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Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
1969 · TV series · 22 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Joe Ruby, Ken Spears
AnimationMysteryComedyFamilyScience FictionFantasy
Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and the talking dog, Scooby-Doo, travel on the Mystery Machine van, in search of weird mysteries to solve.
2 negative1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
Isn't that the entire point of Scooby Doo (a television show for children)?
YuGiOh and Transformers were largely toy commercials, but you lump Dragonball Z into the same class? It practically indoctrinated half a generation into fitness and physical self improvement, I still sometimes hear Bruce Falconers score at the gym.
I feel there is a substantial divide between a narrative adventure story by a Japanese manga artist crafted as a parody retelling of Journey to the West and followed by his eccentricities (Frieza was an alien and power ranger parody, Cell was a bishonen parody, there was tons of messaging in the core narrative about passing the torch, etc) and a product like Transformers designed by a corporate committee of Hasbro from day one meant to sell toys. Sure, the further into Dragonball you got the more commoditized and derivative it became, but at least the original Dragonball show is a worthy classic.
There absolutely is a class below all those shows, where there is absolutely no narrative development and every episode is designed and manufactured for self contained entertainment with no greater depth. A lot of Hanna Barbara cartoons fall into that class, Scooby Doo absolutely - where every episode is designed to be disposable and ultimately meaningless, just meant to distract.
TV was very mysterious back then. I would not see most of the episodes in a series as I had no way to record anything nor any idea when they were on besides having a TV Guide (which we never bought) or the local newspaper tv listings which got thrown out more often than not. TV was more of a random access experience back then. You got what you got. Saturday mornings were pretty awesome as far as cartoons went, but in some ways they weren't--it felt like not a lot of thought or effort was put into that programming and it was mostly about toy commercials. I watched a shitload of Saturday morning cartoons. I would usually get up at 6am and watch the national anthem which played both verses, and then some goofy local show involving a very fat lady and her dog would come on and she would talk about local scene stuff that I had no idea about. After that wa PBA bowling (TV Tournament Time). Cartoons came on around 7:30 or 8am, I think, and ran until about 11am. Maybe bowling was after, can't recall.
For most people, especially kids, shows had no continuity at all. I remember trying to watch Robotech (re-runs?) in the mid '80s and once in awhile I'd see two episodes in a row that were in the correct order. Doctor Who was the same way except that was on PBS and often times I could see a couple in a row. Things didn't change until my parents got cable sometime around 1985 or so.
One more anectdote I'll share: My kids both loved Scooby Doo so we bought all the old episodes on DVD. What strikes me most about the cheap animation is how few characters there were in Scooby Doo. If the gang was walking in a town or an amusement park, there were almost no local color--no people at all. That gives the show a creepy, xenophobic vibe. The gang is always all alone in an alien landscape, sort of like they were transported into an alternate reality.