would be at least moderately happy with it.  2. Scooby-Doo and the Curse of the 13th Ghost After over 33 years, Curse of the 13th Ghost will finally give us a conclusion to The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. This film appears to have pulled out all the stops, and will feature both Flim Flam and Vincent Van Ghoul from the original series. It is unknown if the film will feature Scrappy. I hope, however, if he does appear, that he's not made into some huge joke. I don't mind Scrappy in the least, and I think we've pretty much tired out the "Scrappy is evil!" punchline by now. It would be nice if Scrappy was in the film to mirror the original series, but I'd honestly prefer if he were left out if he's going to be the butt of every joke again, like he has been in almost every cameo appearance since 1988's Reluctant Werewolf. I also hope that the film lives up to the original show. I enjoyed the silly-yet-dark tone of 13 Ghosts, and I would be a bit frustrated if they tried to conclude the series in a tone that was totally off from what the rest of 13 Ghosts was like. The biggest concern with sequels for me has always been that a lot of them don't tend to live up to the original, so hopefully the writers will take this into consideration and try to create a final product that is at least somewhat in the tone of the series fans originally fell in love with.  3. More Substantial DVD Releases Back in the mid-2000s, WB was practically cranking out the new Scooby-Doo releases, and releasing full season and series sets regularly. Lately, it's been the norm to see barely any new episodes released on DVD at all in a year. We still get some new releases, but at this point, it's hypocritical to even call them "new" because they're all simply re-releases that occasionally will include a single unreleased Scrappy short. I was incredibly happy back in 2015 when Scooby and Scrappy-Doo: The Complete Season 1 was released on DVD. For the 50th anniversary, I'd love to see another set of this style released. Maybe The Scooby-Doo Show Season 2 could finally make a full-length appearance on DVD, or The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries could get a full season set. While I'd love to say "they should release a complete series set of every episode of the franchise!", I also don't want to be unreasonable. It would be awesome if they did this, but it's pretty unlikely IMO and there are some copyright issues with The New Scooby-Doo Movies that would probably prevent a true full franchise set. I really miss the days where they would release multiple full season/series sets in a year, and I'd personally be very satisfied if we could just simply get one more of those for the 50th anniversary with one of the unreleased series, instead of these little "an episode here and there" releases that we've been getting these past few years.  4. A Full Series Marathon In the past few years, full series marathons have become increasingly popular on television; for example how FXX aired an "Every Simpsons Ever" marathon back in 2014 that featured every episode of The Simpsons shown in order over a period of 10 days. I would love to see something similar done with Scooby, where maybe Cartoon Network or Boomerang could air every single episode and movie of Scooby in chronological order on the week of Scooby's 50th. Who knows, maybe they could even make a new special like "The Scooby-Doo Project" or the Behind the Scenes interviews to air during the marathon!  5. Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island
I am so, so pumped for this film! It's amazing that they're making a sequel to one of the most loved Scooby films of all time after so many years. My one concern for this, like with Curse of the 13th Ghost, is that it will be totally off-tone and be nothing like the original film. Zombie Island was all kinds of amazing, which hold this film to a pretty high standard. I hope the writers will consider how high the stakes are here, and how many fans are counting on a legitimately good sequel to one of their favorite Scooby films. The dark tone of Scoobynatural, however, gives me a bit of hope for this film. If they can create a final product which is similar to the tone of Scoobynatural, I think this will turn out to be a really good film! What are your thoughts on what you'd like to see happen in 2019? Do you agree with my list, or do you think something else should be added? Let me know in the comments!  2018 has been quite an interesting year for Scooby-Doo. From a brand new live-action movie to several crossover films, Scooby has definitely prospered and flourished this year. In this article, I'll break down the top 10 biggest things (in my opinion) that happened in the Scooby franchise this year.  10. Eight New Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Comics It looked like the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You comic series was going to make its 100th issue milestone this year. However, in April, the comic series was demoted to a bimonthly slot, which brought the total up to only 96 issues. If the current trend continues, the series would reach its 100th issue in August 2019, right before the franchise's 50th anniversary.  