Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Scooby Dooby Doo, Where Are You?

Episode Date: June 24, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, for decades, Scooby Doo has captivated children across the world. It's been translated to multiple languages and remains as popular as newer programs. But why? Join Chuck and Josh as they shed light on the seemingly endless allure of Scooby Doo. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, everybody, Chuck here with this week's Saturday Select Pick of the Week. I'm going for Scooby-Doo this week. Scooby-Doo, where are you? We enjoy doing our pop culture episodes

and some classic TV shows here and there, and Scooby-Doo certainly falls into that category. So I think everyone should enjoy this one if you haven't heard it. And maybe if you have, give it another listen because there might be a secret code embedded. I'm just getting the really isn't. But enjoy.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. He is no longer older than me. We are both seven years old at this moment, right? I knew you'd catch up eventually. I just came home from elementary school. My backpack has just made a thud on the floor.

And the Flintstones have just gone off. And thank God, you know. And on comes Scooby-Doo. I'm not here, though. It doesn't matter. What do you mean you're not here? I'm making out with some girl in the front yard. We're both seven.

I know, that's what I'm saying. Everyone knows I was a late bloomer. That's not true. You were quite the Casanova, Chuck. Nah. OK. And it didn't matter, although I could have told you within the first half of a second of hearing the theme song

what Scooby-Doo is about to come on. Which episode? What version? Because remember, there's 10.7 million incarnations of Scooby-Doo. Yeah, there's a lot of them. What you just heard was, of course, the Russian version of the Scooby-Doo theme.

Those of you who grew up in Vladivostok in Moscow. They're probably rocking out to it. Sure. Scooby-Doo. Yeah, that's pretty good, wasn't it? Yeah, that's great. That was from the, well, again, the Russian version of the new Scooby-Doo movies.

But I mean, the ones that I was used to were Scooby-Doo, Where Are You, which is, of course, the first one. Yeah, to me, that is those 25 episodes. That was Scooby-Doo. See, I think it extends a little bit. But to me, it's more encompassing than that. I'm a little older, though. But it only runs up to the limits of my nostalgia.

I don't watch it these days. No, I don't either. I have to say, though, I'm heartened to know that Scooby-Doo's still in the world. Yeah. As a matter of fact, I read a study, Chuck, from 2010, where they were trying to figure out if cartoon characters have an effect on children's decisions

with food. So they gave kids some boxes that had gummy bears, granola, just some snack food, right? Was there a Scooby snack in there? No. And then they gave them boxes of the exact same stuff. But rather than playing non-cartoon-y boxes, they had cartoon characters on the boxes.

This is a 2010 study. So they had Shrek, Dora the Explorer, and Scooby-Doo. No way. Guess which one of those three cartoon characters was 40 years old at the time? The Explorer. No. Scooby-Doo.

40 years. 40 years. The other two were like 10 years old at the time, and they're using this on four to six-year-olds. And Scooby-Doo's still making them eat gummy bears. Well, I briefed through that slate article you sent that really sums it up nicely. And that's the reason we're doing Scooby-Doo when we're not

doing, I'm trying to think of some fly-by-night cartoon. Yeah, the Jetsons. Or no, fly-by-night shirt tails. But awesome. Love the shirt tails. Scooby-Doo, the reason we're doing this is because it has persevered through the years like Muppets and becomes so iconic that it's

more than a cartoon. Yeah, in that slate article, there's that they quote the guy who created Clarissa Explains It All. And he's like, no one can explain why Scooby-Doo is so iconic. It's so popular. Because he's like, it's not the best.

It's not the worst. So why has it been around for 40 years? And he's like, every cartoon creator's like, why can't my crappy cartoon become iconic? Right. You know? I mean, they don't even answer. There's no answer, is there?

There isn't. And that's part of the allure of Scooby-Doo. There are proposals, like everybody loves a dog. Sure. Everybody loves a mystery. Sure. One of the reasons it's enduring to kids, this author, supposes, is because they don't

do the ironic double entendre script to where adults get it and kids get it. But really, it was all for kids. It was all for kids. Plus, kids like the reason, probably for the same reason that things like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys have persevered is because kids doing adult-like things, like solving mysteries and getting the best of adults,

kids love that stuff. I was the three investigators fan. Did you read them? No. It was Alfred Hitchcock's nephew and his two friends. Oh, really? It was awesome. I was big into Encyclopedia Brown.

