 Greetings all you beautiful mammals!
For those of you who don't know, four years ago today, I published this site for the first time after numerous months of hard work. Since September 3, 2014, this site has come such a long way. Every year, I like to write a post discussing the highlights of the site, as well as talking about the future of the site and what new plans I have for the upcoming year. While I didn't make a lot of updates to the site for the remainder of 2017 after the site's third anniversary, I did add an episode list to the site. I decided to add this list to give people who just wanted to quick reference the episode titles (rather than scrolling through the very in-depth episode guide) a way to quickly look through all the titles. The list also has each episode listed by chronological episode order in the franchise, as I had a lot of people ask "how many episodes of Scooby-Doo total are there?" For those curious, there are 487 episodes of Scooby-Doo out currently, counting each Scrappy-Doo short individually and including the Scooby's All Star Laff-a-Lympics episodes. Earlier this year, I also updated the List of Releases guide to include several very rare VHS compilations. Speaking of which, I want to take a moment to specially thank TriggeredWeegee, who sent me tons of pictures and information, and actually was the one who inspired me to update the page. Thank you so much again for all your help! This summer, I decided to do some major updates to the site. In June, I added the Voice Actors page to the site. This page gives a lot of detailed information about the lives of each of the voice actors who provided their talents to the Scooby-Doo characters over the years. If you haven't checked this page out yet, be sure to because you have definitely been missing out! Additionally, I created a page on the History of the Scooby Series in June. This page highlights the unique behind-the-scenes info for all of the Scooby series, and discusses the production behind all the shows in the franchise. I also got the amazing opportunity to interview Tom Konkle this year, who is one of the writers for Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!. It was so fun getting to meet him, and getting to hear more about his work on the show. Tom was also super nice and offered to do the site's 200th Fun Fact of the Week post! Thanks so much again to Tom Konkle for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with me! Speaking of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, you may or may not be aware that the show has been cancelled, and aired its final eleven episodes in an unfortunate overnight slot with no promotion whatsoever. After discussing with Jon Colton Barry privately on the ScoobyAddicts forum about how disappointing the show's cancellation was, I decided to do an entire week dedicated to celebrating Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! on March 18-24. Each day, I wrote a post discussing an aspect of the show (which included the villains, episodes, characters, a series finale review, and two top ten lists). The week ended with a special Q&A with the show's head writer, Jon Colton Barry, where the fans (you guys) sent in questions which JCB wrote in-depth responses to. A huge thank you to Jon for agreeing to do this again, and for being an awesome conversationalist and friend these past few years! I briefly mentioned earlier in the post that my weekly blog series, Fun Fact of the Week hit its 200th post milestone on August 6, 2018. Every Monday since January 2015, a new post highlighting an interesting Scooby-Doo fact has been published on the blog! Currently, including today's post, there have been 204 weeks of fun facts posted on the site. Writing these fun facts every week has definitely brightened up my Mondays, and I hope it's done the same for yours! I certainly don't plan to stop anytime soon, so keep checking back every Monday for a new interesting fact about Scooby-Doo! I hope to do something special again for the 250th fun fact, so keep an eye for that on Monday, July 22, 2019! It's been amazing to see how the site has grown over the past few years, and of course that's mainly because of you guys! I continue to be so grateful for you all every day, and I have loved getting to know you all over the past four years. It's great getting to meet new fans and continue to chat with old friends as well! Scooby fans are the best! Next year, I have several hopes for this site's evolution. 1. More Articles I feel like this one's going to be on the list until the end of time, given I've put that on here the last two years, haha. But seriously, I do want to start writing more articles for the blog! I wrote numerous articles this year, though I'd like to be more consistent and continue to write about new Scooby content as it comes out. The "Why Scooby Fans Should Give Daphne & Velma A Chance" article was one of my favorites to write this year, and I'd love to write more stuff as in-depth as that was. 2. New Pages Looking back at the update poll from March, it looks like you all want to see a Theme Songs page, a Comics page and a Fan Art page! I'm still working on starting to create those, but if you have any ideas for those or other pages, I'm always open to suggestions! I have a few other ideas in addition to the pages I listed, so hopefully those will be added soon! 3. 50th Anniversary In September 2019, Scooby-Doo will have officially been on the air for 50 years! I'd like to celebrate Scooby's 50th anniversary with style, and I already have a bunch of really cool things planned for that month! There are a bunch of other hopes I have for the site, some of them not worth mentioning like just keeping the site up-to-date, and others I'm keeping a secret for now! I love hearing feedback from people on the site and blog, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know via the contact form. Thanks everyone as always for being so awesome, and here's to another amazing year of ScoobySnax!
