I think it may be because he’s giving him such rubbish ideas that he’ll come up with some great costume that he likes and will be proud of in years to come.
“Remember back in 2018 and you said I should be Velma? Well, I went with my own idea and dressed up as drunken Nick Nolte and was the hit of the party! So there! I mean, thanks for the motivation.”
I think Stan has it @1. The suggestions seem especially putrid, because “Scooby Doo” was always the most horrible waste of broadcasting time on Saturday morning TV.
Yeah, I’m not seeing how any of the characters from Scooby Doo are bad ideas. I suppose that Velma has the issue of possibly making people wonder if he’s trans, since cross dressing, while a Halloween staple usually isn’t combined with ‘dressing as a character’, but that’s still not an actual bad thing.
Man, even the worst Scooby Doo doesn’t come *close* to being the nadir of Saturday morning cartoons.
@ Kamino Neko – Probably not these days, but back when I was watching them there wasn’t so much to choose from.
“Yeah, I’m not seeing how any of the characters from Scooby Doo are bad ideas.”
Maybe because these costumes have been done to death, or perhaps they are a bit juvenile for these hip millennials.
@Kilby Nah…newer cartoons generally better than old stuff… (Not that Saturday Morning Cartoons are even a thing any more…) But back in the 70s thru 90s, even Scooby-Doo’s lowest points didn’t get as low as the desperate attempts to turn every celebrity, movie, TV series, and toy line into a cartoon…or even HB’s own attempts to recreate the Scooby-Doo formula in other series*. (Not that every ‘cash in’ series was bad…just most.) There are a very small number of cartoons from that era I can rewatch as an adult without wondering what the hell was wrong with young me. Scooby-Doo is one of them. (About the only company that was consistently good was Disney, who was hitting it out of the park for most of the 80s and 90s.)
* Which was made fun of by HB’s successors in both Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated.
OK, so Kilby isn’t old enough to remember a time when the Harlem Globetrotters, the Jackson Five and — God save us — the Osmonds all had Saturday morning cartoons. Not that Scooby-Doo was all that good, but it was far from the worst.
I think dressing up as Shaggy would get a lot of “And who are you supposed to be?” reactions. I mean, Shaggy’s attire wasn’t all that distinctive.
I dunno…Dave Willis had a random background character he liked to use who had a green shirt and chin whiskers… Literally every time he appeared the comment section was full of ‘is that Shaggy’? When he was promoted from ‘extra’ to ‘bit player’ (ie, he got a line), and thus earned a tag, he got the name Norville, after Shaggy’s birth name. It’s basic enough to be an easy cosplay, it’s distinctive enough (who wears green shirts, except as a work uniform?) to be an obvious cosplay.
I remember watching Scooby-Doo because it was the only thing on, not because it was good. I don’t remember what it competed against, but whatever it was must have been not for kids, or truly awful.
Whoa, Hammie is SEVEN? Where does the time go? How old is Zoe then?
Scooby Doo is far from the worst cartoon ever broadcast, but it may well be the worst cartoon to have spawned a genuine pop culture phenomenon and a decade-spanning franchise. The franchise has had its moments though (A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Mystery Inc.) as the premise of the show was never irredeemable even if easily parodied.
Every era has its trash cartoons. Pre-television had dozens of wannabe Disney/WB studios whose trash only remains available because the cartoons are public domain and were easy to compile on cheap compilation tapes and DVDS. The trash of the 60s and 70s floated on tiny budgets and recycled premises. The 80s saw the rise of the animated toy commercial and, the 90s trend was unnecessary movie/media franchise adaptations. The 2000s trends included a lot of “mischievous” and “anti-hero” (unpleasant) main characters and the 2010s have seen greater creator-control and more network leeway many times result in esoteric nonsense with nice production values.
@Kamino Neko: Wow, when you specify the *worst* of Scooby Doo, it immediately brings back memories of Scrappy Doo and the era when they had celebrity guest stars every episode. What that honestly worse than “Grape Ape”? The verdict of history is not known yet, but will be harsh.
They have a Velma? All I can think of when seeing that name is Raymond Chandler, “It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way”–but not as far as Velma had gone.”
The best part is we tend to forget the bad and only remember the good, which means for Saturday morning cartoons, where the “best” is crappy enough, the worst is really much, much worse than we can even conceptualize. I happen to remember a really, really, stupidly bad adaptation of Laverne & Shirley; already the idea of adapting the show, about two originally “easy” girls who work at a brewery for an audience of 5 year olds makes your head spin, but the actual execution involved drafting the two of them into the army and putting them under an anthropomorphic pig drill sergeant. I think it only stuck in memory because it was so bizarrely bad, that even we recognized it as a work of unintended genius. “This is Sergeant Squealy, your Commanding Pig!” done in a Brooklyn accent lives on as a catch phrase for me and my sister to this day.