I loved him, too. Remember when he busted the kid who was fake and crying? Because the tears are coming out of the wrong ends of the eyes. I could never figure him out, though. I always felt dumb. I don't know if I ever figured any out either. You shouldn't feel dumb. They were purposely made to obfuscate the truth.

All right, so Dictionary Brown was great. Encyclopedia. Oh, yeah, right. Scooby-Doo, let's go to the history. How about that, the birth of Scooby? Yeah, because it wasn't immediate. No, it was not. Well, it was an immediate hit, but it took a while to get on the air.

Yes. Some incarnations happened, Josh. First one, Scooby-Doo, where are you? Originally, well, let's go back a little bit before. Originally, it was called Who Scared? And then they had another name that kind of stuck for a little while called Mysteries Five. Yeah, and originally, it was based on, what was the radio show? I Love a Mystery?

I Love a Mystery slash Doby Gillis, the TV show. Which is what Shaggy's based on. He's like a beatnik. He's based on Maynardgy Krebs. Fred is based on Doby. Yeah, or other stuff. The other way to look at it is that they were based in large part on the Archie gang, and Shaggy takes after Jughead.

Yeah, I didn't see that. Yeah, interesting. But, and I'm an Archie guy. There wasn't even a dog in the original versions. Well, not in the very original version. There was no dog at all. The Mysteries Five comes along. Right.

There is Jeff Geoff of all things. Geoff. Mike, Kelly, Linda, Linda's brother, WW. This is just unsettling the unfamiliarity. And a dog called Too Much. Yeah, who was Shaggy, wore, like he was a Shaggy dog, wore sunglasses and played the bongos. Yeah, because they were banned.

That was the original concept that they were banned. Right. So the dog played the bongos. And they were worried. They had a great dating idea at first, then they were worried that the makers of Marmadude were going to be like, you ripped us off. Of course. And they tried too much and were like, too much sucks.

Well, an Archie had a sheep dog, so they steered away from that to the great day. I think that's why. And then Jeff and Mike became, they merged, became Ronnie. And then Ronnie eventually became Fred. Kelly became Daphne. Linda became Velma. WW became Shaggy, but was no longer Daphne's brother. Right.

So. But it seems like I've heard of some sort of distant relation that they've made reference to in Scooby-Doo. Like they were somehow. Daphne and Shaggy? Yeah, they were somehow related, but not brother and sister. Oh, interesting. I could just be making that up though.

Maybe. Yeah. All right. So that's how it was for a little while. Then it eventually became the Scooby-Doo, as we know and love, became the Great Dane, as we said. Right. And we left somebody out.

There was a studio exec who has been, who was totally instrumental in this creation. Like he ordered the show from Hannah Barbera. His name was Fred Silverman. Yep. As far as I know, Fred's named after him. Right? Oh, really? And the whole reason there was a dog in there was because Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, the

writers and developers of Scooby-Doo. To young guns at the time. Right. They knew that Fred Silverman loved dogs. He was a dog guy. So that's the whole reason they inserted a dog in there. And two young writers like, yeah, put a dog in there and the exec will love it. Right.

And they asked Joe Barbera, of Hannah Barbera, if they could do that, and Barbera's response is, do whatever you want. And so they put the dog in. They needed care. Right. But Fred Silverman also had an even bigger impact on Scooby-Doo, didn't he? The name Scooby-Doo? Yep.

Yeah. He got that supposedly from Doobie, Doobie-Doo, Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Dark. Night. Night. Same thing. It was dark. The night is dark. Let's see if it's in Alaska.

Wow. The banner is exceptionally quick today. Thank you. So Fred was, this was kind of a landmark show at the time because he wanted a half hour show and cartoons weren't half hour shows at the time. No. They were like Yogi Bear. It was like eight minutes and then eight minutes and eight minutes or something like

that. Or in the case of like the Flintstone, that was a prime time thing. So this was geared towards Saturday morning programming and he wanted to have a full half hour plot line and a little more substance going on. He also wanted to steer away from violence. This Scooby-Doo came onto the scene at a time when cartoon networks were, well networks that showed cartoons were increasingly under pressure from parents groups, family groups, church groups to stop showing as much violence in cartoons.

Like Johnny Quest, there's a lot of rock and sock action in that. And so they decided that Scooby-Doo and his buddies would outwit villains rather than beat them up. Yeah. There were never even like punches thrown in Scooby-Doo, much less, you know, mock gun violence. Right. Exactly.