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 It's unfortunate, but 2017 was a bit of a lackluster year for Scooby compared to recent years. "Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!" only aired eight new episodes this year in the US, leaving 24 episodes still unaired. We saw a decrease in DVDs this year, dropping down to an all-time recent low of only 2 new-to-DVD episodes being released in the whole year. On the positive side of things, however internationally, many fans got to see the rest of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, and the remaining episodes were posted online for fans who weren't fortunate enough to have their episodes air in the home country. We also got some exciting announcements for new films and series, including "Scooby-Doo & Batman: The Brave and the Bold," which will be released just a short 9 days into the next year. We also got the announcement for a new feminist-focused film, "Daphne & Velma" as well as a brand new series and an updated release date for the film formerly known as "S.C.O.O.B.". Though it was difficult to choose large events which occurred this year (as most of what occured this year were very small, incremental events), and I had to scrape the bottom of the comic barrel (you'll notice that I divided each comic as its own event in the list), I managed to pick the 10 biggest things of 2017 that happened in the Scooby franchise. Please note, however, this should not be confused for an official top 10 list, as this list reflects my own opinions of the best events of the year. While creating this list, I tried my very best to remain completely unbiased, and hopefully this list reflects the general opinion of the fandom, rather than simply my own opinion. It also should be noted that this list only includes events which happened this year, so announcements for things which will be released in future years (i.e. Daphne & Velma) are not included in this list. So without further comments, here is the top 10 things that happened in the Scooby franchise this year!: 10. Scooby Appears in Halifax Commercial Though the fact that this small commercial is even included in the list speaks to how light of a year it was for new Scooby content, I still thought I'd include this ad, as it was a somewhat famous commercial and aired on several major networks for many months. In January 2017, Halifax made a commercial which featured the gang solving a mystery and stumbling upon Halifax bank. The commercial, which is a mix of animation and live-action, was filmed in London in late 2016. This commercial also marked the reintroduction of two famous voice actors of the gang, Mindy Cohn as Velma, and Scott Innes as Shaggy.  9. Twelve New Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Comics Coming in at number 9 this year (one spot up from last year's list) is the twelve new Scooby-Doo, Where Are You comics which were released this year. One new comic was released every second Wednesday of the month, and this year, issues #77-88 made their debut in comic shops. We are getting excitingly close to the 100th issue, and if this monthly trend would continue, we would get the milestone 100th comic in December of next year.
8. Creepy Carnival and Happy Spook-Day DVDs This year was a bit different from other recent years, in the sense that over the course of the entire year, we only managed to get two previously unreleased episodes on DVD. These new-to-DVD episodes came from the "Scooby-Doo and the Creepy Carnival" and "Happy Spook-Day, Scooby-Doo" DVDs. On May 2, 2017, the Creepy Carnival DVD made its way into stores, with previously unreleased episode "The Crazy Carnival Caper" from 1983's The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show. Approximately 4 months later, on August 29, 2017, The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries' (1984) premiere episode, titled "Happy Birthday, Scooby-Doo" was released on the Happy Spook-Day DVD. While I'm of course thankful we got even those 2 new episodes, I really wish that WB would release more season sets or 13 Spooky Tales-like DVDs. Unfortunately, as we haven't gotten any new 13 Spooky Tales sets now since May 2015, I think it's safe to say that those particular DVD sets have been discontinued. Still, I'd really like to see the return of themed DVD sets with more new episodes. Both of these new DVDs this year only featured three episodes each, but were only half the price of the 13 Spooky Tales DVDs, which included nearly 5 times the number of episodes that these two recent DVDs have had.  7. LEGO Scooby-Doo! Blowout Beach Bash As a sequel of sorts to last year's "Haunted Hollywood" movie, a second LEGO film entitled "Blowout Beach Bash" was released on July 25, 2017. While the movie definitely had its moments, my personal feelings on it is that it was filled with too many corny and unfunny jokes, particularly the "Blowout Beach Bingo Bash" song which draws on for a painful duration of 5 minutes. I felt this movie was dragged out and easily could have been a 22-minute special, without all the extra filler of songs and bad jokes.  6. Scooby-Doo! Team Up Releases 14 New Issues After becoming a monthly comic late last year, Scooby-Doo! Team Up continued to release new issues every month, totaling 12. As an added bonus, collector's editions of issues 13-18 and 19-24 were each released as volumes 3 and 4, respectively. This year's team-ups included Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles, Quick Draw McGraw, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern & Green Arrow, Hong Kong Phooey & Spot, Plastic Man & Woozy Winks, Jonah Hex, Top Cat, Challengers of the Unknown, The Atom, Atom Ant, and The Legion of Super Heroes. The comic series is now up to issue 33.  