The dratted unclosed italic tag catches me again… Only bizarrely should be italicized…
@lark: “the actual execution involved drafting the two of them into the army and putting them under an anthropomorphic pig drill sergeant.”
The “real / live action” Laverne and Shirley did wind up in the army in at least one two-part episode in 1979
something I recall only I knew the actor who played “Sergeant Shannon” (the nice Sergeant, not the mean one who was presumably the equivalent of the pig in the cartoon). Never saw the cartoon, so I don’t know if was adapted from the live action show or an “original” plot.
My experience was exactly like ignatzz reported: after a good 60 or 90 minutes of high-quality Bug Bunny & Roadrunner material, the rest of the morning was Scooby Doo or even worse. I’m not sure whether I was too young or too old to remember the horrible cartoons that DemetriosX quoted, but I could add others to the list (Gilligan’s Island comes to mind).
When I think back about some of the garbage that I wasted (too much) time watching as a kid, I’m quite happy that my children have much better programming to choose from. Even the worst stuff that they like to watch is better than the average of the stuff I tuned in.
The Osmonds, Lassie’s Rescue Rangers, The Addams Family (on tour), Arnie Barkley’s House, Wait ’til your Father Gets Home, My Favorite Martian/the Oddball Couple/Nanny and The Professor/That Girl (saturday morning edition), Where is Jerry Lewis, King Kong, Moby Dick, Secret Life of Waldo Kitty, These are the days, etc.
Yes, You *can* remember the bad if you really try. (Or are depressed enough.)
@Brian Rachfuss – The New Scooby-Doo Movies, with the guest stars, is exactly one of the series I was thinking of… (The new series coming out next year is not promising, since it’s using the ‘guest star every week’ premise.)
@billytheskink – I’m shocked that you list A Pup Named Scooby-Doo as one of the highlights, since that’s the other specific series that I was thinking of as the low-point. There’s a reason it’s the one that basically ended the franchise on TV for a decade.
shrug: I looked it up, and apparently there was a whole family of bad cartoons based on Happy Days and its spin-offs (Mork and Mindy!); and indeed the Laverne and Shirley one was based off that two parter you cite — and only lasted a season. I would just like to point out that the phrase “jump the shark” comes from that particular family of shows; they bothered to commemorate the flagship show when it got so bad it jumped the shark … the sad spin-off probably came pre-jumped. And from these cast-off sloppy seconds they then made a cartoon…
What’s amazing is that the actual actors voiced the parts — even back then I was sure they had knock-off voices, because even the actors from Laverne and Shirley couldn’t stoop that low…
I’m 69 and I think as a kid what I watched were mostly theatrical cartoons early on (Warner Brothers, Fleischer Studios and such), including some really strange and puzzling Columbia Pictures stuff. ‘The best bones of all come from Symphony Hall!’
To me, the Golden Age came when I was about fifty. Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, albeit coexisting with dreck like Dexter’s Laboratory.
Treesong, I’ve heard they’re going to make new Animaniacs shows.
@Kamino Neko
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo is not an amazing cartoon but it is a definite highlight in the franchise for me because it is so very different than most other incarnations of Scooby-Doo and different in ways that I rather like. It effectively employed Tex Avery visual gags, 4th wall breaking, self-awareness of its running gags, and I rather liked the way it played with the characters’ personalities a bit (Daphne finally gets to do something useful!). It was certainly much better than contemporaries Flintstone Kids and Yo Yogi! (low bar, to be fair) that it often gets lumped together with. The general decay at Hanna Barbera and their long-time franchises was probably a bigger reason that Scooby-Doo went without a new show for a decade than A Pup was. A wave of new cartoon properties and Disney/WB money swept so many of HB’s old characters off the air in the late 80s and early 90s.
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (along with The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo) was developed and produced by Tom Ruegger before he and his team went on to dominate the 90s with Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and Pinky And The Brain. I see flashes of better shows to come from time to time in A Pup, which is nice.
Never watched cartoons as a child; didn’t get TV ’til I was 17 and barely allowed to watch it. Probably why I don’t care for them today; so much violence and chasing and noise noise noise (yes, I’m The Grinch on the mountaintop with Misophonia).
Comics I Don't Understand 
I think it may be because he’s giving him such rubbish ideas that he’ll come up with some great costume that he likes and will be proud of in years to come.
