Frank Welker – Scooby-Doo, Fred Jones, various
Casey Kasem – Norville “Shaggy” Rogers
Grey DeLisle – Daphne Blake, various
Mindy Cohn – Velma Dinkley
For more information on the history of Scooby-Doo, check out the post here.
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| Shaggy's love of meat drove off Casey Kasem. |
Scooby’s ratings had suffered a serious decline. A
Pup Named Scooby-Doo came to a conclusion with no new incarnation
to follow for the first time in two decades. The Scooby made-for-TV film series
that had been running concurrently since 1987 also ended with 1994’s Scooby-Doo! in Arabian
Nights; again, with no plan for a follow-up. Casey Kasem, who had
voiced Shaggy since the beginning, had left the role in 1995 over a dispute
with the producers of having Shaggy appear in a Burger King commercial
(Kasem was a vegan and wanted Shaggy to at least be portrayed as a vegetarian).
Don Messick, the original
voice of Scooby, decided to retire from the role as his quitting smoking made
him unable to achieve the rasp needed to do the voice properly. He ultimately
retired from acting altogether after a stroke in 1996, and died from a second
one in 1997.
Behind the scenes, Turner
Broadcasting System had purchased Hanna-Barbera Productions
in 1991 in order to gain access to their library and begin their own network: Cartoon Network. The studio was
renamed Hanna-Barbera Cartoons and began producing new content exclusively for
Turner networks while the back catalog filled up the majority of Cartoon
Network’s—later sister station Boomerang’—air
time. In 1996, Turner merged with Time
Warner and Hanna-Barbera became part of Warner
Bros. Animation, before being absorbed entirely in 2001 following William Hanna’s death.
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| Johnny Bravo meets the Scooby gang. |
Conspicuously absent at this time was any new Scooby content. However,
the various Scooby shows were shown regularly in reruns on the Turner networks
and saw a significant surge in ratings. This was capped off by the warm
reception to the 1997 Johnny
Bravo episode segment “Bravo Dooby-Doo”, which featured a
crossover with the Mystery, Inc. gang. This would be Heather North’s last outing as
the regular voice for Daphne Blake, briefly retiring from acting until 2003
when she would return, along with original Velma Nicole Jaffe, for two
direct-to-video movies.
Warner executives wanted some new projects based on Hanna-Barbera’s
existing properties and decided to give Scooby a shot with a one-off
direct-to-video film. Scooby-Doo
on Zombie Island was released to home video on September 22,
1998. It was written by Glenn
Leopold, who had worked on the franchise since 1979’s Scooby-Doo
and Scrappy-Doo, based off of his unused SWAT Kats script.
Jim Stenstrum served as
director, and the driving force behind making the monsters encountered in the
film real; a fact that was heavily promoted in the film’s marketing (and
ignored the prior television series where this occurred). With very little
oversight from Warners, the film’s crew was allowed full creative freedom and
made it significantly darker in tone than the previous TV entries, as well as
gave the characters a design update.
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| Fred discovers that's not a mask. |
Frank
Welker was the only original cast member to return, voicing Fred once again. Initially,
voice director Kris
Zimmerman felt that Welker’s voice had gone down
an octave and Welker could no longer do the same voice, which Welker disputed
as Fred’s voice was practically his natural speaking voice. Upon review, it was
determined that the production crew was misled by the fact that Scooby reruns
were time-compressed and sped up slightly, altering the vocal performances.
Kasem was offered a chance to return, but as there were scenes already made of
Shaggy eating crawfish he declined and was replaced by Billy West.
Scott Innes was hired as the voice of Scooby, and Mary-Kay Bergman took over the role of Daphne. B.J. Ward reprised Velma from Johnny Bravo.
Zombie
Island proved a hit in sales and earned two award nominations in 1999. Warner Bros. commissioned
additional direct-to-video movies in what would become an ongoing series;
although only the first three follow-ups would maintain the same continuity as Zombie
Island. Because Scooby was now a viable property, Warner Bros. became
increasingly involved in micromanaging the films’ productions, driving out the
production crew. WB would slowly bring the series back to the status quo of the
original programs while toning down the things that made Zombie Island so
successful. Innes would take over Shaggy from West with the second film,
assuming double-duty with voicing Scooby, and following Bergman’s death her
favorite student, Grey DeLisle, would take over as Daphne for the fourth. Around
this time, the first
live-action film was also in production and set
to hit theaters the following year.