5. Boomerang Streaming Service Launches On April 11, 2017, the Boomerang Streaming Service launched and offered subscribers access to hundreds of cartoons at a time with a monthly or annual subscription fee. Among these cartoons include Scooby-Doo, Where Are You, The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, The Richie Rich / Scooby-Doo Show, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, What's New, Scooby-Doo? and several of the DTV films and specials. The service also is now the exclusive home of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!, which now has stopped airing on the Cartoon Network and Boomerang television network. This is a wonderful opportunity for fans to watch episodes of Scooby-Doo and various other cartoons. However, as I believe I've mentioned previously, in my opinion it is a bit frustrating and unethical on WB's part to air only part of a season of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo, and then purposefully banish unaired episodes to the streaming service. This essentially forces everyone to pay for content which was previously able to be watched for free on their network, simply because CN is too lazy to find a proper time to air the show. Of course, this is only my opinion and my criticisms here should not impact anyone's view of the streaming service. I'm glad that some people seem to enjoy the streaming service and still can benefit from subscribing to it, whether it's a platform for them to watch new episodes or rewatch old favorites.  4. Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown On February 14, 2017, the film Scooby-Doo! Shaggy's Showdown was released on DVD. Personally, I really loved this film and thought it was one of the best DTVs we've had in years. The plot seemed to be very in-depth and appropriate for its length (whereas some other recent films seemed to slightly drag on or try to do too much with too little time) and the characters were all very interesting and well-developed. I didn't even mind the Justin Bieber-inspired Buddy G, whose name was also a parody of another pop star, Becky G. I hope that we get to see more movies as good as this one in the coming year!  3. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo: 21 New Episodes This year, the following episodes premiered in the US: "Eating Crow," "I Scooby Dooby Do," "El Bandito," "Into the Mouth of Madcap," "The Norse Case Scenario," "The People vs. Fred Jones," "Some Fred Time," "There Wolf," "Renn Scare," "How to Train Your Coward," "Worst in Show," "Mysteries on the Disorient Express," "Halloween," "The Curse of Kaniaku," "Vote Velma," "Scroogey Doo," "In Space," "Doo Not Disturb," "Silver Scream," "Fright of Hand," and "Greece is the Word."The final six season one episodes aired in a 1:00am middle-of-the-night slot on June 20, presumably to simply air the episodes as quickly as possible without interfering with their other programming. It should be noted however, that "Eating Crow" technically premiered last year on iTunes and Amazon on March 20, 2016, before it was taken off both services within a few days of being posted. However, the posting of the episode was almost positively a mistake on CN's part, who likely forgot to communicate with the streaming services that the episode had been removed from the schedule. This has also happened previously with CN, which includes "Mystery Solvers State Club Finals" and "The Night the Clown Cried," both of which were not supposed to air for months, but were accidentally posted by CN online early. The holiday specials "Halloween" and "Scroogey Doo," premiered on the Boomerang streaming service a month before their respective holidays. Just before the year ended, on December 21, 2017, Boomerang put eight season 2 episodes on the service (episodes 27-32, 34 and 35). The next day, on Friday (December 22) morning, five more episodes were posted on the streaming service (episodes 37-41). It is currently unknown when the missing 11 episodes will be added to the streaming service.  2. Scooby Apocalypse In January 2016, fans were shocked when they heard the "Scooby Apocalypse" was coming. Now, the series has become a hit for teens and adult fans fans alike, and has released 12 new issues this year, in addition to two collector's volumes which encompassed issues 1-6 (volume 1) and 7-12 (volume 2). The series is now up to issue 20 as of December 13, when the last issue came out in comic book shops. I haven't had time to catch up on all the issues yet (insert big sigh here), though I am currently up to issue 12 and am really enjoying the series so far! It is definitely a different direction for Scooby going in a more violent, adult-oriented plotline, but regardless I'm glad I decided to read it, and it's nice to see Daphne toning down slightly from the first issue I read, where it was basically a fight-fest that included Daphne punching practically everyone. However, I've heard that the series seems to be headed towards a finale, though I'm really hoping that it's simply the end of this particular storyline and not the entire series!  1. Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! Finishes Internationally
Here it is! The biggest event for Scooby in 2017 is Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! finishing internationally and being released online. This year, fans were treated to all of season 2, with the final unreleased episode airing on November 13, 2017, thus finishing the series. Despite the numerous criticisms of both the art and humor, I'll really miss this series. In my opinion, this was easily the funniest, most character-driven series in the franchise, and really gave us a great look at the gang's internal friendship and bond, whereas in other series we don't get to see that as much. The series' style of humor really synced up nicely with my own, providing a mix of both slapstick-y, laugh-out-loud humor and more absurd, abstract humor. I love the fact that the series includes all different types of humor to appeal to all ages. I think the abstractness of the humor didn't appeal to many people who disliked the show, but I really enjoyed how absurd and ridiculous the show got sometimes. All the characters were very three-dimensional and each had their own, unique personalities, to the point where many people could tell if the characters were written even slightly off from how they usually acted. Most prevalently, Daphne was given a very eccentric and nonconformist personality, which I must say really worked for me. So often in TV, we see these one-dimensional or boring characters which are completely predictable, and I really enjoyed the unpredictability of Daphne's behavior. Though that may be influenced by the fact that I have a slightly quirky personality myself in real-life. :) That about wraps up this year's list, though to end this year's list on a much more positive note, I'd like to briefly highlight 5 things which I would like to see occur next year in the Scooby franchise. 