Today in History: Scooby-Doo debuts

The show is actually called "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" but that seemed a bit long for the title. Originally created by Hanna-Barbera Productions, this show has existed in many different formats including a couple of full-length films that were quite profitable for the studios. Reruns as well as new episodes continue to air on a number of channels to this day. However, it all began on one single day.

That day was 13-September, 1969.

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I'm relatively certain that everyone on the planet knows the basic premise behind these episodes, so I will skip that and instead talk about the interesting series of events that led to it's creation in the first place.

Under pressure from busy-body parent groups, cartoons in a general sense and particularly the ones that were the property of Hanna-Barbara were catching a lot of flak for being too violent. The target of a great deal of this puritan controversy was one of my favorite cartoons ever, Space Ghost.

Most of these "violent" shows were cancelled and the studios suddenly found themselves without a star cartoon.

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The show was originally called "Mysteries Five" and the members of the show were a band and the dog (who was named "Too Much") was a member of the band that played bongos. When they weren't playing gigs they were solving crimes that involved zombies and ghosts which is very similar to what Scooby Doo ended up being. The original title was changed from "Mysteries Five" to "Who's S-S-Scared?" and later, upon hearing the end of "Strangers in the night" where Sinatra sings "doo-bee-doo-bee-doo" the name Scooby Doo was born.

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It is really difficult to imagine a show called "Who's S-S-Scared" standing the test of time and that was a dumb idea / suggestion by a studio exec that refused the pitch multiple times for various reasons. One of the reasons was that the cartoon was "too scary."

Another interesting piece of history was that the creators were on the fence about whether or not to make Scooby a large cowardly dog, or a tiny overly-courageous one. Of course anyone familiar with the show realizes that "Scrappy" and Puppy Power would later be introduced to the show anyway and for me anyway, Scrappy was always just a part-time thing and if he had been a member of the show all the time, I honestly believe the show would have failed.

source _{Scrappy wasn't introduced into the series until 1979}

The series was such a hit that various celebrities loaned their likeness to special longer episodes and cultural icons like The Harlem Globetrotters, The Adams Family, Don Knotts, and Batman and Robin, were included in episodes. There were also crossover episodes where "the gang" found themselves on the set of Happy Days and Charlie's Angels.

Certainly one of the most famous cartoons of all time, this Saturday morning feature has stood the test of time and still enjoys quite a following today. The art has been redone multiple times but in test audiences, children relate to the old style of animation in a very similar way to the new age methods. The episodes are timeless and just like Tom and Jerry, don't really rely on the time period they were created to be enjoyed by the masses.

TV-Guide rated it as the 5th best cartoon of all time.