And yeah, those guns in Johnny Quest were cool though, the two-year-old guns. But think about it, like we wouldn't have had like all the contraptions that Fred came up with or any of them came up with like the net that like, you know, you tripped and it just pulled you up or whatever. Well, I think that was a thing. Right. It was. But you don't need that if you just punch the guy.

Yeah, yeah. So this whole aspect that these elaborate traps that they always ended up setting that Scooby and Shaggy had to bait the bad guy into was a result of this movement toward non-violence. Yeah. Well, at first cartoons, they pointed out in this article, which I didn't realize, cartoons at the time before this, no one had really cared about the violent thing because they weren't really geared toward kids. They were shown before movies to general audiences in the theaters.

And then when it jumped to TV, kids started watching them clearly because they're cartoons and they... That's what kids do. They study like that. Like why are kids inherently just like drawn to a drawn image? They're dumb. Stupid kids. And then people started saying, wait a minute, kids are watching these things now.

We should have something non-violent. Right. Australia is outlawing direct marketing to kids. So good for you, Australia. Indeed, Josh. Indeed. And we should mention, September 13, 1969, when Scooby-Doo finally appeared and it was a big hit right off the bat.

Yeah. Here's a bit of trivia for you. The first episode ever showed was titled... I didn't even know this. What a night for a night. The second night is K and I, G-H-T. What a night. And was it a ghost night?

Probably. Yeah. Like four million times. It's on. It's in the intro montage. Yes. Yes. The night with the red plume.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Absolutely. And that was it. And that, Josh, is a staple of Scooby-Doo. There was many times they were fighting zombies and ghosts and demons. But to take a little bit of the scare out of it, because that's what they were originally... The only time they were really worried was the fact that there was so many scary elements.

But they were always humans projecting a ghost on the wall of the cave. Right. There was never obviously any real ghosts, because it was, even though it was cartoon, it was rooted in reality. It was always a criminal. Right. Yeah. And there's a couple of things at play here, which I didn't think about until I started

researching this. But Junior Skeptic Magazine had this issue dedicated to Scooby-Doo, because it's based on a completely skeptical view of the universe. Yeah, especially Fred. You know, there's not ghosts. It's very empirical. Yeah. There's a ghost right there, but it can't be a ghost, because there's nothing as ghost.

So let's get to the bottom of it, and there is some sort of human explanation of it. Yeah. And that, well, like I said, that was Fred. That was his... Well, let's get into the characters. Fred was... They all had their roles. Fred was a skeptic.

He was the leader of Mystery Incorporated, and he was usually the one saying nine times out of ten, he was like, no, that can't be, that it is this, and we'll get to the bottom of it. Yeah. That was Fred's role. He was a very dapper, dandy guy with his scarf on his neck. It's called a cravat, Chuck, and perfectly normal people wear cravat, okay? You've got one.

You don't. He was very handsome. Little square. No, he's a prep. He was a prep, and he was... He was a little aloof, maybe, you could say. Yeah, he was the leader because he was the one that was always trying to keep everyone on task and get the mystery solved, and he was voiced by Frank Welker.

And still is today, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know. I think he is. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

You'll leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing could be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get

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I can tell you who has been doing voices from the get go. Who's that? Casey Kasem. Well, no more, actually. When did he stop? A couple of years ago. Okay. So when did his top 40 run stop?

Because he started Scooby-Doo and his top 40 hosting duties the same year. No, he did Scooby-Doo longer because he did Scooby-Doo all the way up until the latest incarnation. Okay. And Matthew Lillard took over, actually. Really? He's doing it now? He does the voice.

Wow. Because he did such an awesome job. Yeah. I'm no huge Matthew Lillard guy, but when I, I didn't even see the Scooby-Doo movies. Yeah, I should point out. You didn't. I didn't see them all, but I saw parts and I remember thinking, wow, that dude is shaggy. I remember thinking like, wow, my eyes are bleeding.

Yeah. I don't think they're the best movies for they. Good casting though. They raked in some dough. Good casting. Austin Roberts was responsible for the famous theme song that they used in the original. And then that was, many times it was also another pop song played while they montage. Yeah.