1. The Remainder of Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! Airing in the US While I love the show and hate to see it end, I would really like season 2 to get a proper US airing at some point in the next year. Unfortunately, it's not possible to have them "aired" on television, but I really hope that the series will find get a chance to wrap up in this next year, with the remaining 11 episodes premiering on the streaming service. There's really no point in drawing things out any longer, and since every episode has now aired in numerous countries, it seems only fair for US fans to get the rest of the episodes as well. 2. At Least 3 New DTV Movies These past few years, we've only seen generally about two DTVs per year, and in last year's post, I linked to the TCM (Official Turner Classic Movies), which claimed (and actually still claims at the time of this post) we should have gotten 3 movies this year. I'm presuming the third unreleased movie is the Batman one, which was probably made last year and was simply postponed into January. According to the same TCM site, we should have 3-4 movies this year including the "Daphne and Velma" one (more on that later). Hopefully this will come to pass! 3. Continuation of the Comic Releases In 2017, the record for the amount of Scooby comics in a single year was broken, with a grand total of 40 brand new comics being released this year. I would love to see this trend continue, especially as I am just getting caught up with reading the comics and have been enjoying them. I'm really hoping that Scooby Apocalypse continues, as like I mentioned above, it appears to be coming to a conclusion. It would be nice to see something special done for 100th Scooby-Doo, Where Are You comic in December as well! 4. More DVD Releases with Unreleased Episodes As I mentioned previously, the DVDs have been at an all-time low recently. It would be great to see the return of the season sets, or some more themed set DVDs (though including more episodes than just 3) with unreleased episodes on them. I'm very glad to see that Be Cool, Scooby-Doo Season 1, Part 2 will be released right away in January, so here's hoping that we see some other season sets released this year (The Scooby-Doo Show Season 2 would be a nice one to have finally released!) 5. Daphne & Velma I hesitate to put this one in the list, as it is a more controversial film in a sense. I'm sure that a few of you have cringed when I've used the phrase "feminist-focused" to describe the movie, so I should probably explain to you all why I'm excited about the new film. Unfortunately, it seems when people think of the word "feminist" these days, a lot of people's minds turn to super preachy, men-hating women going on obnoxious protests. This is not the vision I have at all for the film, and I too would hate it if it was just 75 minutes of hyper-feminist political statements and bra-burning. My hopes for this film are that it presents Daphne and Velma in more of a main role, and to expand upon their characters further, and most prominently, to get a different take on the premise we're used to, and maybe see those two characters in a different way than we previously had. People are probably still going to hate on the movie a lot in these next few months before it comes out, judging the movie on one word, "feminist-focused," but I really hope that people decide to give a chance in the end. Thank you all so much for reading this post, and please let me know in the comments if you all have any thoughts you want to share of what should happen in 2018. Hope you all have a wonderful new year! :)  Wow, it's hard to believe it's already been three years that the site has been up!
Since last September, the site stats have nearly doubled! Looking at the site stats, on average, the site gets about 800 views per day with an average of a little over 4,000 views per week. Though I don't really have anything to compare the site's views to, some sites probably get thousands, even tens of thousands of views per day from people all around the world. While ScoobySnax.com certainly doesn't have that sort of traffic, I still continue to be proud of the site, and of course, the site visitors every day. It's amazing to me that nearly 1,000 different people view the site every day and I want to say thank you to everyone who's ever read, commented or even briefly viewed the site. For those of you who are new to the site or haven't read last year's year-in-review post, generally I try to sum up the highlights of the site from the past year, and there certainly were a lot of highlights this year! Ironically, only a few weeks after the last site year-in-review was posted, the site unfortunately was down for nearly a month due to some coding glitches which I couldn't figure out how to fix. However, the site being down gave me time to finish up the episode guide, which now has in-depth info on every single Scooby-Doo episode in the franchise. It was a monumental project, as I wrote every single bit of information by hand and took screenshots of every single villain in the Scooby universe myself. But it feels great having that finally available for people to use for reference and information, admittedly I even occasionally refer to the guide if I need to know an airdate lol. As the History of the Site page now says, "2017 was the year for ScoobySnax.com." And that it was, on January 23, 2017, I put the finishing touches on the Internet Games page and posted it a few days later. The page features a list of the best and most popular Scooby-Doo games, and where to play them, so if you're ever bored sometime, definitely check those games out! They are fun for both kid and adult fans alike, and hey, I've even caught myself playing them on occasion! I also created a subpage in May on Crystal Cove Online, a game which was a companion to the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated series. In my opinion, that is the best Scooby-Doo game ever made. It's both challenging and fun, and really does a good job mirroring the episodes! Though I've been told Night of 100 Frights is also one of the best Scooby games (as it has several references to the classic series, including iconic villains such as the Black Knight and the Ghost of Redbeard) so I'll definitely have to play that one sometime and compare them! It was actually a bit of a blast from the past to create the Crystal Cove Online page, since I replayed the entire Crystal Cove Online game to get my information for that page! And of course, next was amusingly the character guide. Why is that amusing you ask? Because I've been saying ever since I did the "What's coming this month on ScoobySnax?" posts for a brief time way back in March 2015 that I would finish the character guide, and in February, the character guide was finally posted nearly two years later than I had intended. Hey, I guess better late than never, right? Lol Lastly, there was the List of Releases guide. This list, which took a surprisingly short amount of time compared to what I was expecting, compiles every season set, compilation set, volume and movie ever released on DVD, Blu-Ray and VHS and gives a brief bit of info on them. In my opinion, the How to Have a Complete Scooby Collection is far more helpful in finding missing episodes which you may want, though if you prefer the home media releases being organized by DVD rather than by episode, this is definitely a good way to figure out which DVD you want to purchase if you have a limited amount of money and/or only want DVDs with a lot of episodes on them (as unfortunately WB doesn't always do a great job of making the amount of episodes they put on a DVD/Blu-Ray worth your money). Combined, these updates are a big landmark for the site! After the List of Releases and Crystal Cove Online pages were created, I had finally added everything I had originally envisioned adding when the site was first published. "Are you still going to update on Scooby-Doo news?" was one particularly memorable comment I got right after posting something to the affect of the previous sentence. Admittedly, I probably worded that poorly and looking back, I can easily see how someone would interpret what I wrote as I'm somehow finished up with updating the site completely. Of course as I think up new page ideas and new Scooby content comes out, I will definitely create more pages on the site! What would a year-in-review post be without talking about the fun facts? Starting on October 13, 2014, on a whim, I decided to start a weekly blog series called "Fun Fact of the Week," where each Monday, I present a new little-known or interesting fact about Scooby. I honestly wasn't sure if it was going to be a week, a month, a year, or forever, but as soon as I began writing them, I quickly knew it was going to be forever. Though originally the posts were more casually published on random days, on January 5, 2015, the posts were made every single Monday, and still continue to be nearly 3 years later today. Why Mondays, you ask? Honestly, no particular reason other than people tend to hate Mondays and I wanted to give people something to look forward (heck, I even look forward to writing them every Monday!) As of currently, 151 weeks of fun facts have been posted on the site with several guest writers, including the 100th fun fact written by Be Cool Scooby-Doo head writer Jon Colton Barry, and the 150th fun fact, written by the creator of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and writer of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Tom Ruegger. And I suppose that leads me to my next point. One of my favorite parts of the site is definitely getting to interact with everyone, those who have worked on the show and fans alike. It was a blast working with Jon Colton Barry and Tom Ruegger, so I want to thank them again for taking time out of their very busy schedule to write the fun facts! Besides writers and show crew members, I equally love getting to talk to fellow Scooby fans, whether its interviews or just in the comments. Speaking of which, one of my favorite articles of the year to write was the Scooby college entrance essay one - it was super fun chatting with Tore and getting to meet her! I want to thank her once again for her time, and wish her the best in getting her master's degree! One of my other favorite projects this year was working with Dallas Kinard on the Scooby continuity timeline. I was glad to help out with such an ambitious project, and it's been great seeing how many people the timeline has already helped! Lastly, although this didn't happen, if anyone remembers the Scooby-Doo typecast which I did with TS-D/JA Productions, we were talking about doing another one at some point, though it didn't end up happening this year, since Scooby-Doom has temporarily abandoned the site to work with a friend on his new podcast, Nerd Blitz. The podcast is a hodgepodge of various pop culture topics, but there is quite a bit of Scooby-related content, so be sure to listen to it if you enjoy Scooby and listening to podcasts! A big thank you as well to Scooby-Doom and I wish him the best of luck in his podcast and whatever future projects he decides to pursue! Though this isn't related to the site, I'd like to mention my fanfic as well. It's been a blast writing it this year and developing new characters and story arcs for it. For those of you who haven't seen it yet, I'm currently writing an ongoing fanfiction story entitled "Coast to Coast with Daphne Blake" about what would happen if Daphne didn't get back together with the gang after Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island and continued with her show. If you haven't read it yet, be sure to check it out! Before I move on, I'd also like to talk about the site's Twitter account quickly. It's been amazing to see the followers slowly climb for the site, and now the site has over 500 people following it, including several people who currently work or have worked on Scooby! My second alternate (non-site) account also now has nearly 100 followers. I truly enjoy talking with everyone every time I come on Twitter, and it's truly a pleasure getting to chat with old and new fans alike. I appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for the great conversations! I could go on for a while, but before this becomes a 50-page long post, let's get to my hopes for the site in the upcoming year! 1. Of course, I'd like to continue creating more content for the site, including new pages and articles. Since I promised to make more articles early on this year, I