Fun Fact of the Week #215

11/19/2018

I'm really excited to share this fun fact, as it's one I've been wanting to write something about since I first started writing the weekly fun facts in 2014.

In The New Scooby-Doo Movies episode "The Spooky Fog," a restaurant in the background is named El Taco. I've have always been incredibly bothered by this ever since I was a kid, because "El Taco" literally just translates from Spanish into "the taco," which is a very lame and uncreative name for a Mexican restaurant. I've been trying to write something about this now for years in a fun fact, but couldn't think of anything other than "there's this restaurant named El Taco in an episode and it's really annoying" (which is obviously not noteworthy enough for a fun fact).

However, I just recently learned from a friend visiting from Arizona that "El Taco" is actually a huge restaurant chain in Tucson (Arizona) comprised of nearly 20 restaurants. Currently, there is only one left open.

I couldn't find a date for when El Taco first opened, but this article says that the restaurant was around long before Taco Bell was a thing, which makes me wonder if "El Taco" was a legitimate restaurant that the Hanna-Barbera writers were referencing back then.

Anywho, thanks for reading my little jumbled thought process that I've called this week's "fun fact." I'm sure I'm far more excited about this than anyone else lol.

8 Comments

Scooby dooby Doo

11/20/2018 03:39:04 pm

Let´s see : how can I talk of how much this restaurant´s name annoyes me? XD

Scooby dooby Doo

11/20/2018 03:39:44 pm

*annoys

WildwindVampire link

11/20/2018 04:46:44 pm

Yup that's pretty much been my attitude towards this for the past four years. xD

Scooby dooby Doo

11/21/2018 01:29:26 pm

Hahahaha

DS 616

11/23/2018 06:56:17 pm

Hey WV, random question but I wanted to get your opinion on the "New Scooby-Doo Movies" show as a whole, mostly because I just started watching it for the first time and i'm kind of confused at how just plain bizarre and overall low quality it is.

I've watched 3 episodes so far and all of them suffer from the exact same issues and, above all else, don't feel ANYTHING like either of the classic Scooby shows from the same era such as "Scooby-Doo Where Are You" or "The Scooby-Doo Show". Obviously I expected the whole "celebrity guest" thing to be a bit cheesy and out of place (and it definitely is) but if that was the only issue then of course I would look past it and just try to like the show for what it is, but there's honestly a ton more wrong here than just that. Here are my main issues from what i've seen so far:

- Animation quality is extremely poor. In a single episode you see countless examples of stuff like characters being voiced by the wrong voice actor, animations and sound effects being incorrectly placed in certain scenes, etc etc.

- The villains are both boring and confusing, as their overly convoluted schemes barely make sense and there's also barely ever any trademark "unmasking" moment either. One episode I just watched had a "giant shark" running around and at the end of the episode an undercover cop showed up and told a whole bunch of fake giant sharks to get out of the water so he could arrest them, which they obviously agreed to for......some reason, and that was the end of it! Lol.

- It also features the most laughably predictable villains ever, I just watched an episode that had an old boat captain with a gravely voice and a chin beard who the gang thought was a nice guy, while there was also a "ghost" scaring them with an identical gravely voice, identical face and chin beard, but he was colored in grey like a ghost and had a different hat on.......so of course they had no idea who this ghost could be! Just crazy, even for extremely young viewers.

- The episode plots (as well as the incredibly lazy dialogue in general) make little to no sense and, more importantly, are just flat-out boring to watch.

- The main characters act completely out of character. There's several bizarre moments of stuff like Velma giggling like Betty from The Flintstones, or Fred getting REALLY angry or overly excited in certain moments, all of which i've never seen in ANY of the other Scooby series from that time period.

Whew! Apologies for the mini-rant, but it really did confuse and overall just disappoint me in regards to how rushed and cheaply this series came across as. Maybe you have some inside info in regard to why this particular series seemed to be of such lesser quality compared to what came directly before and after it.

WildwindVampire link

11/24/2018 03:45:46 pm

Hi! No worries, your question fits in quite nicely with the theme of the fun fact! :)

Yes, the animation quality is incredibly poor. Velma and Daphne switch voices throughout the series at least several dozen times, without exaggeration. One episode, "Guess Who's Knott Coming to Dinner," actually has two animation errors within the first minute! (not counting the intro)

Yeah, that would be "The Secret of Shark Island" with Sonny and Cher. That is definitely one of the more confusing episodes of the series. "at the end of the episode an undercover cop showed up and told a whole bunch of fake giant sharks to get out of the water so he could arrest them, which they obviously agreed to for......some reason, and that was the end of it! Lol." Hahaha that is quite an amusing scene. The two reasons I can think of for that is that they were trying to do too much at once, so they needed to quickly end the episode and that was an easy way to do it. Also it is technically a kids' show, so they probably wanted to make it more "family friendly" by having the sharks peacefully surrender. I mean they're not exactly going to have the sharks come out of the water packing AK-47's and engaging in a high-powered shootout with the cops lol. But yeah I do get what you mean that it was a bit cheesy and could have been done better.

Haha yeah "The Haunted Showboat" is the one you're referring to I believe, that is a bit silly. The voices are also really messed up in that episode, like Alexander and Shaggy switch voices a lot and I think at one point Alexander has Melody's voice!

I can't say I remember Velma sounding like Betty, though the Fred bits are kinda funny. Funny in a cringe-worthy sense, just because clearly it was a very exaggerated reading of what was in the script.

I don't have any super concrete facts on this, but my interpretation of why this series is lesser quality is because of the guest stars. Surely it took a lot of money to pay for a new guest star (sometimes multiple) to appear every single week, so I imagine they had to cut corners and spend less on the animation and/or pay the writers less money. I'll admit, there are certain episodes of this series that are good, like "The Loch Ness Mess" is among my favorites of the entire franchise. But I totally get what you mean about the quality and tone. The series did not seem to have a clear tone in general. From episode to episode, it feels the episodes drastically vary in how dark/lighthearted the tone is and it's difficult to know what to expect.

Just wait until you get to the episodes where Fred makes really sexist jokes...those are always fun! haha
The most surprising one being "This desert is like a woman...it just goes on, and on, and on!"

DS 616

11/25/2018 04:36:44 pm

Haha, thanks for all the info. It's such an odd series but i'm gonna try finish the whole thing and see exactly how much more bizarre it gets!

WildwindVampire link

11/25/2018 06:28:51 pm

You're so welcome! Hope you enjoy it :)

Fun Fact of the Week #215

Leave a Reply.

Author

Categories

Archives