Scooby-Doo! and Scrappy-Doo! Season 1 packs a lot of puppy power

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

I’ve got a mystery for all the past and present Scooby-Doo fans out there in the cosmos. At what point did we all collectively decide that Scrappy-Doo was a blight on the Scooby-Doo franchise? I don’t remember ever disliking the puppy as a child. Even now that I’m an adult, I don’t think he’s that bad of a Hanna-Barbera character. I know his catchphrase, “Tadadada tadadada! Puppy power!” can sometimes grate on one’s nerves, but it’s not like he utters it every five seconds. No, really, he doesn’t. I’ve gone back and watched the Scooby-Doo! and Scrappy-Doo! Season 1 DVD set, which was just released by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.

At what point did we all collectively decide that Scrappy-Doo was a blight on the Scooby-Doo franchise? tweet

As a lifelong Scooby-Doo fan now in my 30s, this is a question that has been plaguing me for over two decades. I’ve wanted to drive around in the Mystery Machine and solve mysteries with the Mysteries, Inc. gang for as long as I can remember. I’ve spent years coping with – and eventually embracing – the fact that many think I bear a certain resemblance to Velma. I was the type of kid who ate up all the Nancy Drew, R.L. Stine, John Bellairs and Agatha Christie novels I could find. Today, I still find mystery novels as being one of the only types of books that can hold my interest through time that is otherwise better spent catching up with my Netflix shows, cooking something up in the kitchen, visiting my friends or family, exercising or concentrating on my never-ending quest to find a love that will last a lifetime. There’s something about mysteries, mayhem and monsters that keep me going – and Scooby-Doo has always been an animated platform offering me a veritable buffet of all three to delight my senses.

I hadn’t seen an episode of the show with Scrappy-Doo in quite some time. The first thing I was curious about was the specific time frame this “Season 1” referred to, and I learned various things about the Scooby-Doo canon I didn’t previously know while conducting my Internet research. Scooby-Doo! and Scrappy-Doo! Season 1 refers to 16 half-hour episodes produced from 1979-80. By the late ‘70s, Scooby-Doo had been going strong for a decade, but the Hanna-Barbera staff was growing concerned that the formula for the show had become a bit tired. Ratings were beginning to decline, so they gave the series an overhaul, adding Scooby-Doo’s pint-size nephew Scrappy-Doo. When in doubt, always add a new baby, right? Or in this case, a puppy. Who doesn’t love a puppy?

I don’t understand the hatred for Scrappy-Doo. tweet

Scrappy-Doo has a lot of spunk and tenacity that I admire. He’s the perfect yin to Scooby’s yang. While Scooby-Doo is a huge coward, Scrappy-Doo is always ready to go out and capture the bad guys, no matter what kind of monsters they’re supposed to be or how much bigger they are in comparison with him. I think that’s a good lesson for children that still holds true. Don’t let your fears cripple you. We would all be much better off if we possessed some of those “scrappy, never give up, when the going gets tough, the tough get going” qualities. I don’t understand the hatred for Scrappy-Doo. Can we all just agree he’s a more valuable team player than the dim-witted cousin Scooby-Dum, the female cousin version of Scooby named Scooby-Dee or even that annoying kid named Flim Flam from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo? (And don’t even get me started on the Scooby Doobies!) Scrappy-Doo may have been the franchise’s answer to the Cousin Oliver Syndrome (when The Brady Bunch tried to add a cute, younger kid to help revive that show’s falling ratings only to face a stark cancellation anyway), but why does it have to work so hard to burn the little guy from its collective memory? Maybe the public at-large would have been more receptive of him if it didn’t look like he was literally chucked into the series and Scooby’s life from out of nowhere (the credits show him being thrown at Scooby in a box on a train platform, which I’ve always found more than a little bizarre).

I had always assumed Scrappy-Doo was voiced by Don Messick, who also provided the voice for Scooby. Messick did in fact provide the voice for Scrappy for many incarnations of the character. However, I found it really interesting that he was first voiced in this collection by none other than Lennie Weinrib (you savvy ‘70s and ‘80s kids might remember him better as H.R. Pufnstuf in the beloved Sid & Marty Krofft show). I thought his voice and lisp sounded slightly different and yet familiar!

Interesting Wikipedia fact #2 that is no laughing matter: Scooby-Doo! and Scrappy-Doo! was the last Hanna-Barbera cartoon series to use the studio’s laugh track. I had never really thought about how much of my childhood involved a laugh track. Hanna-Barbera apparently made use of it in many of their ‘60s and ‘70s classics to help with the comedic pacing because their 20-something-minute cartoons were a bit longer than many of the other cartoons that had come previously. As a child, the laugh track was just something I took for granted as part of the particular cartoon or sitcom I was watching – I never stopped to think about where that canned laughter was supposed to be coming from or why it was even necessary. Now that I rewatch them as an adult, it’s perhaps a little unsettling, yet I wouldn’t want that laugh track removed because it’s very much a part of the show’s – and really all of television’s – history forever preserved in a time capsule.

The DVD set pack a lot of puppy power and nostalgia in its 16 episodes. tweet

While this set doesn’t have any bonus features, it does pack a lot of puppy power and nostalgia in its 16 episodes (that’s over 4 hours of classic Hanna-Barbera hijinks and wondrous, vivid animation). The episode I remembered best from my childhood was perhaps “The Ghoul, the Bat and the Ugly,” in which the gang attends the Batty Awards Show, which gets interrupted by the infamous Shadow Creature. Among the “monsters” represented in these episodes that time wants to forget, you’ll find a comic book character brought to life (The Blue Scarab), a snake demon, a minotaur, space aliens, a sea monster, a devil bear, a vampiress that bears a resemblance to Daphne, a virtual-reality phantom in a Sherlock Holmes-era London and even a neon phantom haunting a roller disco called Sparkles that was perhaps my favorite because it so accurately captures the spirit and essence of the late ‘70s era that I just barely missed. If you can learn to embrace Scrappy-Doo for all that he is and all that he embodies, I think this set makes a nice addition to any Hanna-Barbera or Scooby-Doo fan’s home DVD collection.