admittedly haven't been very good about following through with that. In the upcoming year, I'd like to write more, interesting articles for all of you to read! In addition, I'd like people to continue being helped by the site - it's great seeing all of the emails from people that the site has helped them in some way! 2. I hope that ScoobySnax continues to be a comfortable, enjoyable environment for Scooby fans to use for reference, get updated on the latest Scooby news, or even just chat with one another. As I've mentioned before, I think the Scooby community is fantastic in that sense...almost everyone in the fandom tries to make people feel welcome and part of the community, which you don't necessarily see in a lot of fandoms. I feel like, in some fandoms, there's a perception that being a site owner makes you "above" everyone. I sometimes get the vibe that people may think of me that way, particularly as an admin on the ScoobyAddicts forum. In reality, I don't think of myself as "above" anyone, I honestly just feel like another fan who wants to chat and have fun discussions with people who I see as my equals, not people who I'm above or below. Like I brought up last year, I feel like we as Scooby fans can all benefit from talking and discussing things with each other! It's truly a pleasure for me to be a part of this wonderful fandom. Thank you all once again for a fantastic three years, and I hope you have enjoyed visiting the site and reading the blog (hopefully I've entertained you at least somewhat!) :) . And of course, thank you for reading this very long post, and hopefully you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it! Here's to another fantastic year of ScoobySnax.com!  Although this was a lighter year for new Scooby content, quite a bit still happened in 2016 for the Scooby franchise. From two new feature-length DTV films to a new comic book series centered around the Apocalypse, Scooby was taken in several new, interesting directions 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, and afterwards, list five things I would like to see happen in 2017.  10. Twelve New Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Comics As per usual, each month, a new Scooby-Doo, Where Are You comic was released, making for a total of twelve comics this year. Comics #65-76 were released this year. If this trend would continue, the series will reach the milestone of its 100th comic in 2018.  9. Cartoon Network Finally Catches Up Airing The Scooby Movies Although CN has been doing a very pathetic job of airing new episodes of Be Cool Scooby-Doo (more on that, later), they did finally get one thing right this year. Cartoon Network has finally caught up with premiering the DTV movies and specials this year. Currently, every movie and special has premiered on the network and has aired at least once, something that hasn't happened since 2012. The network caught up on November 20, 2016 when they aired the TV premiere of Scooby-Doo and WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon. Now, if we can only get them to air the rest of the Be Cool Scooby-Doo season 1 episodes, we'll be set!  8. Scooby-Doo! Team Up Becomes A Monthly Comic Previously, Team Up was a bi-monthly comic and new issues were only released every two months. Beginning in September, a new comic was released every month, making for a total of 21 issues, 8 of which were released this year. In addition, this year's team ups included Aquaman, The Flash, The Shazam family, Hawkman & Hawkgirl, Wonder Dog, G'Nort, Ace the Bat Hound, Krypto the Superdog, The Space Patrol Canine Agents, Zatanna & Zatara, Space Ghost, The Joker and Harley Quinn.  7. Scrappy-Doo Makes A Return To The Franchise For the first time in fourteen years (since the 2002 live action movie), Scrappy-Doo made an appearance in the franchise in the comic book series Scooby Apocalypse, and has now appeared in three of the current eight issues. However, the character is still evil as he was in the 2002 film.
6. Scooby-Doo Pop Vinyls & Dorbz Earlier this year, we got to see Scooby Pop Vinyls and Dorbz being released, which includes figurines of Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, Scooby, The Mystery Machine, The Werewolf Ghost and The Witch Doctor. They are currently for sale in stores.  5. LEGO Scooby-Doo! Haunted Hollywood Back in May, we got to see Scooby in action as we've never seen him before: in LEGO form! The 75 minute movie featured classic villains, such as the Headless Horseman, the Mummy, the Sea Beast and of course, the Zombie. The movie also made its TV premiere on Cartoon Network on October 22, 2016, serving as a follow-up of sorts to the 1-minute YouTube LEGO Scooby-Doo shorts.  4. Be Cool Scooby-Doo Season 1, Part 1: Spooky Kooky Fun DVD The recent trend seems to be a new season set every year (last year's being Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Season 1), and this year's set was Be Cool Scooby-Doo Season 1, Part 1, which included the first 13 episodes of the series. The set was released on February 23, 2016.  3. Scooby-Doo & WWE: Curse of the Speed Demon This year, the follow-up movie to Scooby-Doo! WrestleMania Mystery was released on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital HD on August 9, 2016. Kate Micucci also voiced Velma instead of Mindy Cohn for the first time in the regular animation, which I was somewhat disappointed about. Although I like Kate's voice, I feel it fits better with Be Cool and Mindy should have been used. It made me happy though to see that Mindy posted on Instagram that she would be returning at some point in the future, even if it is only for one movie.  2. Scooby Apocalypse This series has had very mixed reactions since it first was announced, but I think you can agree even if you dislike the series that it was a pretty darn big leap for the franchise to take. For those who haven't read it, the premise is this: Scooby and the gang are set in an apocalyptic future, where they all must escape dastardly villains attempting to do them harm. This is also the first series rated Teen. I'll admit I've been pretty busy and have only had a chance to read the first issue, and I thought it was pretty good. My only complaint was that they changed Daphne's character too much, her punching people out is NOT what I want to see for her character. So far, eight issues have been released.  1. Be Cool Scooby-Doo: 6 New Episodes
