The birth of the bloated omni-franchise powered purely by scooby snacks, buckets of nostalgia and gigantic sandwiches is here in these 25 episodes aired from 1969 to 1970. This is the core text and oddly enough it's not very good. The first season is fairly solid and you've got all your favourite flavour of phantom from the yeti thing to the UFO dude but the formula is pretty constrictive and the animation can be very inconsistent, these shows were hashed out quick and cheap after all. The second season feels improbably even cheaper and the bubblegum pop songs that are laid over the chase sequences are unbearable. I found myself glazing over most of it as the formula played out over and over again. There's a curious power to it though and the successful combination of these elements not only led to a contemporary Hanna Barbera gold rush but keeps on pushing through the decades. Now you have at least six distinct attempts to keep each successful generational fanbase happy and earn enough of those coveted scooby snacks to gain immortality. Or a gigantic sandwich.
Review of Scooby Doo, Where Are You!
