Fun Fact of the Week #428

The Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now! special showed some very early designs for Scooby, which shows him as a much smaller dog.

In Iwao Takamoto's autobiography, My Life with a Thousand Characters, he disagrees with Fred Silverman's story that Scooby-Doo's name come from the song "Strangers in the Night" by Frank Sinatra. His reason for disagreeing is that there were designs for a dog Scooby long before "Strangers in the Night" ever came out. Given Takamoto's book came out in 2009 -  12 years before the general public knew about these designs from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Now! - it is possible that these are the designs Takamoto was referring to. This would mean Silverman's story about Scooby's name is incorrect.

As most fans likely know, one draft of the original Scooby-Doo series was a knockoff of The Archies. Given the Archies had a song released in 1969 called "Feelin' So Good (S.K.O.O.B.Y. Doo)," this further complicates things a bit. This may be further proof that there was a previous version of Scooby before Fred Silverman's "Strangers in the Night" story could have happened. 

A big thanks to Lance for suggesting and helping research this week's fun fact!