And then a whole bunch of them on YouTube. Yeah, and that was generally Austin Roberts as well. And apparently if you go onto YouTube and start searching Scooby-Doo songs, you're gonna find that they, if you're not familiar with Scooby-Doo and you just came across these, you would assume that Fred and Daphne were in love and dating. I always assume that as a kid. Yeah, but if you, if you watch it again, like Fred's not paying that much attention to Daphne. No, he's not.

Daphne, she could have taken her left Fred. Yeah. Well, just like I was a kid and I thought, well, they're clearly the two most attractive. That's projecting our own hormones on the Fred and Daphne. Exactly what it was. Yeah. So they should be hooking up. Yeah.

Josh, I'm gonna ask the listeners a question here. Okay. Okay. Listeners. Are we gonna sit around for a week or two? No, no, no. It's rhetorical. Okay.

Listeners, if someone came, this is a Fred Newton style question. If someone came up to you and introduced themselves as Norval Rogers, how many people do you think would have any kind of reaction to that other than, well, it's nice to meet you, Norval? I'd say nine out of 10 would have no idea that that is Shaggy's name. Yeah. Did you know? I knew at some point, but no.

I don't think I ever knew. Like, had you walked up to me and asked me that, I would have been like, get out of my face, Norval. Norval Shaggy Roberts was Scooby-Doo's best bud, Casey Gason, as the voice, as you said, forever. Well, no, it was a finite amount of time. Of course, one of my favorites, I think the probably the unsung hero, the real overlooked one was Velma.

Velma Dinkley? Yeah. She had a last name too. Yeah. That I didn't know. All of them did. I mean, Ruby and Spears, they went to the mattresses. Maybe you could say over this.

The mat. Sure. Yeah, Velma, is she your fave? In that I root for underdogs. Sure. I tend to. I have big glasses all the time. She was a little bookish.

If she was pretty ugly. A little square as well. Yeah. And she, but she got things done. She was very smart. Yeah. She was suspicious. She was, a lot of times she was like a crooked real estate teller like anybody else.

A lot of times she was the one that kind of put it all together. Yeah. Fred kind of took the credit many times, but because it was the 60s, of course. She was voiced by Nicole Jaffe at first, then later Pat Stevens. And then do you know who does her voice now on the new one? Mindy Cone with the facts of life. No way. She's Velma Dinkley now.

Wow. On the new Scooby-Doo show. I've got to check out the new Scooby-Doo. It's like a star-studded cast. I know. I haven't seen it. So I need to do so as well. So we've got to talk about, well, Jinkies is her little catchphrase.

Yes. And Zoinks clearly is Shaggy's. Yeah. Everyone knows that. Yeah. What was Daphne's catchphrase? Help, I'm stuck somewhere. She used to get in trouble quite a bit.

Yeah. If somebody was going to fall into a pit or be pulled back into a trap door or a sliding bookcase or something like that. Be separated from the gang. Yeah. It was Daphne. It was Daphne. They portrayed her as fairly helpless for many, many years until now.

She's evolved a little bit. The newest incarnation. She knows karate. Cool. She's more self-sufficient, doesn't realize, she's not like the, oh goodness, the damsel in distress type. Right. Well, the reason everybody always made sure to rescue Daphne instead of just leaving her

behind. Because she was hot. Well, that was one. She was also very rich and her dad bankrolled Mystery Inc. I did not know that either. He purchased the Mystery Machine. I assume that he probably kept Scooby in Scooby Snacks. Maybe gassed up the Mystery Machine.

Right. Probably needed it, that kind of thing. I don't know what else they needed. Food money. They slept in the Mystery Machine a lot. Yeah. Well, it's assumed so, I guess. You never really see him sleeping.

Yeah. They didn't have a house that I know of. No. They roamed around. Yeah. Yeah. Solving mysteries. Daphne was voiced by Indira Stefania Christofferson.

Then later Heather North. Then later Gray Delisley. Delisley. Delisley. Where are you getting this information? Well, I did a little digging around. Geez. And then we got to cover the man himself.

And by man, I mean dog. Yes. Scoob. Yeah. Don Messick. The great Don Messick voiced Scooby. And if you think he sounds like Astro from the Jetsons, it's because he voiced Astro from the Jetsons too.

Which one is Astro? Oh, the dog. Astro? Yeah. Yeah. Sounds like Scooby? Yeah. It's because it was the same guy.

Yeah. Okay. Who else was there? Was it? IAWO. IAWO Takamoto. Geez. Yeah.

