Family Review #1 Scooby Doo

Okay, before I get started today, I thought that I would explain that I have decided to occasionally put a Family Review on this blog. Does this mean I am reviewing different families? Not at all. I chose to call it a Family Review because of my experiences with a blog called Random Reviewer which is at times highly amusing, and at other times, offensive. I don't want to have anything offensive on my blog, so I am focusing the things I review on things for families. Granted, most of the things I am going to choose to review are going to pertain to families with young children since that is the kind of family I have right now. So on to today's review.

Old Scooby Doo Shows vs What's New Scooby Doo and/or

Old Scooby Doo Movies vs New Scooby Doo Movies

I am a Scooby Doo Fan. I am not a Scooby Doo Freak, but I am a fan. I enjoy watching Scooby Doo with my kids. I was very excited when they started putting Scooby Doo on DVD. In fact, the first DVD we ever got was Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase. It was a Christmas gift along with our first DVD player. We were already fans of Scooby Doo at our house because we had rented some SD videos (out of laziness I am going to put SD in place of Scooby Doo) previously.

I am not going to go into a deep history of Scooby Doo or its many incarnations. I am just going to make a few comparisons of the old to the new...and give my opinions on them.

Comparison #1. Animation

Of course it seems a little unfair to compare the animation quality of older days to current trends. I am going to do it anyhow. Again, I am not going to go into any great depth here, but I will say that although I loved Scooby Doo as a child, and I still have a nostalgic soft spot for the old episodes and movies in my heart, the old animation tends to drive me crazy. The main reason for this, is the way they drew their eyes in the old series...there are no whites to the eyes, and they are basically drawn as just a dot with a squiggle around. Scooby, and strangely some of the villains are the only ones with whites in their eyes. The colors and depth in the old vs the new is also flat. The newer animation has more depth and better color. Its just plain better in every way.

Comparison #2. Plot

Well, I have to say that many plots in both the old and the new are similar. They were built on the same formula. I would say though that the lack of a laugh track on the new series is a good thing. Also that in general the new Scooby Doo has a bit more depth, and better...everything. Its less hokey than the original, although still hokey because it is, after all, a kids show.

Comparison #3. Music

I like the chase music in the What's New Scooby Doo and the more modern SD movies more than what they used in the older ones. The chase songs are one of our favorite things about it in our family, and we would love to see a CD put out of the various chase songs used in the show. The songs in both the newer movies and the newer TV show tend to have more to do with the setting of the show...such as having a Celtic flair in the SD and the Loch Ness Monster movie, and in episodes that take place in Europe and etc, some of the songs are even in other languages. The Old SD had chase songs sometimes, but often reused the same ones, and the music just didn't have the same personality of the newer fare.

Comparison #4. Wardrobe.

Some of the basics have remained similar, like the colors they wear. But there are some subtle changes in the wardrobe of Velma, and more obvious changes in Fred and Daphne, the most noticeable being in that Fred does not wear his ascot. He does, occasionally refer to it in some of the movies. He even tries wearing an ascot in SD and the Loch Ness Monster, and compliments his cyber self's ascot in Scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase. In fact you can see the old right next to the new as the new gang meets computer versions of their old selves in that movie. Shaggy and Scooby have the least amount of change, and Daphne has lost her green scarf and gone more subtle with complementing shades of purple. I think that the old styles were fine for the era they were made in, and the new styles are good for today. I personally like Fred's style better now, but I still find myself missing the ascot at times, because it was just Fred.

Comparison #5. The Characters

For the most part they have stayed true to the original characters in SD. Fred still comes up with some whacky plan or trap, Velma still figures everything out, Shaggy and Scooby are still more interested in food than anything else, and still afraid of everything. Daphne is still vain, and fashionable. The only real changes aside from their wardrobe, that I can find in the characters, is that they have made Fred a little more blonde (not literally, but mentally) and Daphne, although still danger prone, is also more self sufficient and able to defend herself. I am sure that if I wanted to spend a few days really watching the shows and comparing them, I could come up with more, but this is kind of an off the top of my head kind of review.

Comparison #6. The Mystery Machine

A character in and of itself, the Mystery Machine is an important part of SD. For the most part it has stayed the same apart from a few tweaks here and there. One exception is that in Scooby Doo and the Alien Invaders, the Mystery Machine was actually a mystery minivan. That was kind of weird, and I was glad when they took it back to a more familiar format. When we first moved here I even saw a "Mystery Machine" or a van painted like it for sale. For a moment I even thought it would be cool to buy it. I still have to wonder though, how expensive it had to be for them to take that van to Europe and other places. And what do they do for money anyhow? In the original series they implied that Daphne's rich Dad took care of money things. And they have mentioned a few things in the new movies, like Velma working for NASA, and Daphne writing for a magazine or having her own fashion line. I can see SD and Shaggy being food testers/tasters, but they I can't remember the series ever really implying a job for Shaggy or for Fred. I may have to study this further.

To wrap things up...

I prefer the newer SD shows to the older ones. Don't even get me started on the Scrappy Years, because I hardly count those at all. Sadly, they are not producing What's New Scooby Doo anymore, but are following their old trend of moving on to a Scooby and Shaggy based show as they did in the early years. Myself I have always found that the shows with the whole gang were the best. Hopefully they will continue to make a new animated movie each year (the newer movies are basically extended episodes of What's New SD.) In fact, there is a new one coming out next month. All in all, I recommend any SD to be good family fare. We even enjoyed the live action ones, although not as much as the cartoons. The cartoons can even be considered somewhat educational, and its fun to guess who the villain is in each episode. They also hold decidedly less violence than many cartoons out these days, and the nostalgia aspect is there whether you are watching the old or the new. Either way, SD is like an old family friend who has come for a visit. We recommend them.

P.S. We have also started collecting A Pup Named Scooby Doo on DVD. It was a show that ran from the late 80s to 1991. I never saw it when it was on TV, since those were my high school years, but we have enjoyed them now anyhow. There are four volumes out so far that include four episodes on each and they follow the gang's junior high years. Sadly, since they are too young to drive, the mystery machine is absent.