53 years ago today, Scooby-Doo aired on CBS for the very first time. To finish our 13 days of celebrating with fan spotlights here on the blog, I’m super excited to introduce you to the final fan spotlight of this year, Corton! Corton is a regular reader of the ScoobySnax blog, although you may know him better under the username Gibby Norton here on the blog! He also is somewhat active interacting with some Scooby-Doo fans on Twitter. The picture you see above is a sign Corton made at his college back on September 13, 2019. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the franchise, he handed out Scooby-Doo graham crackers and gummies from the table to anyone who passed by on that day! Corton is also responsible for a viral tweet on social media related to something involving a rice krispy treat! I’ll let him tell the full story (which is perhaps the most interesting answer any of the fan spotlights have ever had for the “fun fact” question), but without further ado, here is our final fan spotlight! 1. What is your name? My username that I use on the Scooby Snax blog is “Gibby Norton,” but my real name is Corton Rider. 2. How did you get into Scooby-Doo? I have just always been a Scooby-Doo fan! There is a home video of me somewhere stored at my grandmother’s where I’m barely a year old and playing with toys with my cousin while commercials are playing on the TV in the background. However, when the commercials end I very quickly drop everything I’m doing and rush over to the TV because Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! has resumed on Cartoon Network. Ever since around that age I have had the same continued dedication to the franchise! 3. What is your favorite Scooby-Doo episode and film? Why? My favorite Scooby-Doo movie has got to be Scooby-Doo! and the Witch’s Ghost. While Zombie Island is arguably the more memorable Scooby movie overall, I think that Witch’s Ghost has an even better sense of mystery and a wonderful Autumn atmosphere that I just eat up! Not to mention the Hex Girls are great and that climax is absolutely stellar, allowing the movie to deliver two well-rounded adventures, both one of an unmasking villain story and one of a supernatural threat story. My favorite episode is a bit tougher, stuck between two choices: Where Are You!’s A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts and Mystery Incorporated’s All Fear the Freak. A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts is just this perfect episode of classic Scooby to me, featuring what could be seen as the generic monsters and locale that one may expect, but filled with a lot of genuinely funny jokes, tense moments, and spooky settings that make the episode endlessly fun to get lost in every time! All Fear the Freak is my other favorite because I think it has an extremely satisfying conclusion to Mystery Incorporated’s first season and even beyond that it is in its own right an episode that stands out for its legitimately scary villain and very interesting mystery. I can remember seeing the promo for the episode air on Cartoon Network and I wish so badly that I could find it again somewhere online to relive the excitement of anticipating that episode! 4. What ways are you involved in the Scooby fandom online? I’m not super duper involved in things online because I find the large amount of effort that others have already put in online to making the Scooby wiki, message boards, and podcasts and such to be very daunting when trying to think of something I would like to do, so my interaction with Scooby fans remains mostly on my Twitter account! I did eventually gain some courage and now do occasionally comment on posts on this very blog and on the Scooby-Doo subreddit as well! I also joined a Scooby group turned “Hanna-Barbera Wiki Fan Group” on Facebook run by my good friend who had his own fan spotlight on here last year, James Dixon. I interact with him and some others on there, it’s a lowkey environment so I think it feels very friendly and not like a competition of who is the bigger, more involved fan vibe that other groups have. Otherwise, I am mostly an observer and supporter of what everyone else is putting out. 5. In your opinion, what is the best series or era of Scooby? My favorite era of Scooby is what I like to call the “Reboot Era” of 2009-2013. I’ve heard the term “Reboot Era” used before by some fans and I am unsure if I somehow got that to catch on with what very few comments I have made or if others just had the same thoughts that I had, but regardless I think it is a fitting title! We had a reboot of the live-action movies with The Mystery Begins, the DC Comics re-started over again from issue #1 with a slight retitling of their monthly releases, we got brand new video games (First Frights and Spooky Swamp) that brought their own style and storyline, the direct-to-video movies got a revamped art style and really cranked out hit after hit with those movies, Matthew Lillard took over as the voice of Shaggy, and on top of all of that we hit a really big reset button with the newest Scooby TV show at that time! This era really packed in a lot of content and it was all for the sake of both renewal and trying something different, or at the very least providing the same ol’ thing with fresher eyes than some of the stuff that had come before maybe had. My favorite series for certain is Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated not just because it has a very interesting overarching mystery, but because it also perfectly matches my sense of humor. It mixes in really fun jabs at culture with sometimes wacky humor, sometimes dry humor, and always very situational humor. I think that show is one of the funniest I have ever seen, and I think that that aspect of the show gets overlooked very often in favor of the more dramatic aspects of the show (which are great, too!) 6. What one Scooby-Doo series or film would you want a sequel to someday? Haha, can I say the easy answer of “I want SCOOB! Holiday Haunt to get a release”? Outside of returning characters such as the Hex Girls, Crystal and Amber, Googie, and others from various movies and shows, there isn’t really much that I would like to see happen. I think a reboot of 13 Ghosts would be a great idea for a limited series. And I guess by default I’d want an official third Zombie Island movie made by a devoted fan of the original just to at least kind of make up for what Return to Zombie Island did to turn off a lot of fans. I guess if I really had to make a direct sequel, I’d want a third movie with the theatrical live-action cast. I am unsure as to how realistic a live-action movie would be, but I would love for Warner Bros to give it the same treatment that they gave to Batman ‘66, where they made an animated movie that was designed to look like the same world so that the characters wouldn’t have to be aged up too much despite having the original cast return. An animated legacy sequel done by the guys who do the animation for those direct-to-video DC movies would be amazing! Plus I do think this iteration of the gang deserves a little reunion and official send-off story. 7. What direction would you like to see the franchise go in the future? In the future I would like to see the Scooby-Doo franchise continue to take risks. They’ve been doing that lately I feel by greenlighting both an adult animated series and a preschool animated series- two entirely new territories for the franchise! Even more recently they went a little nuts with their Courage crossover movie and I also appreciate- even if I can’t say that I outright like- that SCOOB! wanted to do more with the property. Try or fail, I always do admire seeing a real effort being made. I think too often we hear people say that they just want Scooby to be the exact same as it was when it first started, which could be great! But I also think that that can be hard to fully recapture without at least even the slightest of a unique spin by the people creating it. There needs to be a personal flair that the creators inject into a Scooby project for it to work, I think. 8. Who is your favorite member of the gang and why? My favorite member of the gang is Scooby-Doo himself! He is loyal and brave, while also silly and cowardly. I think that Scooby in all his iterations always comes across as lovable and funny, and I think that that is a testament to the power of that character’s simple charms and what he means to the people who write him. I mean, clearly other people out there agree with me on this because it is a literal plot point in Scooby-Doo (2002) that Scooby-Doo himself has one of the purest souls on Earth! 9. What is your favorite villain? Why? This one makes me feel very conflicted! I love many monsters from across the years, from the Phantom Shadows to Sarah Ravencroft, Gramps the Vamp to the San Franpsycho, and even that green werewolf from Where Are You to the Luna Ghost. However if I had to pick one, I may have to choose the season 1 version of The Freak of Crystal Cove from Mystery Incorporated. His presence is so unbelievably threatening and scary, and yet his rhyming schtick and his poeticness add a lot of mysteriousness and depth to the character. I think this villain was so interesting that they should have had him lurking throughout the entire season! 10. In your opinion, who is the best recurring (non-gang) character in the franchise? Despite my username I hope no one is expecting me to say Gibby Norton! I am a huge Hex Girl fan, and I think that their music and unique personalities really give them a lot to offer. Beyond them as they are a bit of an easy answer, I have to say that I love the entire supporting cast of 13 Ghosts! 13 Ghosts is such a great series and concept and I think that version of Mystery Inc truly does deserve a chance to shine in a reboot someday! 11. Do you have a Scooby-Doo collection? If so, what’s in it? I definitely have a large movie collection in general, so there is a special cabinet in my bedroom that houses every Scooby movie and show on DVD and Blu-ray (and one 4K with SCOOB!). Beyond my special Scooby movie cabinet I have every LEGO set and I also have some random knick knack things such as the complete trading card set for Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, a ton of Scooby comics including every issue of Team Up, books, toys, CDs, video games, magnets, board games, keychains, stuffed animals, and just some stuff I stumble upon and happen to like. Where I was born in 1999 and Scooby was around for 30 years before that, trying to collect as much Scooby as possible feels more difficult and so I just try to focus on getting things that I just know I absolutely have to have and I make myself content and happy with those! 