“Remember back in 2018 and you said I should be Velma? Well, I went with my own idea and dressed up as drunken Nick Nolte and was the hit of the party! So there! I mean, thanks for the motivation.”
I think Stan has it @1. The suggestions seem especially putrid, because “Scooby Doo” was always the most horrible waste of broadcasting time on Saturday morning TV.
Yeah, I’m not seeing how any of the characters from Scooby Doo are bad ideas. I suppose that Velma has the issue of possibly making people wonder if he’s trans, since cross dressing, while a Halloween staple usually isn’t combined with ‘dressing as a character’, but that’s still not an actual bad thing.
Man, even the worst Scooby Doo doesn’t come *close* to being the nadir of Saturday morning cartoons.
@ Kamino Neko – Probably not these days, but back when I was watching them there wasn’t so much to choose from.
“Yeah, I’m not seeing how any of the characters from Scooby Doo are bad ideas.”
Maybe because these costumes have been done to death, or perhaps they are a bit juvenile for these hip millennials.
@Kilby Nah…newer cartoons generally better than old stuff… (Not that Saturday Morning Cartoons are even a thing any more…) But back in the 70s thru 90s, even Scooby-Doo’s lowest points didn’t get as low as the desperate attempts to turn every celebrity, movie, TV series, and toy line into a cartoon…or even HB’s own attempts to recreate the Scooby-Doo formula in other series*. (Not that every ‘cash in’ series was bad…just most.) There are a very small number of cartoons from that era I can rewatch as an adult without wondering what the hell was wrong with young me. Scooby-Doo is one of them. (About the only company that was consistently good was Disney, who was hitting it out of the park for most of the 80s and 90s.)
* Which was made fun of by HB’s successors in both Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law and Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated.
OK, so Kilby isn’t old enough to remember a time when the Harlem Globetrotters, the Jackson Five and — God save us — the Osmonds all had Saturday morning cartoons. Not that Scooby-Doo was all that good, but it was far from the worst.
I think dressing up as Shaggy would get a lot of “And who are you supposed to be?” reactions. I mean, Shaggy’s attire wasn’t all that distinctive.
I dunno…Dave Willis had a random background character he liked to use who had a green shirt and chin whiskers… Literally every time he appeared the comment section was full of ‘is that Shaggy’? When he was promoted from ‘extra’ to ‘bit player’ (ie, he got a line), and thus earned a tag, he got the name Norville, after Shaggy’s birth name. It’s basic enough to be an easy cosplay, it’s distinctive enough (who wears green shirts, except as a work uniform?) to be an obvious cosplay.
I remember watching Scooby-Doo because it was the only thing on, not because it was good. I don’t remember what it competed against, but whatever it was must have been not for kids, or truly awful.
I thought this one from yesterday was funny . . .
http://comicskingdom.com/baby-blues/2018-10-30
Whoa, Hammie is SEVEN? Where does the time go? How old is Zoe then?
Scooby Doo is far from the worst cartoon ever broadcast, but it may well be the worst cartoon to have spawned a genuine pop culture phenomenon and a decade-spanning franchise. The franchise has had its moments though (A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Mystery Inc.) as the premise of the show was never irredeemable even if easily parodied.
Every era has its trash cartoons. Pre-television had dozens of wannabe Disney/WB studios whose trash only remains available because the cartoons are public domain and were easy to compile on cheap compilation tapes and DVDS. The trash of the 60s and 70s floated on tiny budgets and recycled premises. The 80s saw the rise of the animated toy commercial and, the 90s trend was unnecessary movie/media franchise adaptations. The 2000s trends included a lot of “mischievous” and “anti-hero” (unpleasant) main characters and the 2010s have seen greater creator-control and more network leeway many times result in esoteric nonsense with nice production values.
@Kamino Neko: Wow, when you specify the *worst* of Scooby Doo, it immediately brings back memories of Scrappy Doo and the era when they had celebrity guest stars every episode. What that honestly worse than “Grape Ape”? The verdict of history is not known yet, but will be harsh.
They have a Velma? All I can think of when seeing that name is Raymond Chandler, “It was a cool day and very clear. You could see a long way”–but not as far as Velma had gone.”
The best part is we tend to forget the bad and only remember the good, which means for Saturday morning cartoons, where the “best” is crappy enough, the worst is really much, much worse than we can even conceptualize. I happen to remember a really, really, stupidly bad adaptation of Laverne & Shirley; already the idea of adapting the show, about two originally “easy” girls who work at a brewery for an audience of 5 year olds makes your head spin, but the actual execution involved drafting the two of them into the army and putting them under an anthropomorphic pig drill sergeant. I think it only stuck in memory because it was so bizarrely bad, that even we recognized it as a work of unintended genius. “This is Sergeant Squealy, your Commanding Pig!” done in a Brooklyn accent lives on as a catch phrase for me and my sister to this day.
