Zoinks!

I just saw that Cartoon Network has announced that later this year they will be releasing a new Scooby-Doo series. As someone who watched Scooby when I was little, I decided to do a little research on the matter. What I found was that there have been 17 completely separate Scooby-Doo series (including this new one) between 1969 and 2009. Also, there have been 20 animated movies, 3 live action movies (one coming out this year to promote the new series and explain how everyone met), 12 video games (not including the ones online or the board games), and two plays written for the stage and performed on world tours.

As corny as the show is and despite the fact that most episodes that I remember only had one suspect with the same motive as every villian in the history of the show (Like! Zoinks! Mr. Jones was dressing as the Miner Forty-Niner to scare the townspeople away from the oil he found in the gold mine!), I really cant knock it. Its really impressive to have a show survive 40 years and still captivate audiences. I tried to find out how much the franchise has grossed but could not find a definite figure. Im sure its made some people a very comfortable life. I have compiled a list below of the series and spin-offs and the years that they ran. I'm sure we've all seen at least one episode from most of these series growing up.

• Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! (1969-1970) [The Original]
• The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972-1973) [These are the episodes with the Harlem Globe Trotters, Don Knotts, etc]
• The Scooby-Doo Show (1976-1978)
• The Scooby-Doo/Dynamutt Hour (1976)
• The Scooby-Doo/Dynamutt Show (1976-1977)
• Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics (1977-1978)
• Scooby's All-Stars (1978-1979)
• Scooby Doo and Scrappy Doo (1979-1982)
• The Richie Rich/Scooby Doo Show (1980-1982)
• The Scooby Doo/Scrappy Doo/Puppy Hour (1982-1983)
• The All-New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show (1983-1984)
• The New Scooby Doo Mysteries (1984-1985)
• The 13 Ghost of Scooby Doo (1985) [This was the one where the gang hunted ghost rather than solve mysteries. It stared Vincent Price who did the talking part at the end of Michael Jackson's song "Thriller"]
• A Pup Named Scooby Doo (1988-1991) [Stared the gang as children]
• Whats New, Scooby Doo? (2002-2006) [Theme song sung by Simple Plan]
• Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! (2006-2008)
• Scooby-Doo - Mystery, Inc. (2009-)

Dont forget that this list is only the TV series and not the movies, games, plays, etc.

To be honest, I wanted to write this blog in order to talk about how ridiculous it was to be re-releasing such a corny show, but after looking at all this, I can't come to any other conclusion besides that these people know what they're doing. I'm sure tons of money will be made off of this new installment. Besides, from what I can tell, this new one seems to be much darker (demon possession, poltergeists, the fact that the people do not want the mysteries to be solved).

Pretty impressive from a mystery show with only one suspect per episode.