I think he's still a VP at... Hannah Barbera. Yeah. But did he create Scooby-Doo? I thought Ruby and Spears did. What was Takamoto's role? I think he was just on the early development executive development team and remains there today.

Got it. I'm not mistaken. I'm sure he had a big hand in it though. He also created the, let's see, the great Gazoo. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, man. And, well, that's the great Gorilla?

McGill Gorilla. No. No? The great. Oh, the great vape. Yeah. He created those two. Really?

Yeah. That's a nice track record there. Yeah. So, the gang, it's, you know, most of the shows are sort of similar. The gang encounters some mystery and they usually uncovered at the end these meddling kids. If it wasn't for you, I would have made off with the loot. It's very by the numbers, which is sort of funny that it's this iconic cartoon that's

persevered for this many years because it was all the same. And that show description you just gave, that was geared toward the children who were raised by wolves over the last 40 years, right? Who's never seen it. Right. Yeah. People are like, really? Scooby and Shaggy were always hungry.

They loved the Scooby Sacks. They were always scared and usually they would tempt them with food and to get them to act brave at the last minute. Right. That kind of thing. You want to talk about it now? About what? You know what I'm talking about.

Yeah. Go ahead. Shaggy and Scooby were always hungry. Yeah. That's factor fiction here. I hear fiction. So go ahead and spill it. Well, supposedly around the bush.

There's, okay. So of course there's the, the, the rumor that Shaggy and Scooby were stoners. Yeah. Right. Long standing rumor. Well, yeah. And it makes a lot of sense. They're always hungry.

They talk, you know, kind of slow and sluggish. Look at Shaggy. Yeah. Just look at them. Yeah. Exactly. Look at the mystery machine. Sure.

Yeah. And it's 1969 when it premiered, right? Exactly. I mean like. It's got flowers on the side. Yeah. They originally abandoned. So they, they, they just assumed that it was like Ruby and Spears or some of the development

guys in joke that they made Shaggy and Scooby a, a, a stoners, right? Yeah. And not just assume, but people say that like, oh no dude, it was this big inside joke. Right. It was almost a conspiracy bent to it. But the people who were there creating these characters swear up and down that they're, they're not. Yeah.

And apparently you could be like, well, of course, I'm not going to say that now. Why would you want to say that now? Exactly. Sure. Can't come out and say that. But Fred Silverman, the guy who's the studio exec who had his fingers all involved in this. Apparently he would never have gone along with that kind of thing. He was so involved that he, he was, he just would have known.

Well, Takamoto said the same thing. Right. He said this came out years after, you know, the show premiered. It was not a thing like it makes, I get it, I get it guys, but it's not true. But the beauty of it is, is like, it doesn't matter. Takamoto can say that all day long. You know, it's going to believe him. You know, I mean, like, there's still going to be some 16 year old that says, amen.

Did you ever notice blank? I think that's like a coming of age. First the hormones, and then the stoner epiphany. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there was also the rumor that Velma was gay. And that's not true either, of course, because they, in the new incarnation, they're hinting. Mindy Cohen's taking her in a really sexual direction.

Well, they're, they're hinting at Shaggy and Velma having a relationship. I don't think they've gone full blown with it, but they're kind of poking around that area. I mean, it's like if the gang split up, it was, no, Velma and Daphne went off with Fred, didn't they? Well, it was usually Fred and Daphne. So that was another rumor was that Fred and Daphne are off doing their thing. But that's not true either.

Okay. Because Fred, you know, or is it, isn't it up to the imagination of the individual? Maybe so. Rather than the intention of the creators. Yeah. We don't want to kill anything. No. You just be a sicko as much as you want, dear stuff you should know, listener.

Josh, in 1972, and I don't know if you like these. But the full hour long, the new Scooby-Doo movies started coming out. The ones with the guest stars. All of a sudden. I do love them. Scooby-Doo with Don Knotts. Phyllis Diller. Not Don Knotts playing someone.

Don Knotts is Don Knotts. Right. He was in two. Yeah. Phyllis Diller. Mm-hmm. Who else? Harlem Globetrotters, obviously.

Classic. They were in two. I think Batman and Robin were in two. And three. Three. Three. Two. Yeah.

I wanted about that, actually. Don Adams from Get Smart. Oh, was he on there? Mm-hmm. Jerry Reed. Little Mary. Sunshine. Really?