 |
| The gang is back with a new look and modern technology. |
With all
this new love for Scooby, it was time to look into creating the ninth
incarnation of the franchise. Originally announced as a joint venture between Kids’ WB and Cartoon Network called All-New Scooby-Doo!: The
Animated Series, What’s New, Scooby-Doo? was the first series not produced
by Hanna-Barbera, but instead by Warner Bros. Animation, as well as the first
time the entire Mystery, Inc. gang had been together regularly in their teenage
forms since 1980. It also completely abandoned the Hanna-Barbera sound library
in favor of newer, more realistic sound effects. The ironically named What’s
New was a return to the classic mystery-solving format of the franchise,
with the Mystery, Inc. gang travelling around to various locations and
encountering criminals in disguises trying to frighten people away from their
crimes (although, occasionally, a villain would slip through with a sympathetic
motive).
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| A real dead-head behind the wheel. |
What’s
New, Scooby-Doo? debuted on The WB
as part of the Kids’
WB programming block on September 14, 2002. Welker
was given the additional duties of voicing Scooby after the producers’ first
choice, Marty Grabstein, was too busy recording for Courage the Cowardly Dog. Kasem returned after
the producers made Shaggy a vegetarian, and would be the final series in which
he’d voice the character even though he’d continue to do so in the subsequent
animated films. Mindy Cohn also succeeded Ward as the permanent voice for
Velma. While the character designs took inspiration from the original
Hanna-Barbera models, they were refined by Scott Awley and Scott
Jeralds to make them look less two-dimensional. Fred
and Daphne also received slight changes to their attire; with Fred losing his
ascot and given a blue stripe across his torso and arms, and Daphne no longer
wearing her green scarf and her dress having a new design. The characters’
personalities received some tweaking, as Velma’s intelligence was elevated
greatly, Fred was dumbed-down slightly in an attempt to give him more of a
personality, and Daphne was no longer danger-prone or the damsel in distress
and became a woman of action who could take care of herself. Shaggy and Scooby,
who became the prominent faces of the franchise for a time, had the focus taken
off of them and put onto their friends for a majority of episodes (although
they do have a starring role without the others in the episode “Camp
Comeoniwannascareya”).
 |
| The Hex Girls: Dusk, Thorn and Luna. |
In a first
for the teen incarnation of the franchise, there were recurring characters and
locations seen in multiple episodes. Amongst them was Elliot Blender (Kimberly Brooks), a spoiled genius that often lost to Velma in contests;
Melbourne O’Reilly (Steve Blum), an Australian adventurer and explorer and one of Fred’s
heroes; Gibby Norton (voiced by and modeled after Eddie Deezen), a nerd who had an unrequited crush on Velma and often
tried to impress her by being the mystery’s villain; Mr. B (Jeff Bennet), who owned a group of mischievous puppies known as the
Secret Six: Maize, Knox (both Jennifer
Hale), Jingle (Colleen O’Shaugnessey), Flax (Dee
Bradley Baker), Bling-Bling (DeLisle) and
14-Karat (Welker); and Professor Laslow Ostwald (Dave Foley & James
Arnold Taylor), an inventor. Crossing over from
the 2nd and 5th animated films were the Hex Girls: an
all-female eco-goth rock band comprised of lead singer and guitarist Thorn
(Hale), drummer Dusk (Jane Wiedlin) and keyboardist Luna (Brooks). Additional character designs
were handled by Strenstrum, Susan Crossley, Dexter
Smith, Tim Maltby, Phil
Bourassa, Hyunsook Cho, Joe Sichta and Kathi
Castillo.
 |
| Flashing back to A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. |
The series
was written by Jordana
Arkin, Chris Brown, Bill
Canterbury, Jonathan Collier, Bill
Culverius, Nahnatcka Khan, Dwayne
McDuffie, Tom Minton, Tom
Sheppard, Mark Turosz, Matt
Wayne, story editors George Doty IV, James
Krieg and Ed Scharlach, and Hanna-Barbera co-founder Joseph Barbera, who also served as a producer for the series. A lot of
wink and nods were made towards the past entries in the Scooby franchise, such
as having the characters appear in their A Pup character models in the
episode “A Terrifying Round with a Menacing Metallic Clown” and the use of a
laugh-track and Scooby’s werewolf form from Scooby-Doo and the
Reluctant Werewolf in “A Scooby-Doo Halloween”, as well as some fourth
wall-breaking jokes poked at the long-established formula that What’s New revived.
 |
| Simple Plan as they appeared on the show. |
The series’ theme was performed by the band Simple Plan, who
also appeared as themselves in the episode “Simple Plan and the Invisible
Madman”, and had three of their songs, “I’d Do Anything” and “You Don’t Mean
Anything” and “The Worst Day Ever”, featured on the show. The theme was written
by Rich Dickerson and Gigi Meroni, who composed the rest of the series’ music. Each
episode’s chase sequence featured either an original or a licensed song by
typically an indie, punk or alternative band (increasingly so following the
first season). Along with Lotto
Animation, who also handled the opening titles,
the series was animated by Wang Film
Productions and Dong Woo Animation Co., Ltd.