9. Eleven New Scooby-Doo! Team Up Comics This year, eleven new issues of Scooby-Doo! Team Up were released, bringing the total number of comics up to #44. One less issue than normal was released this year, due to the December issue landing too close to Christmas. This year's team ups included Birds of Prey, Yogi & Boo Boo Bear with Ranger Smith, Angel Ape with the Inferior Five and Stanley and His Monster, Supergirl, Blue Falcon and Dynomutt, The Justice Society of America, Swamp Thing, Penelope Pitstop, Congorilla with Sam Simeon and Detective Chimp, Doom Patrol and Dastardly & Muttley with Yankee Doodle Pigeon.  8. Twelve New Scooby Apocalypse Comics Scooby Apocalypse played a daring move this year when they chose to kill off one of the series' major characters, Fred. 12 new comics were released this year, bringing the T-rated series up to a grand total of 32 issues.  7. The Girl Ghouls Return in OK K.O. Crossover While this might not be a huge event for some, I personally was almost in a state of shock when I saw the announcement that the girl ghouls from Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School were making a reappearance on television for the first time in 30 years. The girl ghouls are such underappreciated characters in my opinion, and for another television series to take a group of one-off characters from a movie 30 years ago is huge. Though I honestly didn't like the crossover overly much, I was still incredibly happy that they made it. That's why this takes the #7 spot on this list.  6. Scooby-Doo & Batman: The Brave and the Bold On January 9, 2018, Batman crossed over with Scooby-Doo for the fourth time in the franchise history in a feature-length DTV movie. Batman had previously crossed over with the series in "The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair" and "The Caped Crusader Caper" of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, as well as once in "Bat-Mite Presents: Batman's Strangest Cases" of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Several other DC superheroes and Batman villains also appeared in the film.  5. Scooby-Doo and the Gourmet Ghost In the second crossover of the year, Scooby teamed up with celebrity chefs Bobby Flay, Giada de Laurentiis and Marcus Samuelsson in Scooby-Doo and the Gourmet Ghost. In my opinion, this turned out to be one of the best crossovers in recent franchise history. I love how they worked the history from the American Revolution into the story, and the guest stars didn't overshadow Fred, Daphne and Velma at all unlike some previous crossover films had done.  4. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! Concludes in the US After a nearly 3 year run, Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! finally concluded in the US after almost every country had already finished airing the series in 2017. Episodes 42-52 (American Goth - Professor Huh Part 6 3/4) aired in an overnight slot on the Boomerang television network on March 8 - March 18, 2018. To make matters even more difficult, the timeslots were continuously changed even in the overnight slot, with episodes having no consistent day-to-day time of airing even overnight.  3. Almost Every Episode Added to the Boomerang Streaming Service Going off of #4, the remaining Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episodes were added to the service on September 26, 2018. Even more exciting, almost every episode from the entire franchise was added to the Boomerang streaming service that same day. Every episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, The Scooby-Doo Show, Laff-a-Lympics, Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, What's New, Scooby-Doo?, Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated was added to the service on this same day. The only episodes not added were nine of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, due to copyright issues. These are the same nine episodes which are not available on "The Best of the New Scooby-Doo Movies" DVD. Hopefully, at some point, these copyright issues will be resolved! Nonetheless, this is a huge event for Scooby fans. Never before have fans had access to nearly every episode of Scooby-Doo all in a single place. Now, if we could just get them to add some of the missing DTV movies and specials, we'd be set! :D  2. Daphne & Velma I'm sure this is probably a hugely unpopular opinion, but I absolutely adored this summer's release of Daphne & Velma. This was a really fun, quirky little film that was just an all around feel-good movie. Though there were some feminist undertones, they weren't obtrusive to the plot at all IMO. The film also arguably had a central message related to optimism and empowerment, which is an awesome message for anyone to take away from something. I'm really hoping we'll see a sequel to this someday!  1. Scoobynatural
While my #2 was probably somewhat more controversial, this crossover was probably at the top of everyone's lists! Scoobynatural was such a neat crossover that was probably one of the few dark and mature things we've seen from the franchise since Zombie Island. Even as someone who had never watched the show before the crossover, I felt there was a genuine connection between the two shows in this episode. Sam, Dean and Castiel being zapped into such a classic episode ("A Night of Fright is No Delight") was such a perfect idea for a crossover, and I'm so glad we got to see this happen. Now here's hoping that next year's 13 Ghosts and Zombie Island revival films are just as good! |
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