An Open Letter to the Owners Of Scooby.

First posted on February 19th, 2012 on The Cold Slither Podcast - CW post link

I’m going to be completely honest here guys. This post is about Scooby Doo Where Are You? If you see this blog entry at all it’s going to be HEAVILY edited. Some of the things I say make some very powerful people, very unhappy. I once wrote a smear piece about The X-Men’s Cyclops and it never even saw the light of day.

The fact remains that I never liked Scooby-Doo. Sure, I watched it as a kid but I also wore spandex shorts, denim shoes and drank two gallons of Kool-Aid a day.


But don’t worry, I’m not going to spend this whole article ripping on a cartoon that many people hold dear as an important piece of childhood nostalgia. I want to try to promote a positive atmosphere…I want to bring the online geek world together, not tear them apart…I want to…keep my job. In spite of my strong sense of self preservation, I feel like it would be irresponsible for me not to speak my mind. Even on a subject as harshly polarizing as Scooby Doo and the Mystery Gang.


An OPEN LETTER TO WHOEVER THE HELL OWNS SCOOBY DOO NOW:


Dear Sir or Madame…or Ghost?

Your intellectual property Scooby Doo, is about to be featured in an episode of the Cold Slither Podcast. This will no doubt bring your little underground show to the big leagues and when that happens all of it’s little “flaws” are going to be exposed under the harsh light of The Cold Slither Nation. Since I am recognized world-wide as a powerful, pretend cartoon expert and in that capacity, I want to try to help you guys make this Scooby Doo thing take off. With the right direction it could develop into something on par with Captain Caveman or even JabberJaw!

Look…as sad as it might be, Don Knotts is gone. He isn’t going to be able to carry your show anymore. And since there is NO ONE around today that could be that caliber of guest star your going to have to try to be a little more creative.

Scooby Doo got some huge street-cred when they asked Batman to guest star. Why not open that up to the Batman of today? I’m sure that Christian Bale would lend his goofy, cookie monster voice to the show… Of course, he might beat up a couple members of your staff, but I’m telling you that it’s gonna bring in the fans!


The one thing that Scooby Doo has always done well is the supernatural angle.

Image by Alex Pardee

The kids today love horror…look at the popularity of True Blood and Monster Squad and uh…Lost Boys, okay some of those might not be current but my people tell me that there are some supernatural vampiry type shows that are just going gangbusters right now! The one mistake they always made was that the monster always ended up being Old Man Withers or something…wearing some kind of super realistic and incredibly flexible rubber mask. What the cartoon fans want today is real monsters! Real Danger! Evil! The Occult!

Here’s what I’m thinking: Bring in Guest Stars that are actual movie slashers! You could cross promote and brind a real edge to the show Picture it!


“A Scooby Doo Mystery…on Elm St.”

“The really New Scooby Doo Movies: The Mystery Gang Meets Leather Face!”

Image By Bingo Gastation

You might ultimately have to kill off one or two members of the Mystery Gang but who cares. Just kill Velma! After all that whole “I lost my glasses” gag wasn’t even funny the first time!


While I’m on the subject of improvement; not enough has been done in the past to capitalize on the amazing leaps in sandwich technology that Scooby Doo brought to the nation. We need to have at least 50 percent more sandwich scenes. The kids today love sandwiches. Both my little rugrats take the things to school damn near every day. And they are BORING. Peanut butter and jelly or maybe turkey and swiss. These sandwiches are small enough to fit in a lunchbox they don’t have whole wedges of cheese or entire fishes or a turkey drumstick or anything on them! Its like our youth has forgotten what it means wander (in a marijuana induced stupor) into a kitchen in a clearly abandoned, haunted house, raid the illogically well stocked ice box and pile everything you find in it between to slices of bread!

Here are some things that we don’t need:

While I wholly encourage your writers to “Bump up the weird” on this show. And no I don’t mean the kind of weird that we’ve been given in the most recent verstion of the cartoon. That was weird in a bad, uncomfortable kind of way. For instance; we don’t need a scene with Velma and Shaggy making out, Scooby catching them and then accusing Shaggy of “cheating on him”

I can also do without any more musical crossovers. It was fine when you could score top notch acts like The Mamas and the Papas, Jerry Reed or The Harlem Globetrotters; but if producers reached out to “musicians” today, who knows what we could end up with. I picture an animated, nightmare world full of terrible musical acts that are if anything less real than the cartoon they would be appearing on. If any of you were tossing around the idea of Scooby Doo meets: Lady Gaga…Justin bieber…or *shudders* The Insane Clown Possee…please! For the love of Scooby Snacks reconsider! After all were trying to raise a new generation of Scooby Doo fans. Not sending our children down a path so dark and hopeless there might be no escape!

If you don’t take these obvious steps to drag your cartoon out of it’s rut, then I don’t know what to tell you. Your wasting TV space, your wasting good animation and you’re wasting my time. I mean come on guys!

Zoinks!