The dratted unclosed italic tag catches me again… Only bizarrely should be italicized…
@lark: “the actual execution involved drafting the two of them into the army and putting them under an anthropomorphic pig drill sergeant.”
The “real / live action” Laverne and Shirley did wind up in the army in at least one two-part episode in 1979
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629044/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_40
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0629045/?ref_=tt_ep_nx
something I recall only I knew the actor who played “Sergeant Shannon” (the nice Sergeant, not the mean one who was presumably the equivalent of the pig in the cartoon). Never saw the cartoon, so I don’t know if was adapted from the live action show or an “original” plot.
My experience was exactly like ignatzz reported: after a good 60 or 90 minutes of high-quality Bug Bunny & Roadrunner material, the rest of the morning was Scooby Doo or even worse. I’m not sure whether I was too young or too old to remember the horrible cartoons that DemetriosX quoted, but I could add others to the list (Gilligan’s Island comes to mind).
When I think back about some of the garbage that I wasted (too much) time watching as a kid, I’m quite happy that my children have much better programming to choose from. Even the worst stuff that they like to watch is better than the average of the stuff I tuned in.
The Osmonds, Lassie’s Rescue Rangers, The Addams Family (on tour), Arnie Barkley’s House, Wait ’til your Father Gets Home, My Favorite Martian/the Oddball Couple/Nanny and The Professor/That Girl (saturday morning edition), Where is Jerry Lewis, King Kong, Moby Dick, Secret Life of Waldo Kitty, These are the days, etc.
Yes, You *can* remember the bad if you really try. (Or are depressed enough.)
@Brian Rachfuss – The New Scooby-Doo Movies, with the guest stars, is exactly one of the series I was thinking of… (The new series coming out next year is not promising, since it’s using the ‘guest star every week’ premise.)
@billytheskink – I’m shocked that you list A Pup Named Scooby-Doo as one of the highlights, since that’s the other specific series that I was thinking of as the low-point. There’s a reason it’s the one that basically ended the franchise on TV for a decade.
shrug: I looked it up, and apparently there was a whole family of bad cartoons based on Happy Days and its spin-offs (Mork and Mindy!); and indeed the Laverne and Shirley one was based off that two parter you cite — and only lasted a season. I would just like to point out that the phrase “jump the shark” comes from that particular family of shows; they bothered to commemorate the flagship show when it got so bad it jumped the shark … the sad spin-off probably came pre-jumped. And from these cast-off sloppy seconds they then made a cartoon…
What’s amazing is that the actual actors voiced the parts — even back then I was sure they had knock-off voices, because even the actors from Laverne and Shirley couldn’t stoop that low…
I’m 69 and I think as a kid what I watched were mostly theatrical cartoons early on (Warner Brothers, Fleischer Studios and such), including some really strange and puzzling Columbia Pictures stuff. ‘The best bones of all come from Symphony Hall!’
To me, the Golden Age came when I was about fifty. Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, albeit coexisting with dreck like Dexter’s Laboratory.
Treesong, I’ve heard they’re going to make new Animaniacs shows.
@Kamino Neko
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo is not an amazing cartoon but it is a definite highlight in the franchise for me because it is so very different than most other incarnations of Scooby-Doo and different in ways that I rather like. It effectively employed Tex Avery visual gags, 4th wall breaking, self-awareness of its running gags, and I rather liked the way it played with the characters’ personalities a bit (Daphne finally gets to do something useful!). It was certainly much better than contemporaries Flintstone Kids and Yo Yogi! (low bar, to be fair) that it often gets lumped together with. The general decay at Hanna Barbera and their long-time franchises was probably a bigger reason that Scooby-Doo went without a new show for a decade than A Pup was. A wave of new cartoon properties and Disney/WB money swept so many of HB’s old characters off the air in the late 80s and early 90s.
A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (along with The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo) was developed and produced by Tom Ruegger before he and his team went on to dominate the 90s with Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and Pinky And The Brain. I see flashes of better shows to come from time to time in A Pup, which is nice.
Never watched cartoons as a child; didn’t get TV ’til I was 17 and barely allowed to watch it. Probably why I don’t care for them today; so much violence and chasing and noise noise noise (yes, I’m The Grinch on the mountaintop with Misophonia).