VERY INTERESTING: SCOOBY DOO

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Fun Facts About Scooby-Doo

Since 1969, a Great Dane dog named Scooby (full name Scoobert), his loyal human companion Shaggy, and three of their teenaged friends have been on TV in many configurations, using a vehicle called the Mystery Machine to solve mysteries. The first series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, aired Saturday mornings on CBS and lasted two seasons and 25 episodes. In 1972, the show returned as The New Scooby-Doo Movies.

Ken Spears and Joe Ruby created the Hanna-Barbera show and have watched it go through more than a dozen different series, including A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, and Be Cool, Scooby-Doo!. Besides all of the TV shows, the show spun off into several TV specials, two live-action movies, 25 direct-to-DVD movies, and more than 20 video games. Here are some facts about Scooby-Doo, which made its original premiere on September 13, 1969.

1. ABBOTT AND COSTELLO WERE A MAJOR INFLUENCE ON SCOOBY-DOO.

TV executive Fred Silverman told Emmy TV Legends that “I had always thought that kids in a haunted house would be a big hit. As a kid, I would go and look at Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and movies like that.” Silverman pitched CBS a show called Who’s S-S-Scared?, but the dog was in the background. “I was convinced this was going to be the biggest hit that we’d ever had, even though nobody knew what the hell it was,” Silverman told Emmy TV Legends.

He pitched then-CBS president Frank Stanton, who told him, “We can’t put that on the air. That’s just too frightening.” Silverman had to rework the concept of the show and made it more about Scooby. “And our Abbott and Costello will be Scooby-Doo and Shaggy,” Silverman said. “In a matter of two hours we had revised the concept and it worked great.”

2. SCOOBY-DOO'S NAME CAME FROM FRANK SINATRA'S "STRANGER IN THE NIGHT."

Silverman told Emmy TV Legends how he was on a red eye flight to L.A. and couldn’t sleep. CBS had just rejected his idea of a group of teens and a dog trying to solve mysteries, so he was in the middle of coming up with new ideas. “As we’re landing, Frank Sinatra comes on [the PA], and I hear him say, ‘Scooby-doo-be-doo.’ [Note: Sinatra actually says “doobie,” not “Scooby.”] I said, that’s it—we’ll call it Scooby-Doo.”

3. IWAO TAKAMOTO CREATED SCOOBY-DOO'S FEATURES.

Japanese-American artist Iwao Takamoto got his start working on Disney films before he segued to the Hanna-Barbera world. Takamoto drew the original sketches for Scooby—along with the human counterparts—and based the dog on inverting a Great Dane. “There was a lady that bred Great Danes at Hanna-Barbera,” Takamoto told the Cartoon Network. “She showed me some pictures and talked about the important points of a Great Dane—like a straight back, straight legs, small chin and such. I decided to go the opposite and give him a hump back, bowed legs, big chin and such. Even his color is wrong.”

4. FRANK WELKER HAS VOICED FRED JONES FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS.

Legendary voice actor Frank Welker has more than 850 acting credits on his IMDb page, but at 23 years old he received his first voice acting gig as the ascot-wearing Fred Jones. “I could barely read the copy and didn’t know which end of the mike was electrified, which explains why shock therapy has no effect on me,” Welker told Verbicide magazine in 2006. “Joe Barbera was fantastic and really gave me a chance; he would give me the opportunity to read for all the characters, not just Freddy, and that really opened things up for me.” Welker has voiced Fred in every Scooby series except A Pup Named Scooby Doo, and he’s provided Scooby’s voice since 2002.

5. CASEY KASEM VOICED SCOOBY-DOO'S SHAGGY FOR NEARLY 30 YEARS, BUT EXITED THE SHOW DUE TO HIS VEGANISM.

Radio host Casey Kasem voiced Shaggy from 1969 to 1997, left the show, then returned in 2002. In real life, Kasem was a vegan and he wanted Shaggy to be a vegan as well. When Kasem was asked to voice Shaggy in a Burger King commercial, he protested and quit the show. But in 2002, Kasem convinced the producers to allow Shaggy to become a vegetarian.

“Shaggy is one of my claims to fame,” Kasem told The New York Times in 2004, a decade before his death, “but I think Casey surpasses him a little bit. However, one will last longer than the other, and Shaggy will go on forever.”

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking