Hanna-Barbera
The month of May is upon us, which means summer’s just around the corner beckoning us with warmer temperatures, enticing vacation time with friends and family and a plethora of activities that can be enjoyed outdoors. However, you and your children can beat the heat this summer with Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Surf’s Up, Scooby-Doo!, which offers a brand-new mystery involving a Beach Beastie at Daphne’s uncle’s resort, as well as 12 other handpicked episodes featuring a beach or aquatic theme from Scooby-Doo incarnations past.
Adam West guest stars as Daphne’s eccentric uncle in the all-new episode titled “Scooby-Doo! and the Beach Beastie.” When mysterious aquatic monsters attack his resort, it’s up to the Mystery, Inc. gang to get to the bottom of this caper before they drive off all the resort’s guests. What I really love about this all-new episode aside from the fact that it stars a legend (West) is that Scooby-Doo is not afraid to poke some good-natured fun at itself after being on the air for over five decades. For instance, the gang teases Freddy about his obsession with and reliance upon nets to always catch the bad guys. There’s also a hilarious scene in which West launches into a stark-raving mad tirade about how anyone could be behind the supposedly supernatural aquatics including himself, saying maybe he just wants the insurance money when the resort is forced to close. It pokes fun at the very premise of the formula that has made this one of the longest-running and most-beloved children’s shows of all time.
I also enjoy the fact that Matthew Lillard continues to voice Shaggy Rogers after portraying him perfectly in the live-action Scooby-Doo movies of the early 2000s. Aside from Casey Kasem himself, there is no one else I can envision in that iconic role. Personally, I wish they would have kept the original working title of the new short: “Beach Blanket Beastie” because that was a clever play-on-words.
The other 12 adventures are among the finest the Scooby-Doo canon has to offer. Highlights include classic early Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? episodes such as “A Clue for Scooby-Doo” (which was in fact the second episode in the first season) and “Scooby’s Night with a Frozen Fright” (the episode in which a frozen caveman supposedly melts and comes to life, wreaking havoc upon a scientific lab), quite a few episodes packing puppy power (Scrappy-Doo) and even an episode of A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (an early ’90s favorite from my own childhood) titled “Scooby Dude.” There’s also fan favorite “She Sees Sea Monsters by the Seashore” from What’s New, Scooby-Doo? and a personal favorite title of mine from Scooby-Doo! and Scrappy-Doo!: “Shiver and Shake, That Demon’s a Snake.”
I like it when they do collections such as this because it allows you to really see the full circle of where Scooby-Doo has come and how the animation, storyboards and characters have evolved over the years. So put your feet up, pop some popcorn with the kiddies this summer and partake in a family pastime that’s spanning multiple generations by now: watching some classic Scooby-Doo cartoons together as a family. Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Surf’s Up, Scooby-Doo! is a splashy DVD you’ll want to own for your own personal home collection.
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