12. What do you think has made the franchise so popular that it’s still going strong after 50 years? I think it is absolutely the characters that have made this franchise last as long as it has. The atmosphere of mystery definitely helps as a good hook, but people come back so much because they want to see these characters. They’ve changed over the years various times, from writing styles to voices. However the core idea of every personality has always been maintained in some capacity and it’s hard to not want to see how these characters evolve next and what adventures they go on! It’s the same reason that things like The Simpsons and SpongeBob go on forever- because even if someone doesn’t like one season (or in Scooby’s case iteration) it is still just so hard to say goodbye to characters you love so much. So they keep on bringing the Scooby gang back! 13. What is one fun fact about you in real life? Back in November 2016 I was in my senior year of high school. In order to impress the girl I really liked I sprinted into one of her classes and threw her a Rice Krispie Treat (at the time one of her favorite snacks) and ran back out. One of the people in that class tweeted about it. Within 24 hours that tweet got about 200,000 likes and 100,000 retweets! And while I was not actually dating the girl at the time and I was not name-dropped in the tweet, you all just have to take my word on it. I promise it was me. I was the “romantic” inspiration for a trending tweet and people’s failed attempts at starting a Rice Krispie Treat challenge. The person who tweeted it is on private now, but at the time she even got sent boxes from Rice Krispies themselves. She gave me one tiny square treat as a thanks. I assumed Rice Krispie Treats only came in rectangles, but all I got for my efforts was a tiny square one. And now it’s 6 years later and believe it or not, but I’m finally with that girl I liked, haha! So I guess it turned out pretty alright. 14. Please feel free to share anything else you’d like to here!
I don’t really have anything else that I need to say or promote! Support physical home media! If you love Scooby, give any new shows or movies a fair shot before judging! Just do whatever it is you can do to support Scooby that also makes you and you happy and doesn’t bring others down! Thank you so much to Corton for participating as our final fan spotlight! I just want to say that I really like Corton's sentiment in his answer to the fourth question. One of my favorite things about the majority of this fandom is the idea it's friendly and that it doesn't need to be a huge competition of who is doing the most or who has the biggest collection. Personally, I think that any amount of involvement in the fandom, even if you're just reading content and not interacting, is perfectly valid, and I love that most people in the fandom have that mentality! I want to once again give a special thank you to the thirteen people who participated as fan spotlights this year. I hope everyone enjoyed reading these and getting to know some new people who are Scooby fans! :)
11 Comments
Becker
9/13/2022 08:41:13 am
Hell yeah 13 Ghosts reboot! If there's one concept for a Scooby show I wanna see, it is a remake series of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo but with a darker tone rather than a light one. Not to say I don't like the zany/wacky/satirical/comedic 13 Ghosts show that we need did get though, because I do like it. It's just that I'd also love a version of it that takes the opposite approach.
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9/13/2022 11:47:22 am
I would love to see that too! I definitely enjoy the wacky/silliness of the show, but it would be cool to see it even take a more SDMI-ish approach to the overarching plot (although without the romantic junk).
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Gibby Norton
9/13/2022 09:28:43 am
Thank you so much again for the opportunity to get to share my thoughts on my favorite franchise! Getting to geek out over Scooby is an opportunity I never pass up and I greatly appreciate getting a spotlight!
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9/13/2022 11:46:26 am
Thank you so much for being one of the fan spotlights! I really enjoyed reading your perspectives on the franchise as well as the couple of stories you shared! :)
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Jakob123
9/13/2022 01:15:56 pm
To celebrate Scooby-Doo's 53nd Anniversary I would like to present all of you SD fans out there to a short Scooby-Doo song parody that I just came up with.
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Jakob123
9/13/2022 01:16:59 pm
This is basically just a parody of the theme song to (The Big Bang Theory) by Bare Naked Ladies so you know.
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9/13/2022 02:04:11 pm
That's a cool song, Jakob. Thanks for sharing it with us!
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Jakob123
9/13/2022 08:59:14 pm
Thanks I am thinking that I should send it to Warner Bros just to make it become a reality.
Drakosleuth
9/13/2022 02:47:05 pm
What a great way to end the Fan Spotlights, it was fun getting to read each spotlight and getting to know people a little more, and hear their thoughts and opinions. This is a great community and I look forward to see what's new for the future. :)
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Matt
9/14/2022 12:58:20 am
Wow that is really cool about the Rice Krispie Treat thing LOL!
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James Dixon
9/14/2022 12:47:39 pm
My internet bro! So happy for Corton that he got this interview.
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