This year, six new episodes of the new show aired on Cartoon Network, including "If You Can't Scooby-Doo The Time, Don't Scooby-Doo The Crime," "Gremlin on a Plane," "Sorcerer Snacks Scare," "Saga of the Swamp Beast," "Be Cold, Scooby-Doo!" and "Giant Problems." iTunes and Amazon users were also treated to a seventh episode, "Eating Crow," which was mistakenly added to both services because CN did not communicate to them that they were not airing the episode. That about wraps up this year, so here's what I would like to see next year: 1. Three new DTV movies Luckily for me, this one has been confirmed already, with Shaggy's Showdown releasing on February 14, 2017, and according to TCM, two other movies (one of them another LEGO-animation DTV) will be released sometime next year. 2. More Comic Releases One of my personal new years resolutions related to Scooby is to read more of the comics! I haven't had a chance to read many lately, and the plotlines seem really good. Ten more comics have already been announced for release in January-April, so I'd say we're definitely going to see an increase in the number released this comic year, especially with the new series Scooby Apocalypse and the now-monthly Team Up. 3. More Be Cool Scooby-Doo I think I can speak for all of the Scooby fans when I say CN did a pathetic job airing the series this year. While I was happy we got more new episodes, I was very disappointed that more episodes didn't air. I mean, how hard is it to schedule a simple three hours into CN's schedule and just get the episodes aired? Next year, I would like to see at minimum the rest of Season 1 aired, and hopefully some of Season 2. 4. The Return of 13 Spooky Tales I for one was incredibly disappointed not to see any 13 Spooky Tales this year, in fact the only new non-movie DVD this year was Be Cool Season 1 Part 1. The rest were all re-releases of old episodes and movies. Personally, I loved how the 13 Spooky Tales got some of the unreleased episodes finally available on DVD and gave us a new special, and it was disappointing not to get that this year. I'd like to see at least one new 13 Spooky Tales sets released, but two or more would be even better. 5. Season Sets I was super happy about the Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Season 1 DVD being released last year! I'm really hoping that we will get a Season 2 release this year, of either Scooby & Scrappy-Doo or Laff a Lympics, both of which only have Season 1 released. What are your thoughts on what you'd like to see happen in 2017? Do you agree with my list, or do you think something else should be added? Let me know in the comments! So, I realize I didn't do one of these for the site's one-year anniversary, but I thought the idea up shortly after, and wanted to do it for sure this year. You readers read my blog posts and get info from the site, but you never really hear about the behind-the-scenes stuff that I do to work on the site, the changes that the site has gone through, and most importantly, my hopes and dreams for the site. I try to make most of my site posts formal, but on this post I'm just going to write from the heart and say what I'm feeling.
My first thought here is just...wow. I can't believe it's been a full two years already. For those of you who don't know, September 3, 2014 is the day I published the site. As the site went live for the world to see, I went through a big emotional rollercoaster of overwhelming feelings. Happiness, that I was helping people get information. Nervousness, about what would happen with the site, and how long it would last. Excitement, that I was opening a whole new community in the Scooby fandom. Hope, that people would love the site and it would succeed. And even a bit of relief, that I could finally get my site out there for people to see. The site flourished and succeeded more than I could have imagined. Right now, the current site stats show an average of 500 viewers a day, and around 3000 viewers a week, with 700 of those viewers being new (meaning they have never visited the site prior to that view). To some, that may not seem very big, but to me, I feel like it is a huge success. Even if I only help or entertain one person, I think that is definitely success, at least in my opinion. That first month was mainly work on adding to the site info, and it wasn't until after that when I started blogging. Writing the fun facts for the blog every week has been one of the funnest things for me to do for the site, especially as sometimes even I learn something new! I'll admit, I didn't know how the fun fact thing would really work when I started it on October 13, 2014. For those of you that have been here since the beginning, you'll remember that at the beginning, I was asking people to email me fun fact ideas. I quickly abandoned that, and started finding it easy and fun to write them, and it became a weekly thing. I've personally always loved when sites do weekly things, which is why I started the fun facts in the first place. Thinking back now to myself writing Fun Fact of the Week #1, I think I would be shocked about how successful they became, and the amazing thing I did for Fun Fact #100. I won't say anything about it now, all I'll say is I'm super proud of it and can't wait for you guys to see it on Monday! I would be lying if I didn't say that the site has changed me a lot, because it has. Firstly, the site has opened a door to many opportunities that I never would have had. The biggest thing is what I jokingly call my "freelance" Scooby work, since I do sooo much for the Scooby community and this site, that I've just started calling separate projects not related to ScoobyAddicts or the site "freelance projects." My first one was the typecast with TS-D/JA Productions, which was a really enjoyable and relaxing first one to do. It really was very little pressure and it was a ton of fun talking about Scooby in-depth with another Scooby fan. Quick shout-out to Scooby-Doom, who runs TS-D/JA Productions, thank you for giving me that wonderful opportunity! The other big thing that has changed is Twitter. I'll be completely honest here, when I first created my site Twitter account, it was intended to be only news, site promotion and answering whatever