Season 1:
“There’s No
Creature Like Snow Creature” (9/14/02) – Rumors of a snow creature reach the
gang on their skiing holiday, but Velma and Fred end up out of commission for
the mystery.
Song: “It’s a Rad, Rad World” – Sebastian Robertson
“3-D
Struction” (9/21/02) – A trip to a museum in Costa Rica leads the gang to
investigate a dinosaur that emerges from the film shown there.
Song: “Gue-Gue-Guepa” – Chicos de Barrio
“Space Ape
at the Cape” (9/28/02) – An alien egg hatches at NASA and threatens the current
shuttle mission.
Song: “Music of America” – Poster
Children
“Big Scare
in the Big Easy” (10/5/02) – While the gang stays in New Orleans, two ghosts
re-enact their Civil War battle and drive off the other guests of the housing
estate.
Song: “Man with the Hex” – The Atomic Fireballs
“It’s Mean,
It’s Green, It’s the Mystery Machine” (10/26/02) – Investigating why the
Mystery Machine has seemingly come to life leads the gang to its original
owners.
Song: “I’d Do Anything” – Simple Plan
“Riva Ras
Regas” (11/2/02) – The gang wins a contest to meet Lindsay Pagano in Vegas, but
end up having to investigate the ghost of a magician that haunts the venue.
Song: “Here I Come Vegas” – Lindsay Pagano
“Roller
Ghoster Ride” (11/9/02) – Scooby and Shaggy win a contest to design a new
roller coaster for a theme park, but a ghost is intent on sabotaging all the
rides there.
Song: “Saying Goodbye” – The
Muffs
“Safari, So
Goodi!” (11/23/02) – The gang goes on an African safari where they discover the
animals all turning yellow and acting strangely.
Song: “Hatari Safari” – Rich Dickerson
“She Sees
Sea Monsters by the Sea Shore” (11/30/02) – The gang’s island vacation is
interrupted by a sea serpent.
Song: “Rockaway Beach” – The Ramones
“A
Scooby-Doo! Christmas” (12/13/02) – The gang ends up in a town that doesn’t
celebrate Christmas due to a headless snowman terrorizing them.
Song: “Santa Claus, Santa Claus” – Heavy Trevy
“Toy Scary
Boo” (2/1/03) – The gang investigates a toy store where the toys take over.
Song: “Scooby, Scooby-Doo” – Rich Dickerson
“Lights!
Camera! Mayhem!” (2/15/03) – The gang gets VIP passes to a Hollywood studio
where a production comes under siege by the Faceless Phantom.
Song: “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around
With You” – The Ramones
“Pompeii and
Circumstance” (2/22/03) – The gang encounters a zombie gladiator in Pompeii who
seems to be connected to illegal waste dumping in Mt. Vesuvius.
Song: “Hal Capito” – Luciano
Palermi, Raffaella Camera & Rich Dickerson
“The
Unnatural” (3/22/03) – The ghost of the homerun record holder tries to stop
Luis Santiago from breaking it.
Song: “Play My Game” – The Donnas
Season 2:
“Big
Appetite in Little Tokyo” (9/13/03) – While in Tokyo, Shaggy eats a
mystically-zapped pizza that causes him to turn into an ever-hungry giant.
Song: “Urei” – Puffy
AmiYumi
“Mummy
Scares Best” (9/20/03) – On an archaeological dig in Egypt, the gang encounters
a mummy that can turn people into zombies.
Song: “Time Running” – Tegan and
Sara
“The Fast
and the Wormious” (9/27/03) – Fred enters a cross-country race which ends up
pitting the gang against a giant worm.
Song: “Punk Rock Y Subversion” – Los Miserables
“High-Tech
House of Horrors” (10/4/03) – The gang investigates a house of the future
attraction at a future fair where a teenager disappeared.
Song: “Another Way” – Paul van
Dyk
“The Vampire
Strikes Back” (10/18/03) – The gag heads to the recording of The Hex Girls’
latest music video in Transylvania where a vampire is on the loose.
Song: “Petrified Bride” – The Hex Girls
“A
Scooby-Doo Halloween” (10/24/03) – The gang goes to spend Halloween with
Velma’s relatives but some scarecrows are eager to spoil the fun.
Song: “Shout it Out Loud” – KISS
“Homeward Hound”
(10/25/03) – The gang heads to a dog show which comes under attack by a cat
creature that steals the puppies of the former winner.
Song: “Now I Wanna Be A Good Boy” – The Ramones
“The San
Franpsycho” (3/20/04) – The gang visits Ryan Sheckler at the Grind Games in San
Francsisco, but the games end up terrorized by the ghost of a former Alcatraz
inmate.
Song: “Doing Time” – MxPx
“Simple Plan
and the Invisible Madman” (3/22/04) – When the gang’s and Simple Plans’ vans
are wrecked, they’re forced to stay in a ghost town where something invisible
stalks the band.
Songs: “You Don’t Mean Anything” & “The Worst Day Ever” – Simple Plan
“Recipe for
Disaster” (3/23/04) – The gang heads to the Scooby Snack Factory which is
besieged by spies and a monster.
Song: “Sabre Dance” – Love Sculpture
“Large
Dragon at Large” (3/24/04) – A dragon terrorizes a Renaissance fair in
Scotland.
Song: “The Ghosts of Me and You” – Less Than
Jake
“Uncle
Scooby and Antarctica” (3/25/04) – The gang encounters a fish-like creature
while trying to return a penguin to Antarctica.
Song: “Southbound” – MxPx
“New Mexico,
Old Monster” (3/26/04) – An ancient bird terrorizes the Native American
reservation that the gang visits.
Song: “No Control” – Blackfire
“It’s All
Greek to Scooby” (3/27/04) – Shaggy buys a mysterious amulet that causes a
centaur to chase him.
Season 3:
“Fright
House at the Lighthouse” (1/29/05) – While visiting Fred’s uncle the gag tries
to stop a ghost from messing with local ships.
Song: “High Five” – Calibretto 13
“Go West,
Young Scoob” (2/5/05) – The gang visits a western town where the robot
inhabitants have gone berserk.
Song: “Haven’t Been Myself in a
While” – CIV
“A
Scooby-Doo Valentine” (2/11/05) – It looks like the gang may be responsible for
disappearances on Lovers Lane.
Song: “Walk on the Wire” – Sahara
Hotnights
“Wrestle
Maniacs” (2/12/05) – Fred enters a wrestling competition haunted by the twisted
ghost of a former wrestler.
Song: “All Twisted” – CIV
“Ready to
Scare” (2/19/05) – The gang visits Daphne’s cousin in Paris only to learn she’s
been abducted by a gargoyle from the Notre Dame cathedral.
Songs: “Nonchalant” – Chapeaumelon & “Ca Plane Pour Moi” – Plastic
Bertrand
“Farmed and
Dangerous” (2/26/05) – Visiting Mr. B and the Secret Six puppies leads the gang
to learn it was built over an ancient graveyard.
Song: “Something’s Going On” – A
“Diamonds
Are a Ghoul’s Best Friend” (3/5/05) – At the Emperor Cup game between the US
and Russian ice hockey teams, a former Russian hockey player makes off with the
trophy.
Song: “I’ll Search Forever” – Rich Dickerson
“A
Terrifying Round with a Menacing Metallic Clown” (3/12/05) – Shaggy’s mini-golf
tournament is terrorized by a giant metallic clown.
Song: “Something Special” – CIV
“Camp
Comeoniwannascareya” (3/19/05) – Scooby and Shaggy volunteer at a summer camp
that’s haunted by a slimy creature.
“Block-Long
Hong Kong Horror” (3/26/05) – The gang joins Shaggy in Hong Kong to get his
rubber duck repaired at the same time the city is terrorized by a dragon.
Song: “Hong Kong Holiday” – E.G.
Daily
“Gentlemen,
Start Your Monsters!” (4/2/05) – Fred competes in a car race that ends up
hosting a skeleton driver in a monster truck.
Song: “Hot” – Smash Mouth
“Gold Paw”
(4/9/05) – The gang visits the Secret Six at Fort Knox, which is haunted by a
creature made of gold that turns whatever it touches into gold.
Song: “Pressing On” – Relient K
“Reef
Grief!” (4/16/05) – A coral monster interrupts Shaggy and Scooby’s Australian
sandcastle building contest.
Song: “New Planet” – Smash Mouth
“E-Scream”
(7/21/06) – Velma tries to relax while the others enjoy a video game
convention, but she stumbles upon a virtual-reality game that has come to life.
Song: “Holiday” – Otherstarpeople
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