【1989 Archives】

Marvel movies989 Archives Passé. Don't even think about the DCU. Today, we're going deep into the only cinematic universe that matters — the SDCU(Scooby-DooCinematic Universe.)

In the age of studios frantically scrambling to make a quick buck on rebooting something old, it's hard not to be cynical thinking about if we'll ever see the end of this Sequel Era. But if you can believe it, there was a time when it was much, much worse. Especially in animation.

There's no doubt that we're now in a golden era of animated programming for kids. In the realm of television, you're only a stones throw away (not literally, please don't throw rocks at your TV) from unique premises, mind-blowing art, and deep, emotional storylines.

But it's taken the industry a while to get it right. Or, in the case of these animation studios, it seemingly took 20 years to stop recreating the one thing they didget right.

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Jon Gray, an artist and writer who's worked for Disney and Sonic the Hedgehogcomics, recently dropped an intricate Twitter thread detailing the dark ages of Hanna-Barbera and Ruby-Spears, the animation giants behind The Flintstones, Tom & Jerry, and of course, Scooby-Doo.

For the entirety of the late '60s and '70s, it seemed like they were either bafflingly incapable (or unwilling) of coming up with one singular good idea for a show that wasn't an exact carbon copy of Scooby-Doo.

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Gray describes it best, saying "H-B was notorious for cloning every successful idea they had eighty fold. Scoobywas the most ridiculous example. My criteria for a clone is as simple as their shows: mystery solving and/or monsters with a pet. Sometimes one, the other, or both."

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Gray's current count for Scooby-Dooclones is at 22, although he acknowledges he might've missed some just because of the sheer breadth of its content library. Here are our personal favorites:

Scooby Doo Except the Sidekicks are Also Ghosts

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Scooby-Doo But With a Different Car

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Scooby-Doo Except it's Shark Tale

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Scooby-Doo: Old Town Road (Remix)

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Scooby-Doo and Uhh...Whatever the Hell This Is

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Scooby-Doo Except it's Oh My God What Is That Thing

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Scooby-Doo And We Are Clearly Running Out Of Ideas I Guess He's [spins wheel] A Werewolf This Time?

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By the early '80s, Gray writes, the Saturday morningScooby-Dooclones had fallen out of favor, with the last one officially being A Pup Named Scooby-Dooin 1988. We can't possiblyimagine why. The viewing public's appetite for H-B's main cash cow wouldn't arise again until the next Scooby-Doomovie, 10 years later.

It's mind-boggling to think about how one behemoth could dominate an entire industry by just flooding it with knock-offs of its main property. OK, maybe it's not that unbelievable. All you really need is one profitable idea and the belief that kids will watch damn near anything that's put in front of them. Alex Hirsch, creator of a little show called Gravity Falls, described this era best.

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But even the shows that were blatant cash grabs with awful concepts that took one collective corporate brain cell to produce are still nostalgic for someone.The only redeemable quality of these shows may lie in the fact that they were the best part of some kid's Saturday morning.

It's no mystery that the animation industry is clearly much better off now without these ripoffs, though. We may be stuck in an endless loop of reboots (both good and bad), but creativity abounds in the shows recognizing that kids are more intelligent than previous animation studios gave them credit for.

So let's send off the gangs of meddling kids (and their dogs, or ghosts, or shark) that came before. They've solved enough mysteries to entertain a generation.

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