It was all right with me. Remember? Yeah, yeah. He sang that song and they found him. Wow. It was a haunted opera, I think. Sonny and Cher. Mama Cass working at a candy factory.

Or she owned a candy factory? Uh-huh. Just mean. Yeah, yeah. Back in the days when obesity was funny. Well, they took the show to an hour. That was a good one. They took the show to an hour and just in a slightly odd direction, but it worked for

me. I enjoyed those shows very much. Sure. And no one seemed to, you know, you could suspend the disbelief that, sure, the Harlem Globetrotters are there and they gave all of a sudden. Right. And they're in their uniforms. Yeah.

With a basketball. Sure. Doing tricks. Yeah, yeah. And it was good press for all them, I'm sure. I mean, if you're really having to rethink suspending belief, disbelief when it's a cartoon. Yeah. It's time to check in somewhere.

Side characters, Josh. Got to mention Scrappy-Doo, who annoyed me a bit. Oh, yeah. There are a lot of people out there that hate Scrappy-Doo. I mean, hate him like he's Hitler's dog. Scrappy was actually Scooby's nephew and as everyone knows, he was the counter to Scooby. He was very brave and... Maybe Brash you could even say.

Yeah, Brash. Brash. And then... Kind of a jerk. He was a little bit of a jerk. Yeah, he was a troublemaker. And then my favorite, which was Scooby-Dum. Was he your favorite?

Yeah. I love Scooby-Dum. He was the, like, the exploitation character. Yeah. He had, like, that hat and... He had a pork pie hat. He had a dumb look in and he had a huge southern drawl and clearly a hillbilly. He was voiced, my friend, by the legendary Dawes Butler.

And if you're a cartoon fan, if you're a cartoon aficionado, you're like, of course, Dawes Butler. And if you're not, you still are a fan because he did Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snaggle Puss, and Huckleberry Hound. That's quite a range. That's pretty good. Well, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, and Scooby-Dum are not a range, but Snaggle Puss thrown in there?

And Yogi Bear too. That was, like, just a shining moment. Yogi Bear too. And he has actually a really great long list. I think he did Fred Flintstone for one year or one episode, maybe the pilot, and then he did Barney for a little while. I mean, you go to his IMDP page and it's like, cartoon all-star god. Dude, did you go to Hannah Barbera's corporate page?

No. What's it like? They have a page that has a listing of all their cartoons, and it's alphabetical. They have everything. They did everything. The only one that I watched that I loved that was not a part of my late youth that they didn't do was Thunder of the Barbarian. Yeah, I didn't watch that one.

Oh, that was good. I was big into Hong Kong Fooie, though. I think that was in one day. Everything was. They did the Super Friends. They did Yogi Bear. They did Edamante. Like all those cats that hung out with Yogi Bear.

Just seeing the Pussycats, probably. Yeah, the hair bear bunch. Lots of bears. Teen Wolf. Did you watch the Teen Wolf cartoon? No. There's like four or five episodes. It's pretty cool.

Was this after the movie? Yeah. See, I was beyond cartoons. No, the movie was based on the four-episode run cartoon. They're like, you know what this means? It needs Michael J. Fox. Right. That'll bring it back to life.

They did everything. That was pretty cool. It's like this nice trip down memory lane to go on Hannah Barbera's page of cartoons that they've done. Well, and that's why Fred Silverman went with them because they were, at the time, I think they said they did at least more than half of the cartoons on the air at the time. I can't believe it. Yeah.

It's probably more like 80%. Yeah. It's my guess. Hong Kong movie was great. Number one super guy. Let's talk about the animation a little bit. Getting to the tech. Yeah, because Hannah Barbera was responsible for about 50% of the cartoons in existence

when Scooby-Doo came out because they figured out how to make cartoons cheap enough for a TV budget. Right? That's pretty brilliant. Yeah. It's called limited or planned animation and full 10 years before, so I guess in the 50s, late 50s is when they devised this and it's a very simple concept, but if a body part doesn't have to move, then you don't have to draw it over and over for each frame for

each cell. Right. So that's why when you look at Scooby-Doo now, sort of clear, you'd be like, why did Shaggy walk? He looked like the upper half of his body never moved. Right. Because they didn't want to draw it over and over again. Yeah, they just drew one leg, one leg, one leg, and they did that using cells, like clear

sheets of celluloid. Remember the overhead projector in high school? Yeah. Like those sheets. Acetate or celluloid. Right. And the bottom sheet would have Shaggy's upper body, and then there'd be another sheet with his right leg, another sheet with his left leg, and they just, they only had to

animate the two upper sheets rather than the whole sheet, and that just changed everything. You can buy those cells. They have this great place in Hollywood that sells like framed original cells. Oh, really? Cartoons at school. Nice. You should get a Simpson cell. I should.

