Preface : We continue a look at "Scooby Doo" related media for the 50th anniversary of the mystery solving great dane. This is part of our Scooby Doo 50.
In 1969 Scooby Doo first appeared on our screens with the famous series called "Scooby Doo Where are You?" that aired on CBS it was a big hit that made CBS want more and made a series called "The New Scooby Doo Movies" in 1972. Then ABC had Scooby programming and Scooby ran with out maybe a year with out a new something between 1975 and 1991. The other market that happened for Scooby was syndication. It aired on TBS, USA Network, and more. I've talked about Scooby Doo movie specials from the Hanna-Barbera Superstars 10 series.
Meanwhile, Ted Turner was taking over the world and bought up Hanna-Barbera in the early 1990's and at this point he made Scooby-Doo exclusive to his networks (TNT,TBS, and some new network called Cartoon Network). If any exposure to Scooby Doo 90's kids would get it would be thanks to the Turner networks. Before this point it did seem Scooby's popularity had waned and people had grown tired of it, this was the case seen before back during the let's add more Scrappy to boost the franchise phase. Ted Turner had seemed to get tired of running the world and sold his stuff to Time Warner in 1996 and Hanna-Barbera ended up being part of Warner Brothers animation. Reruns of the different Scooby-Doo series and movies aired on Cartoon Network.
With this new found popularity maybe it was time to have some new Scooby media. From 1998 they made new direct to video movies that also aired on Cartoon Network. Even a live action movie came out in 2001. Over this time though, something hadn't been done, a Scooby Doo TV series. This brings us to the 2002 series "What's new Scooby Doo?"
"What's new Scooby Doo" came out in September of 2002 airing on Cartoon Network and on broadcast TV with Kids WB. The concept of the series was a short of back to basics for the franchise after years of different gimmicks ,characters being side-lined, and etc maybe it was time to just try something new but familiar. "What's New Scooby Doo?" brings us back the concept that started Scooby Doo in the first place "Scooby Doo, Where are you?". It's also the first series, that wasn't "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" to bring back Velma and Fred. It takes place in our modern (2002) times.
The voice cast was Frank Welker , who has been the voice of Fred since the start, had the return of Casey Kasem as Shaggy. Also Frank Welker is the voice of Scooby due to the death of Don Messick in 1997. Grey DeLisle was the voice of Daphne and Mindy Chon is Velma. The series returns us back to random person in a mask format compared to them trying "hey the monsters are real now!"
The Theme song is just as catchy as the original
The theme was done by a Canadian rock band called, Simple Plan, which you call maybe a n alt-rock group with some emo added in for fun. They even guest started in an episode and some of their songs ended up in the chase scenes.
more after the jump
So here, we are going to look at the first episode of the series as an example of what the show was going for in it's mission.
It starts with snowboarding when some sort of ice monster shows up and scares a snowboarder. The gang is on their way to the same area that we just saw before (what timing!). This show takes place in our modern times (2002) and so the mystery machine has a TV in it (before we ruined analog TV) and the van has a navigation machine. So the snowboarder , Chris Kluge,that we saw earlier with monster was injured. Now they have a mystery to solve. Now, they meet the ice monster and they even lampshade it could be something with a guy inside but they find that hard since it's a clear costume.
Fred has now injured himself. The rest of the gang so searching for some clues as normal and the ice monster returns and another person is injured, another snowboarder. Fred has an idea for a decoy in this case meaning Shaggy. Guess who shows up? The Ice Monster is back! Also, more modern tech like cell phones. Daphne sees the ice monster. Shaggy and Scooby do their favorite hobby, make food.
Later, they set a trap and using Shaggy and Scooby as live-bait, as normal (that's how we use Shaggy's --- don't start) and we get a chase scene with alt rock instead of 60's pop. Evenutally, that capture the monster it was a robot of some sort. Meaning there's some guy who was controlling it gets caught thanks to Velma's sneezing.
Yeah, What's new Scooby Doo brings back an old format that hadn't been used in sometime (though A Pup Named Scooby Doo did as well) and it does a good job with it. It's a nice touch to bring back a format and have fun with it, something familiar but fitting for it's contemporary audience especially as one that may been watching the reruns on Cartoon Network. This series ran for 3 seasons with 42 episodes. There was a Scooby Doo series after this and oooh oooh. (We aren't doing that next)
Tune in next time when we take off the mask off this guy, funny though he keeps saying it's not a mask..
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