Scooby Doo has been on the air since the late 60s and has had numerous versions of the show.
Which is your favorite? Poll coming
Scooby Doo Where Are You
New Scooby Doo Movies
Scooby Doo / Dynomutt Hour
Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo
13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo
A Pup Named Scooby Doo
What's New Scooby Doo
Shaggy and Scooby Doo Get a Clue
Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated
Be Cool, Scooby Doo
Scooby Doo and Guess Who
Other
Scooby Doo has been on the air since the late 60s and has had numerous versions of the show.
Which is your favorite? Poll coming
Had to vote for the OG Where Are You, but honestly I love them all. Can never get enough Scooby!
Those older Scooby shows can sometimes be hard to sort out because they were broadcast as one title, and then syndicated under another.
It seems you are lumping series 4-6 (broadcast 1979-1985 under several different titles) as "Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo" even though there was a format change with series 5 in 1980 where Fred, Velma, and Daphne were dropped from the show (Daphne would return in series 6, 1983 with Fred & Velma guest starring in the 1984-1985 season). The years where they are gone are the nadir of the series that, in my opinion, was never all that great to begin with. Making it Scrappy-centric took tripe and made it worse tripe.
I'm probably unique for a kid growing up in the 1970s in that I was NEVER a Scooby fan. I always preferred the superhero shows, and while I did watch Scooby, it was often a chore for me. Anytime there was something better on another channel, I'd have no problem switching.
However, I will say that when Kids WB brought the series back as What's New, Scooby-Doo? (series 9 of the franchise) it was better than the originals -- both in animation and in storytelling. Series 11, Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, is a show that I only saw the first few episodes of, but that also seems to be of a higher caliber with season-long plot threads and an attempt to deepen the relationships between the characters.
If I had to pick my "favorite" series, I might go with "Other" and choose the spinoff series, Laff-a-Lympics. Like Yogi's Gang before it, the series was a Hanna-Barbera "Cinematic Universe," and was fun to watch on that basis.
Scooby Doo Mystery Incorporated for me.
It edges out the OG Scooby Doo Where Are You because it took everything that came before and did something really cool w. it.
Mystery Incorporated, best combination of old and new, tongue in cheek day to day mystery solving with a surprisingly dark ongoing plot connecting everything.
The original 'Where are you' nabbing second.
A pup named landing in third for me, as it was the one of my childhood.
Current Pull: Amazing Spider-Man and Domino
Bunn for Deadpool's Main Book!
Have to go with the original Scooby Doo Where Are You.
I stayed with SD until Scrappy showed up but couldn't take it. I came back for Mystery Incorporated and fell in love with the show all over again.
Without hesitation, the answer for me is Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated. I was never that much of a Scooby-Doo fan until I watched Mystery Inc. That series was insane like a combination of X-Files and Hardy Boys mixed heavily with German Expressionism, so very epic.
"So you've come to the end now alive but dead inside."
Other than the different series, there has also been some great appearances in other shows. My favorites were Johnny Bravo and of course Supernatural.
The "daphne is leader" era did have some good stuff also. Scrappy became less annoying and became more or less velma and dropped "puppy power". He was no longer super strong like in his first season but no where as annoying as the 7min shorts.even though there was a format change with series 5 in 1980 where Fred, Velma, and Daphne were dropped from the show (Daphne would return in series 6, 1983 with Fred & Velma guest starring in the 1984-1985 season). The years where they are gone are the nadir of the series that, in my opinion, was never all that great to begin with. Making it Scrappy-centric took tripe and made it worse tripe.
Daphne became a good leader. She grew out of her "i like clothes" teen era. Shame the dtv films dropped her growth and took her right back to her acting like a teen again!
The ghosts can be real also helped as they also kept the fake ones so you didn't know if the ghost was real or fake in each episode mixing it up! Sometimes it was both! They busted fake aliens from space only for the real aliens to show up! A actress needs help with a ghost haunting her! The ghost turns out to be fake! The actress turns out to be a vampire!
Mystery inc was now well know for both ghost chasing and mystery solving and peoples hired them for both! Sometimes there would be no ghosts and they just get hired to solve a theft or catch a crook! Even the universal monsters hired them in the halloween special! Fred became a mystery writer and velma worked for nasa and only showed up on their days off!
The less said about the awful 13 ghosts movie they made the better. No 80s scooby fan sees it as canon anyway.
So have a soft spot for that era. But to me the first scooby doo where are you is the one i still like the most.
Mysteries did have a nice thriller based theme however.
Last edited by Gaastra; 02-08-2021 at 07:14 AM.
Get a Clue, 13 Ghosts, and the 7 minute Scrappy shorts are definitely the low points of the series. The New Scooby Doo Movies and a Pup Named Scooby Doo are both pretty hard to watch for me as well, but still better.
Even today, you can still see how Where Are You was successful enough to launch a franchise, but my top two are definitely Mystery Incorporated and Be Cool in some order.
Personally I love MI but still consider it to be overrated. It's a great show but hardly the be all and end all that it's fans portray it is.
Be Cool knew it couldn't follow MI's act and didn't try. The result is a hilarious show with probably my favorite take on Daphne and some really good songs played over the chase scenes in season 1
I did like the short lived version of the group as kids and Scooby as a puppy...
What's New Scooby Doo?
I also have a soft spot for Scooby Doo, Where Are You? and the Scooby Doo show.