Jinkies!

Every so often, I get the urge to write about something completely insignificant and irrelevant.  And this is no exception.  It has been a few rough weeks, and so I need a light topic today.

I am a huge fan of classic Hanna Barbera cartoons from the 1960’s.    The Flintstones, an adult sitcom masked as a cartoon, is my all-time favorite.  The Flintstones aired during “prime time”, a trail blazer for later shows such as The Simpsons.  The good plots, funny dialogue and unforgettable voices (ie, Mel Blanc, Alan Reed, Jean Vander Pyl, and the uncredited Daws Butler) are still funny and strangely still relevant today.    Other favorites of mine from this time period are The Jetsons and Yogi Bear, also featuring the talented and versatile voices of Daws Butler, Mel Blanc and Jean Vander Pyl.

However, there is another cartoon that hails from this same time that still captures the attention of even today’s generation.  It has been reincarnated many times in different ways and in different forms.   In my opinion, the best installment of this cartoon is and will always be the original installment from 1969, “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?”

“Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” was immensely entertaining.  A group of teenagers, Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy (voiced by Casey Kasem), and their dog Scooby Doo, would be doing their thing, driving around in a van known as the Mystery Machine (which looked like it was straight out of the Summer of Love or The Partridge Family) and stumble upon spooky situations and mysterious happenings.  In a matter of fifteen minutes, an entire story would be told, including some unforgettable villains, witty dialogue, and clever traps.    Each show followed an identical pattern of the kids heading somewhere, encountering a mystery, investigating, a chase scene, elaborate traps to capture the villain, unmasking and identifying the villain (always the most unsuspecting character who appeared in the first scene) and a final goofy line where everyone laughs, usually delivered by the talking dog, Scooby Doo. 

What I loved most about it is the background music and the laugh track.  The theme song was catchy and the funny chase scenes mid-point through the episode always featured a catchy song with some unusual lyrics.   Although never identified in the credits, the singer of the chase scene songs sounded a lot like Davy Jones from the Monkees.

“Scooby Doo, Where Are You?” ran for two seasons.  There have been innumerable incarnations of Scooby Doo that followed that weren’t as successful in my opinion.  The dialogue wasn’t as tight, the music was different, the chase scene songs gone, along with the laugh track.    There was another iteration of Scooby Doo many years later that was repackaged as a third season of “Scooby Doo, Where Are You?”, but the plots, dialogue and lack of chase scene music were unmemorable.  And the voices weren’t as memorable as the usual Hanna Barbera cast.

The only other iteration that I enjoyed was “The New Scooby Doo Mysteries”.   These episodes featured special guest stars (in cartoon form) who were popular in the 70's, like the legendary comedian Jonathan Winters, Phyllis Diller, Don Adams, Don Knotts, Sonny & Cher, The Harlem Globetrotters, Sandy Duncan, Batman & Robin, and the Addams Family.

Because I can’t help myself, and am overly critical, looking for meaning where there is none, here are some things that I never understood:

·         The Mystery Machine was pretty big.  The back of the van seemed to be endless, and yet, all five characters crowded into the front seat.

·         How were they able to drive the Mystery Machine to foreign countries?

·         Fred was a control freak.  He ordered everyone around and told everyone what to do.  He would state the obvious, telling people when to duck and when to jump and when to set the traps.  And he always drove the van.  And he always decided who would pair with whom.

·         Fred had terrible fashion sense.  But what do you expect from the late 60s, bell bottoms and ascots and sideburns.  Oh my.

·         Fred was utterly clueless when it came to women.  He was totally oblivious to the hotness of his companion, Daphne.   All the times that they would split up, he and Daphne would go one way, Shaggy, Scooby and Velma would go the other.  You would think Fred would have taken advantage of some of those dark closets and tunnels with Daphne. 

·         Daphne also had terrible fashion sense and no eye for how to color coordinate an outfit.  She wore a purple dress, pink stockings and a green neck scarf with a purple hair band.   What was odd was how vain she was, always worried about her “hairdo”.  What she needed was a fashion intervention.  

• Why did they wear the same outfit every episode?

·         Why was Daphne so darn clumsy?

·         When did these teenagers actually go to school?  Didn’t the principal ever wonder why they were always truant? 

·         If they were school age, how did they have money to go traveling all over the world?  When did they work and how did they earn this money?

·         What made them qualified to solve mysteries? 

·         Why were local police always so inept that they needed the help of these five bungling kids?

·         Why was the dog Scooby Doo the smartest of the lot?

·         What was in those Scooby Snax anyway?  hum...  1960's.  Take a guess.

·         Why did Shaggy always get stuck with Scooby Doo?

·         Why did Fred put up with Shaggy?  All Shaggy ever did was eat or spend his time seeking out food.

·         What was Shaggy’s stomach made of?  Why did he eat such unusual combinations of food?  And why did he eat dog food?

·         What kind of a name is Velma anyway?

·         Why didn’t someone buy Velma one of those strings that you attach to your eyeglasses and wear around your neck? 

·         Why didn’t Velma get tired of losing her glasses and switch to contact lenses already?

The other impact this series had was on our vocabulary.  “Scooby Doo Where Are You?”  was responsible for words such as “Jinkies” and “Zoinks”, and frequently used the word  “Groovy”.   

The most unforgettable line from this series is the line that every villain said after being caught by the teenagers: “and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids”.  And sometimes there were slight variations on this such as “And I would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for those blasted kids and their dog”.  I often hear people quoting this line today.  And it always makes me smile, bringing me back to a younger time.

No matter the answers to my above questions, this was a great cartoon that can never be replicated or surpassed.