Maybe I should get you one one day. Okay. You got me that can of generic beer from Los Angeles, didn't you? I did. That was nice. Empty can of generic beer. It's nice. It's the best gift.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing

on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Friendships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, you everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Um, what else took, uh, Oh, the, the cravat you were making fun of about, man. wearing Was actually a kind of an old animators trick I thought they did not do that they did with Fred

Oh, okay, like that's the reason why he was wearing a karate thing. Gotcha, but You can you can change facial expressions very easily You can animate the whole rest of the body and just change the head and the face right if you have separation right? Yes, but you can't have separation if there's not supposed to be a line between the neck and the sternum Uh-huh, but there can be if there's a cravat there. Yeah, and they say if you pay attention these older cartoons You see a lot of neckties and collars like Pink huckleberry hound had a necktie and a collar. Yeah, remember that. Yeah, and that was a true snaggle post He dressed like a Chippendale, didn't he? He had like the did he have the cuffs and like the tuxedo

That's a second time we've mentioned that on the show the Chippendale thing But they did not have and this was apparently a Takamoto um Decision they did not have what are called muzzle lines Right. Do you remember that that? Animated show that's in pulp fiction that Bruce Willis When he was a kid he was yeah for walking clutch cargo. Okay. Yeah, where it's like an animated face And then just like the lips are moving well

They used to animate just the lips moving and the rest of the face wouldn't but Takamoto apparently wanted more Expression than that. Yeah, we made it so the animators couldn't just draw the mouth and leave everything else He drew too many extra lines that gave expression to the face Yeah, and the result was they forwarded the the whole animation process. Yeah forwarded Fast forwarded. Yes, Josh. The rest of the show is a little bit like a regular show They scripted it like a regular show. They storyboard it. They did the voice recording just like you you know would imagine they lay it out and break it down on paper and Then it is sent to animation at that point, right where they lip sync it all to the mouths and

That largely has been done in Korea and other places overseas for many years like the yeah Have you seen the Banksy intro to that Simpsons? Yeah, oh man, that's awesome. Oh man. That is awesome Did you hear that there was some guy on? eBay auctioning off Banksy's identity. Oh, really? He had come up with it over the past few years He was researching a jerk the sale price of some of Banksy's pieces and tax records that showed the same Amounts and he put it together and was auctioning off for a million dollars and was about to get it and apparently got paid off By Banksy that's what they think or knowing Banksy the whole thing was Banksy Ah, good point. Yeah, what a guy so when they animated back in the day Josh they traced with ink and then painted

Onto the back of the acetate and today of course with computers the drawings are generally scanned although they do say that there's still a lot of drawing done and most of the coloring and Details and things like that are added with computers right so there's still some purity to that most most cartoons are not Live because there's a terrible strain on the animators wrist Exactly, and here's the other thing too. There is some editing that goes on in post-production But because this animation you want to plan it out such that it sort of just runs in a linear fashion You don't have to worry about it. So a lot of the editing is

sound effects editing other sound editing Adding props and just things to enhance it stuff like that got to so that's the deal there that is quite a deal It's a free deal Takes about six months for one half hour show. They say yeah, it's a long time. Yeah, I mean think about that Imagine if they hadn't come up with limited animation how much that would take how much longer it would take yeah six months for a show Is that possible? Well, I don't know if that would know I think it's now. That's how long it takes What I

Don't know if that's then or now You know what we've had some animators and stuff right in so somebody that we need to find out in the industry Hello, our show. Yeah, how long does it take to make a half hour cartoon? Yeah, everybody we know makes like 15 minute shows. Yeah Oh, that's kind of true. Mm-hmm We had some myths and facts that we've already busted, but one of them we didn't get to was um There was a myth That the show's characters were based on the five Boston colleges Yeah, I've not heard this one. I hadn't either Fred was Amherst Daphne was Holyoke Mount Holyoke

a Velma was Smith College Shaggy was obviously Hampshire and the party animal Scooby was clearly UMass and They said that that's not true either. No in fact Hampshire College came about a year after Scooby-Doo premiered So they said that that one kind of kills that yeah, and they think Takamoto said this these are Bostonians trying to kind of Get a little regional pride going but I didn't get if they were from Boston Over there they were supposed to be from Boston. I heard that I don't know where yeah If Boston people just made it up or if there was some sort of reference to Boston and here's the other thing I couldn't find that hopefully someone will know is I seem to remember as a child

