Blog: Scooby Doo, I Love You

I’ve always loved a mystery. From Nancy Drew to CSI to Agatha Christie, I just love the excitement that comes from figuring out who the dastardly culprit is. For me, no mystery can claim to be as accessible, funny, and amusing as Scooby Doo. Every single Saturday morning, my television would be tuned to Boomerang, the one channel that would play “Scooby Doo Where Are You”, the first and my favorite Scooby Doo series. I would soak in every episode and would often use slang such as “Jinkes” and “Ruh roh” in everyday conversation. I had a Scooby Doo bathing suit, pajama pants, action figures, books, posters, Christmas ornaments, coffee cups, and an original 1973 Scooby Doo lunchbox my mom got when she was a kid. Scooby Doo was my childhood.

From “Jeepers It’s the Creeper” to my personal favorite “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf”, every episode of “Scooby Doo Where Are You” followed the same formula. The episode would go as follows: the gang is riding around in the Mystery Machine on their way to a luau, a barn dance, or the Malt Shop. They meet some people. One is a friend, one is a foe, and one is a red herring. They see the “monster”. There’s a groovy montage with a popular song at the time playing while the gang gets chased. Somewhere around this time Velma drops her glasses, gets dangerously close to the monster and is then saved by another member of the gang. Daphne, forever the damsel in distress, slips through a trapdoor and is saved by Fred. Fred then orchestrates a complex trap in which Scooby and Shaggy are the bait, bribed by Scooby Snacks. The “monster” is caught and unmasked. Alas, it is found to be someone they met that was trying to scare people away so he could get rich.

But it’s not this crazy formulaic style that draws people into the Scoobyverse. After all, even as a little kid, it’s not difficult to puzzle out who the culprit is. It’s the characters, Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and of course, Scooby Doo that make this series so monumentally classic. It’s Fred and Daphne’s awkward dancing, Velma’s logical thinking and attractive orange turtleneck, and Scooby and Shaggy’s awesome bromance that have given this show the ability to be consistently on the air after its intended era.

No matter what spin offs these characters are featured in, whether it be A Pup Named Scooby Doo, What’s New Scooby Doo, or any of the many movies, these characters are essentially the same. They wear the same colors, act the same, and aren’t extremely versatile. And I like it like that! As a kid, stability is essential and I loved that I could watch anything Scooby and see the characters I know and love acting exactly how I expected them to act.

As cheesy as it sounds, Scooby Doo taught me to be confident. I wasn’t afraid of silly monsters and the show taught me that with a little teamwork and the power of creative thinking, I could solve the problems that came at me. Buried beneath the hijinks and hilarity, I think Scooby Doo holds a powerful lesson about humanity. That is, underneath it all, what we should be afraid of isn’t some mummy or a creepy circus clown, because everything is just us crazy humans. And Scrappy Doo once too.