In the late 70's audiences may have been tired of "Scooby Doo" , the original series came out in 1969 and the company that made the show decided the best thing to do with success was .... make shows like it and more Scooby Doo. With the ratings needing a boost they did what many shows have done, add a new character.
There are people who criticize a show with a formula because it has a formula, that's slightly unfair, having a formula isn't a bad thing it's the execution of the formula and the story around it that makes it work. Scooby , of course, had one and it worked for the show , but after a while it did grow a little boring and idea starved.
So in 1979, Hanna and Barbera being the geniuses they were introduced a new Scooby series, that being "Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo"
The intro of the series tells you everything you need to know about how this series was going to be in full. Remember Freddy, Velma, and Daphne? Well, are of no use so, they are background characters , Shaggy still has some use but this series is all about Scrappy and Scooby. Now, to be fair the most popular character of Scooby-Doo would be Scooby, then maybe Shaggy as they seemed to be the only characters with at least some personalities to them. Could the writing people have done a better job at making them characters ? Yes, but this is 1979 and networks don't care.
The format had stayed there with them going somewhere and ending up finding a mystery , it's a guy in a mask, but now we have Scrappy to be the more rambunctious ready to go and fight. character. If the goal was to save the series, well it did, it worked.
"Scooby" wasn't high brow cartoon, it wasn't what Disney makes for TV today like "Gravity Falls"or Cartoon Network does with "Gumball" it's not about cleaver writing , deep lore, or whatever it's a fun little series that had a premise and got far with it. This series lasted the standard +3 with 16 episodes.
At the time, Scrappy proved be a great character for the show, and gave it something that the audience at the time wanted. Diverting but using an analogy, do you remember that segment from one of "The Simpsons" halloween episodes where there's a monkey paw that grants wishes and they make a joke about the over saturation of "The Simpsons", especially Bart? That's what happened here it's like if the people at Nick decided the best part of "Spongebob" was Gary and made him the main focus of the show and got rid of everyone else but Spongebob and Gary.
In 1980 season, that's what they did : Fred, Velma, and Daphne would be kicked the curb. The was a new format focused more on comedy and put into shorter bites inside of one episode stories. They had 3 seven-minutes shorts instead.
This was featured part of another thing Hanna and Barbera liked doing at the time: package shows in this case the "The Richie Rich and Scooby Doo Show" Where they aired the 3 Scooby shorts intertwined with three Richie Rich shorts. So now it was Shaggy with the Mystery Machine , then Scooby and Scrappy with him. This would be the first Scooby series where they had more real life spooks instead of person in costume, again cutting down on the time with more on running scenes and goofiness.
The shorts lasted up to 99 shorts. In 1983, they let Scooby Doo be a stand alone series again and brought back Daphne. This series was "The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show". They also brought back the classic mystery solving with the guise of Shaggy and Daphne being reporters for a teen magazine. They didn't go back to one story per episdode, the went with two eleven minute stories. In season 2, we found out that Fred and Velma weren't killed off by the revenge of one of the people they exposed because they show up as "guest stars" in a few episodes.
More after the jump
If you watched from the theme song , you wouldn't even know Daphne was in the show until the very end. When she was inserted into an O , that sounds weird.
They renamed the show in the second season as "The New Scooby Doo Mysteries".
Scrappy continued in the next Scooby series , and one of my personal favorites , "The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo" in 1985, which ran for one season. When they released the finale movie for this series in 2019, there was someone missing, that's Scrappy. More on that later in the post. This series was the final appearance of Scrappy in a Scooby series a character as the next series, "A Pup Named Scooby Doo" didn't have him. (Also another favorite scooby series)
He did appear in the Hanna Barbera Superstars 10 , "Scooby Doo" movies : Boo Brothers, Ghoul School, and Reluctant Werewolf.
After 1988, his appearances were gone. Strange for a character that really did save the "Scooby Doo" series. Scrappy may have bothered some people who didn't like that the show strayed away from it's classic format, even though viewers seemed to return to the series. Maybe, he was over exposed and it made it seem like he was "taking over" the show.
Anyway, Scrappy did return for the 2002 live-action movie , as (spoiler?) the villain as if going with the view that yes, Scrappy was bad thing for Scooby Doo after all. Any other mention is either a flippant ignore or what the series did with "Mystery Incorporated" .
I'm going to leave this open ended without my full thoughts on Scrappy, this is mostly to talk about a big piece of "Scooby Doo" history and it would be a little silly not to mention it.
I also reccomend you read this series of blog posts from Mark Evainer on the background of Scrappy it's quite an interesting insightful read.
Link here.
Anyway that does it for now, stay tuned next time after we find out Scrappy is still fighting ghosts to this day in Nevada.
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