few questions people tweeted me. Almost immediately, I found out that I was completely wrong about what my Twitter experience would be. Through Twitter, I have gotten to meet tons of great Scooby fans, and talk to more people than I would have ever imagined I would have. It still amazes me that over 300 people follow the site! Still, through my site account, I didn't really get to talk to people as much I wanted to and felt distant. So, those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I decided to create a separate account to talk to fans, hoping that I would have at least a few people to talk with. Creating that second account was perhaps one of the best decisions I've ever made, as I've felt closer to Scooby fans than I ever have, and even gained somewhat of a following. For those who follow me on Twitter, I love talking to you all! Whether we've just talked once or if we've had marathon-long conversations (which have been become more and more common now, which I love), I appreciate each and every one of you and thank you for the great conversations! Well, besides the obvious updates and additions of all the different pages, I think I've pretty much covered everything that's changed in the two years. I really enjoyed writing this, so I'll definitely try to make it a tradition to do this "year-in-review" type of post every year. So, what are my plans, hopes and dreams that I have for the site in the next year? Plans - 1. I've been saying since I used to do those "What's coming up for this month" posts back in early 2015 that I would finish the character page, and this is something that (somewhat pathetically) I've not gotten to yet. My goal is to try to have the character page completely finished by the end of 2016. 2. Another major goal of mine is to create a "VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray Releases" page, which will be a complete guide of all Scooby Home Media Releases. 3. I'd also like to finally complete the site's episode guide. I'm very close now, right now the only series that does not have a guide is Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, and I'm happy to say I've already started work on it! My goal is to try to have all of this on the site by the end of December, but of course I have to factor in real-life busyness (I'm an incredibly busy person!), so although these are goals that I'd love to happen, I unfortunately can't guarantee that I will meet that goal. Hopes - I could sit here all day listing my hopes for the site, as I've really grown attached to it, but just for the sake of not having this post be 30 pages long I'll just list my biggest ones. 1. Of course, this is and always has been my biggest hope since the day ScoobySnax.com was published. I want people to get knowledge and learn new information from the site, I hope that the site helps people with things they're looking for (I've been really happy to get the emails from people saying that the site has helped them in some way!), and most of all, I hope people get enjoyment out of coming to the site. I know a lot of people, whether it's a site about Scooby or something completely different, just want to get "as many people as they can visit their site" but my main goal has always been to help and entertain people. 2. I want to get a bit better at time management and meeting my own deadlines with the site (and my post from March 2015 saying "my plan is to have the character page completely finished by April 2015!" is a great example of that lol). While I don't feel procrastinate-y (I don't care that it's not a real word, I'm inventing it lol) with the site, I often let real-life stuff overwhelm me too much and I don't really have a good balance between real-life stuff and working on the site. I tend to just sporadically add stuff and then disappear for a while. Especially in terms of Twitter, I'll be super active on there one week and then fall off the face of the Internet the next week due to busyness (which I still feel really sucky about, sorry Twitter followers!). I got a bit off topic there, but I'm working on finding a good balance and being able to be more regularly active on both the site and social media. 3. This last one is kind of a hope mixed with something that's already happened, I hope that ScoobySnax.com becomes a popular resource that Scooby fans know about, and feel like they can trust and rely on. I'll explain this a little more in-depth as it sounds a bit contradictory to my above statement about how I'm not about getting as many people to the site as possible. While I don't care about the number of site views or promotion I get, my hope is that it does become popular so that people can benefit from the info on here. As I believe I've mentioned once before, I think people mistake Scooby site owners for trying to "compete against the other sites" but we're really not about that at all. At least from my experience, I feel like all the Scooby site owners are very kind and generous and want to be friends (or at least friendly) with one another. In my opinion, whether it's the pioneer Scooby sites like ScoobyAddicts or ScoobyFan.net, the newer sites in the last couple of years, such as SDMI Knowledge and this site, or even the upcoming Scooby sites like ScoobyGuru's site or the Scooby-Doo podcast that are coming out soon (looking forward to it, guys!), I feel like we can all benefit from collaborating and talking with each other, as in the end we all have the same goal. Sorry, I got a bit off-track there, but my main point is that I feel that ScoobySnax.com is already pretty popular and people have definitely benefited from it, which I'm super happy about! Dreams - Maybe this is just my imagination, but I feel like all of us die-hard Scooby fans have a "dream" of something big they want to achieve or add to the fandom. While I'm going to be very vague with this part (sorry, don't want to ruin any surprises for you guys!), I do have several bigger "dreams" that I'd love to do, some of them related to the site and some of them separate. Just so you guys know, I do have several really cool things planned (which will hopefully happen in the coming year) that I think you all will love! That's about it for this year's "year-in-review" post, a few quick last things I want to mention:
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