Learning something about Them being on a track team at some point like Shaggy was on the track team. I Think I remember some episode where they referenced that so I couldn't find that and And hopefully there's like some Scooby aficionados that'll say oh, yeah, of course Of course He's a pole vaulter mm-hmm because he pole vaulted in episode number 24 To get away from the wax phantom You got anything else I do actually

remember we talked about Fred Silverman if you look at the list of Scooby-Doo incarnations in 1976 it goes from CBS which originally ran Scooby-Doo to ABC Yeah, yeah, and it did that because Fred Silverman went to ABC. So this guy loved the show this much He just took it wherever he went. Yeah, I got one more little fact way too. I saw that Casey Kasem agreed to come back and Not the latest one because Matthew Lillard does it But I think it was the previous if he could make Shaggy a vegetarian because he's a big vegetarian and they went Yeah, sure who cares

Do whatever you want if you want it doesn't matter so Matthew Lillard is the Casey Kasem What Ryan C. Chris is Dick Clark, huh? Yeah, sure in a way. Well, although Dick Clark still does the Rock and Eve. He just has help Yeah, he's a co-host now. I know So that's sort of the same All right. No, I've got a little more. Okay, if just trolling the internet you get bored search Scooby-Doo among some of the other stuff you'll find some gems mental floss actually has a Um quiz where you have to guess whether it's an actual real-life event or a Scooby-Doo plot is hard

Yeah Kind of some of them. It's pretty neat. Awesome. Just the concept alone means you should take that quiz Well, that means that they found a few things that were so close that they decided to base an article right? Yeah People do crazy stuff. Sure real estate developers. They do nuts Their list verse has a very cool top 10 of odd villains including the wax phantom Uh-huh, and then Google did you notice last Halloween? Had five different logos for Halloween and all were Scooby-Doo themed. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so true It's after all these years, man

All these shows have come and gone that were huge and Scooby-Doo has persevered Yeah, and continues to that's right. It's pretty awesome. That's off to you Scooby-Doo You got anything else I think that's the limits of my bad impressions If you want to learn more about Scooby-Doo, and I mean like everything Especially if you're interested in television show development You should read this very unique article on the site. Just type in Scooby-Doo and The search bar at howstuffworks.com which means now it's time for listener mail Josh a while ago we talked about

Acupuncture Acupuncture is that we did one. Yes, I know recall. Oh, you recall we got hammered by people Because a lot of people don't like acupuncture, but at the end of that show we called for a surgery horror stories Uh-huh, and we got quite a few actually and this is one of them. Okay, and here it is. All right guys and Jerry hope all as well a friend of a friend went in to have a Cancerous testicle removed and they took out the wrong one Oh No, it was a basic mistake when you go in no, that's not a basic mistake

So he'd Frank in LA describes it as a basic mistake for giving it wasn't Frank's testicle either It was a basic mistake when you go in for that operation a nurse puts an X on the inside of the thigh That corresponds with the testicle that is to be removed and she marked the wrong leg Oh pretty easy someone caught it after it was too late, and they ended up taking both of them out When they told him he started crying. I'll bet with laughter But his wife was the one that was furious. I know they received a settlement, but I don't know those details This is a true story, and I'm more than happy to have my buddy verify it really enjoy the podcast Frank in LA

Well Frank's a friend of a friend Sorry, bud, but sounds like you get a good sense of humor about it Well his friend does at least Well friend of a friend So yeah nurses watch out with that Sharpie Yeah, you want to be like fully awake and aware and paying attention. They come in tomorrow It doesn't matter what it is. She's like your cell phone at the time. Yeah. Yeah Yeah

Wow, that's all I got That's quite enough Chuck. Thank you for that and thank you for joining us with us talking about Scooby-Doo We'll see you next time in the meantime. Go check us out on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. We're on fire and And we're sysk podcast on Twitter by the way indeed and you can email us the old-fashioned way at stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com On this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com On the podcast Hey Dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping-off point

But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush Boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody ya everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye

Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts