Put ’em Up, Put ’em Up! This is the last straw!

In June of this year, when I heard they were doing what amounts to a sort of two year-behind 50th anniversary special for Scooby, I decided to contact WB (which can be a rather difficult task, of trying to contact big business empires these days), finding the Twitter DM to be the best looking shot, and wrote:

Glad to hear they are doing a Scooby Doo reunion this fall. But in the past 20 years, retrospective moments have always become occasions to have negative references to the Scrappy Doo character. With this plus, passing shots in nearly every production up to “Guess Who”; I think this has gone way beyond ‘enough’ already! The first live action movie reference was already over the top, and marked the beginning of the trend (And notable references in SDMI and the 13th Ghost), and it was appealing to a small but vocal band of fans who didn’t like him years ago. But many other fans, especially younger ones DO like him! It’s time to start considering them, and this would be a great time to instead redeem him in some way in the story!

Other Scrappy fans voiced a desire to contact WB as well. But upon watching it, they did not listen, as they haven’t for over 20 years.
The gang in the story at one point bring up Scrappy and talk about how he was “never part of the gang”, and was “bad talking them on AOL Chat”! Wait a minute! Are they serious to write something like that? The online forum is precisely the place where Scrappy was the one receiving mountains of bad talk for probably 25 years or more! This is totally flipped around! He’s a fictional character who cannot do anything himself online or anywhere else (including change the show), but this was how many of those online posts were treating him. As if he were a real life person who had done something to them!
So now, every momentous occasion in both the Scooby and larger cartoon world has become a platform for this silly hatred.

One of the first produced uses of him, breaking total silence previously, was a “Blair Witch Project” parody on Cartoon Network, where Scrappy is the voice in the forest, and when Daphne screams in terror, Freddy says it’s only Scrappy, and Daphne says “I know!” A far cry from the middle of Scrappy’s original run, where Scrappy was her partner in splitups, where they did the serious work of clue-finding. Had these people ever watched that show?
With the internet now firmly in place, CN opens up a nice site that includes games, and for Scrappy, it was “Scrappy Stinks”, where you sling muck at him. Scholastic’s Cartoon Network: Extreme Scooby trivia book, while including references to Scrappy episodes, only mentions him once, in the trivia question on p.35, where choice “A” to answer the question “What does Scooby say he’d buy if he had $500,000?” is “A diamond studded muzzle for his cousin[sic] Scrappy Doo”. (The correct answer is “One million hamburgers”, of course).

None of us never imagined this was only the start of nearly a quarter century of official cartoon media trashing him!

Of course, the pinnacle of this was Scooby’s long awaited first live action movie (2002), where he was made the villain. And not just any villain, but transforming into a hideous giant monster who tries to KILL Scooby for not making him the leader of the gang. Again, which is exactly the way all the online haters saw him. (The head writer later came forth and said this was a last minute change of the original script, and expressed hating his guts. You can get more of a sense of where this guy is coming from here: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/james-gunn-fired-tweets-pedophilia-rape_n_5b5238d6e4b0fd5c73c5390a So of course someone like that who makes some crazy inhuman “joke” of that sort would see nothing wrong with having a good character turn into a monster and try to kill his beloved uncle! This marked the dark, sadistic mindet of the period, as seen in many of the other references in Adult Swim shows and elsewhere. This was the sentiment that was totally indulged in and allowed to fester and completely take over!)

The hatred spreads to the production studio!

This movie reference marked the start of the pickup of negative references to him in new animated stories, where they mostly ignored him before. But on the other hand, this one actually made even haters think it was out of character, as well as getting fans to finally start speaking up. So while writers intensified their expression of hatred, the blogosphere that once fomented it now began to cool off, and you could actually find more people defending him and saying they liked him, the movie was trash for doing that, and also, some even saying he be brought back and/or “redeemed” from the movie portrayal!

So 10 years later, it’s CN’s 20th anniversary, with a panoramic pose of every cartoon star that ever appeared on the network. And look, there’s Scrappy in the lower left, and in front yet! Are we finally getting somewhere, and him being accepted as part of the CN universe? No; he’s only there for that weird Adventure Time mutt to push out of the way at the very last minute as they count down for the final shot. (Wow; with all the other characters involved, that they would take the time and money and do the extra work of putting him there and animating that sequence, just to take another shot at him! These people are really into this hatred thing!)

Forward to right around Scooby’s actual 50th anniversary, they decide to close the hole in the old “Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby Doo” series (the one Scrappy era show generally liked by nearly all, despite his presence), in which, it was realized, only 12 ghosts had been captured. There were 13 episodes but the first episode is where they were released, and the remaining 12 saw one ghost each captured. This series had Scrappy, of course, plus a new, even more “Cousin-Oliverry” character, Flim Flam.
So surely now Scrappy would have to be brought back in a positive light, right? No; they just restore the original gang (Freddy and Velma weren’t in the original, of course), and when Flim Flam (who was brought back despite being acknowledged as more annoying than Scrappy, and also made a bad guy in an earlier modern story) asks where’s Scrappy, the others have this silent look, and Velma asks “What’s a scrappy”? So now, she’s never even heard of him! (She’s the one who introduced us to him in a retrospective look back in the live action movie as well as telling us in this new story about his AOL attacks, yet you would think they would use the movie premise as the reason they shun him now, rather than making up this new justification. But nothing is being kept straight in these modern canons, except Scrappy just being bad, and now rejected by the gang).

(Reportedly, it was “Warner Bros.” who requested Flim-Flam and Scrappy not be in the film; however, both were taken into consideration by writer Tim Sheridan, and Scrappy was ultimately cut from the film due to “not fitting” into the story. So we see here at least one writer who tried to do the right thing, but it’s this monolithic “Warner Bros.” entity that, again, remains against him!) Aside from all this, being one of the things Scrappy is hated for is supposedly “changing the show”, including the real monsters of his second and third seasons, these would-be “purists” go on and undo that also, by making this 13th ghost a standard fake villain, which completely ruins the premise of the Thirteen Ghosts, where they were also real. (In fact, first twelve ghosts were completely undone by being portrayed as hallucinations due to the Himalayan thin air! Even though I haven’t seen it said anywhere, this would likely imply then that Scrappy was another of these hallucinations, and thus never really existed; which I guess would perfectly explain why Velma never heard of him! If so, then now, they’re writing him out of existence!)

So now, what’s basically a belated 50th anniversary special for Scooby, continues trashing him.

Here, the writer of the special, Jonathan Stern, justifies the hatred:
https://www.animationscoop.com/interview-jonathan-stern-on-new-cw-special-scooby-doo-where-are-you-now/

JM: There are several bold, wow moments for Scooby-Doo fans, not just learning the information but there is a moment in this when the characters bring up Scrappy-Doo and I just went, “Whoa!”

JS: (laughs)

JM: Was that a risk? Did you need approval to say what you say about Scrappy-Doo?

JS: Well I certainly needed approval, and I think [the Mystery Machine Gang] actually bad-talked Scrappy-Doo a little bit more in the first draft of the script. And that got noted out. There is enough consensus amongst the many people that I was working with that Scrappy-Doo is not a high point of the Scooby-Doo franchise. I think there’s a lot of comfort level in making Scrappy-Doo the butt of jokes. If you watch the Scrappy-Doo episodes, he’s not nice to Scooby. He’s kind of a d*ck. I feel if you watch it, you feel protective of Scooby and the other characters. Scrappy doesn’t belong here. Stop bothering them! And little things. Why does he have such a more fluid way of speaking English than Scooby? It really undermined… it suddenly made Scooby the dumb one of the partnership. I didn’t like that. Obviously Scrappy has not become a permanent fixture in the Scooby universe. I’m sure there are some Scrappy fans out there. But also every reunion special has its dramatic moments, so we had to find our dramatic moment.

(“Dramatic moment”? It was just another cheap pot shot toward the beginning of the show, that had no further bearing on it! What a ridiculous, lame excuse! Honestly, I thought Scrappy was going to end up possibly being the villain again, once again getting revenge on them for their rejection. But they kind of almost did just that in a roundabout way, by introducing this lady as a disgruntled “sixth member” of the gang, who had been quickly rejected from the initial casting, and she turns out to be the villain getting revenge! —which is exactly what Scrappy was in the movie! All they had to do was have her actually be him in a second disguise, and it would have been identical to the movie setup! I’ll bet it was at least a provision to allow the possibility of making him the villain. Maybe that was one of the additional negative references left out? Or perhaps it was done deliberately to make us think it might be Scrappy again, and that was the “dramatic moment”?)

One thing here is that we finally get more of a rationale of why his speaking normally was such a big deal (which I heard frequently in the old hate comments, and could never understand). “Made Scooby look like the dumb one”. (The group dynamic in the seasons leading up to Scrappy had already done that pretty well).
So we see here Stern claim simply “I didn’t like that.” This must be what the others he alludes to are also feeling. So for that reason, Scrappy must be trashed in this and every other production where he’s mentioned. Screw the fans, even, except for the vocal haters from years ago. There are a lot of things in cartoons, and in life we don’t like. But we don’t go and and get all all murderous, in an effective effigy about them. So why is there such low tolerance among these people of this character?

On Facebook, I posed a question to cartoon aficionado Jerry Beck, who actually appeared in the special and then posted the link to the above interview, and his response was:

Scrappy-Doo hatred is all a matter of when you were born and your lifetime POV of all things Scooby-Doolia. To many of us older folk, the introduction of Scrappy-Doo was a “jump the shark” moment. He’s the fifth or sixth Beatle; the fourth, fifth, sixth or seventh Stooge. An unnecessary addition to a perfect(?) quintet. To those born later on, who grew up with Scrappy as an accepted member of the gang, the character is a bit more accepted. I don’t know for sure, but I assume Scrappy was a character that was added to the show by clueless network higher ups – and they may have gotten away with the character if it weren’t for those meddling network executives. Or something like that.

This has been another claim that was often tossed around. It’s the older viewers, who all hated him from the very beginning, (and we should know, as we were there), but the “clueless” network execs didn’t care and just forced him on us anyway. Of course, there was no internet back then, for people to voice their opinions, like now. So people now can say anything. They likely assume if they didn’t like him, then nobody did. (But this would have eventually leaked out onto some form of the media). They can ride off of the intensity of the hatred that surfaced when the internet finally did arrive, and claim it proved it had been brewing all those years, and it sort of looks like that might be true. The only input the networks had back then was the ratings systems. (And perhaps old fashioned “snail mail”) And they seemed to favor Scrappy, hence, the show being renewed (in one form or another) throughout the bulk of the decade.
Of course, who were these ratings “families”? I didn’t have a box, and didn’t know anyone else anywhere who had one. They seemed like some sort of ghost population “out there” somewhere that you never saw, and changes to TV would be made we didn’t like or understand, and felt were bogus (shows cancelled or changed, etc.). Still, the Scrappy critics are claiming the hatred of him was universal (at least for that whole generation), so unless the ratings families were paid shills for Scrappy, the fact the ratings had improved means that at least some sample of the populaton liked him! (The topic of generations will be further addressed later).

Where did all of this start?

In the late 90’s, I enter the world of the internet and find venues such as the old Usenet, and later on, sites like jumptheshark.com, filled with hostile invective against Scrappy. I thought “they acted like he became real and killed their mothers, or something!” Many imagining the horrible things they wished would be done to him, and some even saying he ruined their childhood. Which is exactly what they were acting like! (So you have to wonder if it’s really even hyperbole or not!)

It was extremely hard to find a Scooby site on the numerous “web-rings” of the day, that spoke well of him. He was apparently deliberately ignored on many of them.
Oh, but wait; there he is, on the bottom of the page, on this ribbon covered with pictures of him. Occasionally, it’s on the top of the page. (That might be a good sign, couldn’t it?) Nothing else is mentioned about him next to it, and it’s not a link to a Scrappy fan webring or site or anything else.

Turns out, it was actually a hate symbol created by one person apparently (a female with a geocities site, IIRC, and I wish I had remembered the name, when it was given somewhere years later), that haters placed on their page to show solidarity in their hatred of him. Shaped like the familiar Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon and others generally associated with death, it must have been wishing his death! What in the world? What other character had such a cult following against him?

This hadn’t spread everywhere yet, as Burger King around this time included him in their Scooby Doo promotional, with a windup version that boxes, like on the cartoon. (Typical of those things, just one wrong pull disables it completely!) In 1999, he was featured on a comic book in the Cartoon Network Presents series, though WB subsidiary DC had already been aiming to stop using him. As late as 2001, The Learning Company produced a series of PC education games, such as “Scooby Doo: Jinx at the Sphinx”, where Scrappy, while not in the story, is in a bottom menu tray for “?” information (this seems to be the “suspects and clues” menu), and also at at the end, tells you (Scott Innes doing the voice) “Who do YOU think the [bad guy] is? Make your selection on the screen!” (This I say is a good use of him, that should satisfy everyone: he’s not in the story, but still a supporting character!) These would probably be the last produced good uses of him.

The hatred hadn’t spread everywhere yet. Burger King includes Scrappy windup toy!

1998 was a big year for Scooby, as for about four years he had been gradually ascending in popularity and exposure on Cartoon Network which he arrived on fully in 1994. So this was when Scooby Doo on Zombie Island was released, which was the first all new animation and full story of him, and the start of the modern WB-produced era of DTV’s, which has been the main venue for new Scooby productions for these past 23 years (with some new series appearing every few years inbetween). This was also the height of the Scrappy hatred on the aforementioned early internet forums, the main one being Usenet. So the forums were all abuzz about the new movie, and in one discussion, which was likely on alt.tv.cartoonnetwork; someone asked “What ídiots made the decisions to add celebrities, add Scrappy, kill off Velma, Fred and Daphne, and add Flim Flam?”
The response, by a prominent cartoon fan named Jeff Harris, gave me the first articulated glimpse of the full thinking of the “haters”, yet in a very level-headed and informative yet concise synoptic format. (This guy must be an INTP like me, as the Introverted Thinking with tertiary Introverted Sensing really stands out).

Subject: Re: What is your opinion of Movie
11-2-98 4:42 PM Standard Pacific time

Scooby-Doo Where Are You! is the classic show and lasted 25 episodes, one more than Pup and was more mystery oriented. The New Scooby-Doo Movies were 24 hour-long episodes featuring celebrities that had contracts with CBS, which was responsible for the show airing in the first place, and characters that Hanna-Barbera had either created, like Speed Buggy, or had animated rights to, like Batman and Laurel and Hardy. ln 1976, ABC, which Saturday morning programing was ran [sic] by Michael Eisner (I kid you not ), made 24 episodes of Scooby-Doo which was similar in format to the original 1969 series, but didn’t have the edge of that version. Plus, this version introduced Scooby’s extended family. Hanna-Barbera also recreated the look of the original show with 16 new episodes of Scooby-Doo Where Are You! two years later.

ln 1978 [sic], the coffin was nailed shut when Scrappy was introduced in The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show. With a name change like that, and 16 episodes featuring the brat, you should have known that the end was nigh. From 1980 to 1983, 86 Scrappy and Scooby seven-minute shorts were made and ABC wanted them to be paired off with new talent such as Richie Rich and Yabba-Doo. ln order to do that, the show became more comedic straying away from mysteries altogether. Thus, it was ABC who got rid of Freddy, Velma, and Daphne from the show (even before Disney took over ABC, they were ruining shows). ln 1983, The New Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show not only brought back Daphne , but it also brought back some of the mystery the snow had been lacking for quite awhile. The brat was still there and the show had two 11-minute shorts making up 13 complete episodes. Renamed The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries, a year later, the show added 13 more episodes and even featured occasional appearances of both Fred and Velma. The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo was somewhat truer to the original show, but since Fred and Velma wasn’t on the show, and brats such as Scrappy and Flim-Flam hogging the camera, the show just wasn’t the same. Audiences didn’t like it either and the Scooby-Doo franchise was over. For a while at least

ln 1987, Hanna-Barbera started the Superstars 10 moves, in which Scooby Doo, Shaggy, and Scrappy Doo were featured in three of them. The final one, Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf was the final Scooby-Doo featuring Scrappy-Doo. Apparently, the animators wanted to write off Scrappy-Doo, and literally started from scratch, bring back the original cast and de-aged them to be preteens. Now, with Scooby-Doo on Zombie lsland, the animators have completely written off Scrappy-Doo, as if he had never existed. That’s Scooby-Doo in a nutshell.

Of course, within four years of this, they would no longer be “writing Scrappy off as if he never existed”, but on the contrary begin to constantly continue bringing him back up in passing in stories or even outside spoof shows to trash him in one way or another. The culmination being the live action movie, which had me thinking back to this post and saying we were better off with the “as if he never existed” treatment! I figured Harris must have been totally gratified by this, but by that time (with ToonZone replacing Usenet as the main discussion forum for cartoons), he seemed completely silent on Scooby, at least as far as I saw him. After the post, Scooby of course continued blowing up exponentially, with new DTV movies following, a new series, more daily airing slots, many more marathons, “Dog Bowls” with him always the winner, CN promotional spots, and of course, the live action movie. Harris became one of the main voices complaining about so much Scooby all over the place, even [a bit sarcastically] calling CN “The Scooby Doo Network” (himself wanting more anime).
So here, we have an instance of someone who is at best ambivalent about Scooby (e.g. quick to grow tired of him), yet caring about it enough to believe Scrappy ruined it. On jumptheshark.com, some of those wishing the most harm to Scrappy also trashed Scooby as well. They would rant about how the whole Scooby format had “jumped” from the very beginning, and was no good, too repetative; the same old format, etc. and at the end, stick on some even worse thing about Scrappy. (I thought, why do you even care, if you don’t even like the show at all?) Even Mark Evanier who developed the character and wrote a blog about it mentions “I never quite understood the sentiment being voiced so long after Scrappy had done this alleged damage, and coming — as it often seemed — from people who weren’t that wild about the show before Scooby’s little nephew joined the team.”

And the post is full of misinformation, which has characterized Scrappy hatred all the way to the present. To begin with, we have the claim that “new episodes” of the original show “Scooby Doo Where Are You?” were made the year before Scrappy was introduced (1978). This error first appeared in the 90’s in Jeff Lenburg’s Cartoon Encyclopedia, and went on to corrupt even the DVD releases, so now this has been officially canonized; though when you play the DVDs, perhaps eager to see this “Season 3” of the original show, you just get the Scooby Doo Show opening the episodes were syndicated with (which being a scaledown of the “Scooby Doo – Dynomutt Hour” opening, bears no resemblance to the classic Scooby themes), and find episodes whose background music and other elements (including even the gang dynamic, villains, etc.) made it the furthest thing from the original show at the time! This apparently sprang from a programming mistake early in the season, of some episodes reportedly airing in the separate SDWAY slot that accompanied the “Scooby’s Allstars” supershow the episodes were actually made for.

People blame Scrappy for causing Freddy and the girls to “fall to the background”, but it actually already occurred by this season, with Shaggy and Scooby sometimes spending the bulk of the episode sent out alone to encounter the monster and have all the slapstick chase moments, while the others (who practically could have been played by a single character much of the time) usually find all the clues, and have to explain the mystery to Shaggy and Scooby who often don’t even know what’s going on, at the end. (Big example: “Fortress of Fear”. As I say in my synopses, Scrappy might as well have already replaced the others then!) Velma splits up with Shaggy and Scooby only ONCE the whole season (and this in the Warlock of Wimbledon episode which was left out of the 1980 syndicated package, so you didn’t even see that back then!) Her voice and personality had also changed by then, which was a big blow to the feel of the old show.
To someone who grew up with the original show and really cares about the original format, where there was more of a UNITY in the gang, and more fitting music and settings, THIS was the “jump the shark” period; and by the time the new character was added, I was already pretty much gone and it really didn’t matter at all. Many others, also, apparently. It was already a completely different show, though the changes were very subtle, yet added up.

Just keep in mind; THIS was the newest season that was airing, when ABC determined the show had run out of steam, and needed a big change, or else be cancelled! Some of the things that were good about it were gone, and all that was left was what had gotten old.

But this “SDWAY third season” myth has helped foster the illusion that everything was fine with the “original” show, and then Scrappy suddenly appeared in the middle of this and single handedly destroyed it. Continuing from Evanier, “Others seem to view the pre-Scrappy series as animation that compared favorably with Fantasia…but suddenly when this one character was added, it abruptly turned into a Saturday morning cartoon show.”
So this season seems to be generally liked and respected by many of the same people hating Scrappy. Harris says they “recreated the look of the original show”. (Graphics I would say were actually improved, being crisp and clear, but the settings were very different, and often more abroad. You rarely had a good haunted house like the old show). To wit, several of its villains have been revived in the modern movies, such as the tar monster and Iron Face, so the modern writers must have loved that season just as much as seasons 1 and 2!

Next is the “coffin was nailed shut” by Scrappy, and the almost conspiratorial mindet of how future Disney CEO Eisner was “already” ruining shows. This is also echoed by Beck’s “clueless network executives”. But as it later became revealed, and confirmed on Evanier’s blog, it was the RATINGS they were going by, which suffered before Scrappy was added, but then improved after he was added. Execs (animation studio and broadcast network) back then were were doing whatever they could to save the show from cancellation. And it must have worked, for Scrappy to go on for 9 years! They weren’t trolling all these viewers who (supposedly) really hated him the whole time, as people have practically claimed.

If he improved ABC’s ratings, and CN kept airing him, there must have been a fanbase, though relatively silent compared to a possibly small group of very vocal haters who managed to sway popular opinion!

You also have no recognition that Scrappy had changed, and by the time Daphne came back, was no longer a “brat hogging the camera”, but completely mellowed out into what I always considered a “new Freddy”. So from this, I got the sense that the critics had never even watched past the first season, when that assessment of him was more accurate.

Finally, that A Pup Named Scooby was deliberately created to eliminate Scrappy. (Or as someone else put it back then, when Warner Brothers bought out HB, they stopped production on the Scooby series “almost mercifully” for awhile to give it time to recover from Scrappy). Even recently, on the Scooby wikia, someone at some point added to the Scrappy article the claim (completely unsourced) that “Although [Tom] Ruegger had warmed up to the version of Scrappy-Doo he had worked with in the few years before Pup, he was ultimately never that thrilled about him and believed doing Pup would be a chance to redo the franchise without him.” (This since changed to “Tom Ruegger saw it as a chance to do the series over, forgetting Scrappy.”) So now, we have an actual [and fairly familiar from cartoon credits] name of someone introduced! But I then went and asked Ruegger myself, and he said he liked Scrappy; and the obvious point that in A Pup Named Scooby Doo, Scooby was young so Scrappy [naturally] wasn’t born yet. Younger versions of cartoons was the next fad after younger sidekicks, sparked off by the popular “Muppet Babies”. He concluded “I am against Scrappy-bashing and I did not like seeing Scrappy as the villain in that live action movie. No way Scrappy would or could ever go evil. The makers of that film didn’t understand that Scrappy is loyal and heroic and scrappy. Never evil”. I asked if he knew of others back then, (such as other insiders, writers, etc) who didn’t like him, and he said no.

So we see that a lot of total fabrication of facts is involved in this hatred. Yet it’s been put out there as such universal “truth”, and now taken solid hold in the production studio itself!

So it was this well-presented but largely distorted reading of Scooby’s history, and reflecting what seemed to be universal online feeling about Scrappy, that inspired me to write my own “Scooby story” page (to set the record straight before these sentiments became immortalized and canonized in official publications), which I did that year and sat on for about two years (2000), until I realized I could publish my writings myself on AOL’s “members” space. (My immediate response to the post formed the basis of my separate page on Scrappy).

Today’s online climate and a contradictory behind the scenes industry climate

There are now so many differing levels of opinion on him. 20 years ago, the haters were very vocal, and it seemed almost no one ever defended him. Hence, when I did question haters, one of the things they would often say would be “everybody hates him”. It did look like that. But today, things are very different! But the writers seem to be still living in the past. “Generations” is really no excuse. Even if that was the cause of the hatred, the younger generations who like him more are here, and speaking up. Why aren’t the writers listening to them? This Stern guy says “I’m sure there are some Scrappy fans out there…”. Like they are hypothetical fairyland pixies he has never seen any actual signs of. He claims it as a running “joke”, but people who aren’t even fans of Scrappy are saying it’s no longer funny!
But even over the course of the years, certain things didn’t quite add up in the idea of the fans being so negligible.

The first thing I feared upon seeing all this invective in the 90’s was that when WB catches on to all of it, Scrappy will be pulled from the air and never shown again. (A big chunk of Scooby’s career; —an entire third of it in fact at that time, gone!)
Thing is, that NEVER HAPPENED. While completely omitted from all new productions for a time, through all of that those early years, Scrappy remained a familiar part of Cartoon Network, and then Boomerang, and this going past even the live action movie. They even had Scrappy Doo MARATHONS during that whole period! Several of them, for several years! One of the first shots at him on CN itself was the Blair Witch parody —which was the bumper for one of these Scrappy marathons that were apart of the larger Scooby celebration going on! The aforementioned CN promotional around the time of the movie that proclaimed the network “The place for toons”, had him adding “Not for me, man!” [get it?]; but he did remain a prominent fixture in its programming! So, [WB] he’s so hated, yet you’re still taking hours out of your schedule to show him! It was a bit surprising.
(The incarnation of Scooby that disappeared after awhile, and pretty much never aired again until the modern streaming services, was actually the Scooby Doo Show; which, again and ever so ironically, seems to be well liked by the same fans and writers who hate Scrappy!) On the DVD’s, while he was omitted from the cover art on the releases of the three Hanna Barbera Superstar 10 movies, and 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo, they still managed (to our astonishment) to eventually release the first season of the Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show, as well as the first season of the Richie Rich-Scooby Doo show (containing the second season short episodes; though with Scrappy again omitted from the cover)!

But if they kept airing him (and even releasing DVD’s), there must have been a fanbase, albeit relatively silent. With these companies, the bottom line is MONEY. They’re not bent on annoying the fans by forcing this character on them even though they all hate him! (As haters seem to think). James Gunn a few years ago identified himself as behind the live action movie reference, but then, even more recently, I’ve seen cited as saying he ended up regretting it, or realizing it was a mistake, due to some sort of backlash. The online comments in the aftermath of its release, rather than being 100% gratified, as you would expect, instead then actually began to turn at that point, with many thinking this was way over the top and ruined the whole movie! This, way back then in ’02! (Yet the sentiment would after then pick up increasingly in new productions, from other writers). I myself saw the movie with a young kid, who as we were leaving the theater, asked in total bewilderment, “why, why?” they made him the villain!

Seeing that Stern mentions needing “approval” to mention him at all, it’s looking now like a difference between WB production, being strictly against him, and WB broadcasting (which is really the old Turner company), being more favorable, at least due to the existence of viewership. So from this combined company, he’s a good enough thing that you can watch his old stuff all day, while they trash him in any new productions, because he was so bad. But all anyone has to do is watch those many airings (now streamed) to see what he was really like for themselves, but these writers seemed to be just repeating assumptions based on very limited watching. Anybody who would say Scrappy was mean to Scooby in the 83-4 series, where he was so busy being Daphne’s cluefinding partner (like Fred and Velma previously were) to have much interaction with Scooby at all, (who was once again paired strictly with Shaggy as the “comedy relief”; —it wasn’t Scrappy who made them look dumb!) just hasn’t watched it. That they would leave him out of the 13th Ghost movie (and only include yet another potshot at him) for that same reason shows they didn’t watch that series either (especially the other way they messed it up, making the ghosts fake).

The live action movie portrayal had even haters saying it’s not funny anymore; and online hatred began cooling off!

Where over 20 years ago, you had all the hate in comments, and nearly every Scooby fan site displayed the hate ribbon and otherwise omitted any mention of Scrappy, today, comments sections (as in the YT videos, below) are very mixed, with still a few saying he’s no good, but more people actually saying they liked him, some even saying they wish he would come back to the show. (I would say to them, we have to reverse this ongoing runaway trend among the writers first, before you can even think of something like that!) You had the “Scooby Apocalypse” comic, which seemed to practically redeem him from the movie-influenced premise of being bad (which looked hopeful to his fans that the tide was turning). The Scooby pages on Facebook include him in their range of post topics, and again, the feelings are generally mixed, and the climate is overall at least “fair” to him.

Picking up on them cutting out more negative talk from this special, it sounds like there must be others higher up in WB who don’t want the negative references either (even if they might not like him). It sounds like Stern is voicing others’ opinions moreso than necessarily his own personal feelings.

So where exactly this is coming from? This is what Evanier basically asked, years ago on his blog series on Scrappy. It’s been like a total mystery in itself (with haters then using it to validate their belief that he’s just universally bad). Since feelings about him are so mixed in the larger fan culture, everybody in WB can’t possibly feel that way. It looks like some small cadre of people who didn’t like him, getting together and just steamrolling their “comfort” at attacking this character over everyone else. “We don’t like him, so NOBODY likes him, and he’s just plain BAD, BAD, BAD!“* (Just like it was 20 years ago, when it was just online and not yet institutionalized into new productions). Even Evanier said “My read is that the folks who don’t like Scrappy are few in number but loud in voice.” Who are these people, and why don’t they just cut it out already?

*(Think, the old rooster describing the bad little chick Foghorn would then babysit).

It’s time they stop getting to control the direction of new productions, regarding Scrappy! Or, they need to start thinking about others’ perspectives sometimes. Who wants to see every momentous occasion becoming a platform for this silly hatred of one one-time (years ago) character (and who wasn’t even bad, really)? Is this even going on (TO THIS EXTENT) in any other franchise?

More on the “generational” perspective: my view

I’m an older viewer too, and grew up with the first four seasons, which were so inspiring, I got up on Saturday mornings and sat through the Patchwork Family (and often earlier stuff like “Channel 2 Eye On”) waiting for it to come on at 8. My mother said she had to make me watch it when it first debuted, which is incredibly hard to believe! (Perhaps because it was more serious looking than the other stuff I watched, like Tennessee Tuxedo?) But soon, I was totally hooked! When it moved from CBS to ABC, the steam started running out, and due to some subtle changes, it just wasn’t the same thing. There were still some interesting ideas, but overall, it was just “blah”.
So by the time Scrappy was added, I was barely following, and it was the same season Fang Puss (from “Fangface”) and Baby Plasticman were added to shows that only debuted the year before, so I saw Scrappy as just another instance of a common current fad to try to add something new to a show, but I myself wasn’t interested, actually. But then as much as I loved the old Scooby, it never occured to me to have any negative feelings like that about this new addition. I remember laughing at him with a friend, at how silly it was of him trying to beat enemies much bigger than him. (I wasn’t thinking of Henery Hawk at that time, who he was based on). But neither we, nor anyone else I saw anywhere took that to hate him. It was just a silly cartoon! (It seemed back at that time that Scooby was a bit out of fashion anyway, and the kids were more into action-adventure, and especially anime. And the most popular “flagship” cartoon stars of Hanna Barbera were still the Flintstones and Yogi and friends, as you can even see in promotional art from that period.
So I admit; it was “not the high point” of the franchise; it was the low point. But it was already at that point for various reasons!)

I watched Scooby into that period, with it all going in one eye and out the other, and not even remembering anything, until it got up to “Hang In There, Scooby” (a few weeks into the second season where it was just a short episode with no mystery or Fred & the girls), when they’re riding the wing of the plane and the passenger with Marilyn Schreffler’s voice (think Olive Oyl on the new Popeyes of the time) says “There’s a man out there!”, and I thought to myself “Why am I forcing myself to watch this? What really does this have to do with the classic Scooby?” So I turned away for good, and then just focused on the old series, which had just entered weekday syndication. (The highlight being the Comedy Movies, which hadn’t been shown since the CBS run. Was so nice to see those again after so many years! THAT was the classic Scooby I was missing, with episodes like Dynamic Scooby Doo Affair and Loch Ness Mess my all time favorites, but now only vaguely remembered! It was also here that the inferiority of the “Scooby Doo Show” seasons really stood out!) Every new season I checked back, and if I only saw Scooby, Scrappy and Shaggy, I quickly turned it off again.

It was actually when they began circling back around to the mystery format, with cool new ideas that I became interested in new Scooby again. At the end of the ’82-3 season, I happened to peek at the show, and caught Beauty Contest Caper, which was a cute semi-mystery/crimefighting story, and even used original ’69 score! This is what won me back, and if that weren’t all; lo the surprise that summer, on a McDonald’s tray liner with a promotional for the new ABC Saturday lineup that hinted “danger prone Daphne” was coming back! (So surprising it was her, when she was almost never paired with Shaggy and Scooby on the old show! Though she was then developed, as not as “danger prone” anymore!) By this time, Scrappy had been totally developed, to the point he became Daphne’s cluefinding partner, sort of like Freddy was.
In 1984, the ’80-1 series were repackaged as “The Scary Scooby Funnies” and played right after the New Scooby Mysteries with a similar new opening, so I at first thought they were new, and watched, falling in love with the earlier, yet already somewhat developed “invincible” Scrappy, and the comedy format. Hang In There Scooby (the only one I remembered from the original run) was apparently not apart of this package (to verify that these were apart of the same series of episodes), and I hadn’t watched long enough to see the much better written later ones, like the fairy tale spoofs, which were prominent in this new show, so they were now truly “new” to me!

As I’ve said elsewhere, it was still the same old Shaggy and Scooby, crying “Zoinks!” and “Yow!” as they always had, but now it no longer pretended to be a classic mystery, and you didn’t have Freddy taking both of the girls, finding all the clues, and constantly criticizing Shaggy and Scooby as they run off and leave them alone to face the most danger, as in those last seasons with them. It was like the chase scenes of the mysteries framed as episodes by themselves, and the chase was apparently the main attraction by then anyway. So as I’ve said, it was a great relief from a format that had become completely worn. (The selection of background music was very nice, as it combined the new 1979 first season score with a lot of revived early 70’s “Pebbles and Bam-Bam” era stock, and even occasionally, a Magilla or Wacky Races era piece thrown in on occasion!)

So I long noted that a lot of the people hating him 20 years ago were slightly younger than me (Harris being my first example; he I believe was born in 1978, and would only have been 1 year old when Scrappy was introduced), as the younger end of Gen. X. It seems some of these modern writers are about that age as well. So they likely didn’t watch Scrappy be added to the show; they grew up seeing the whole run from ’69-88 side by side in syndication or cable, and thus the Scooby Doo Show was “original” after all; so Scrappy stuck out (and to some, the special guests of the Comedy Movies as well, which also were included as a “jumptheshark” point), and then aimed to speak for everyone. (The older members of this generation would have been in their 30’s already when all of these ridiculous internet posts were made, and a bit old for a lot of that stuff. So that’s why it seemed to have been the younger ones doing it. If it really was the older ones, at that age, they needed to ‘grow up‘ [mentally and emotionally, that is] already, rather than holding on to that stuff and then carrying it into the animation industry! When I was a kid, if I got this much into some feeling about a fictional character or story, my parents would say I watched too much TV and needed to come out of the dream world and back into reality! Gunn, for instance called Scrappy, among many other things, “an awful person”. Sounds almost like he forgets this is not a real person!)
The criticisms aren’t even consistent; now they’re criticizing him for things they (often wrongly) claim he does, rather than him simply being added later.

Scrappy himself was cited as saying in the 1999 comic (the end of the period where he could still be found in good uses), that he “get[s] this [i.e. dislike] a lot from these Gen. X guys”. Gunn is my age, while Beck is a decade older (a “Boomer”; though he wasn’t necessarily hating on Scrappy, and I’ve never seen him do it; just explaining this generational viewpoint. BTW, he does love and frequently post on the other “Scrappy”; the black&white one from the 30’s). I can’t find any age/birth date listed for Stern anywhere, but he seems like a later X. Sheridan, now is that “younger” (Millennial) generation, saying the original 13 Ghosts was out when he was young. (While his “couldn’t make Scrappy work with the story I was doing” I don’t quite understand, and sounds like a lame excuse, he did genuinely say he “would have loved” to have redeemed Scrappy the way he redeemed Flim Flam in the story. (You can hear this here). He even speaks of a hopeful “Scrappy Renaissance” someday! (And the host says “it was nice that there was an attempt at Scrappy”!)) So here’s someone in WB who thinks differently from the others, but some higher up(s) were opposing it. But of course, he’s a different generation! The president of WB Animation is Sam Register was born three months before Scooby debuted and thus in my older, cynical generation, so I wonder if he could be the one opposing Scrappy and only allowing negative references. (Though he’s only been in the title for about a year, but was still involved with WB and CN way before that. To be fair; never heard his position on Scrappy, though, but it would likely be someone, along with others, up on that level).

I guess, looking at my generation, other subcultures of it included the “death metal” fans in high school wishing death to disco: —that’s the way they think; if you don’t like something; then death to it; and write this all over the walls and desks!— and so I guess it figures they would grow up, and the new medium of the internet would become the new venue for their extreme feelings, and a few who got involved with the entertainment industry would then create this dark mindset we have seen since we came of age, where Shaggy and Scooby must have been “stoners” like they were (“sex/drugs/rock&roll”, after all), let’s bust up that “too perfect” goody-goody gentleman Freddy and “develop” him into a complete idiot, and those who didn’t like Scrappy would then project all of this evil onto him. But I think this has been completely indulged long enough, and needs to be reined in now!

I have to admit that these members of my own generation here are being very childish with this feeling that the powers that be of our youth were just trying to destroy our childhoods just for the fun of it; like this is all about us (and hence, why hatred toward one of those decisions, Scrappy, would be so deeply and intensely PERSONAL. They’re acting like it is still 1979, and some mean parent took all their toys away or “grounded” them for years and laughed!)
Plus, the uncharacteristic cynicism of modern productions. (Willaim Fischer’s article on the Scrappy hatred objects “I don’t get why Velma, confident and affable in the first series, has since been made a cynical, deadpan nerd with self-esteem issues.”) and utter darkness at times. (Like it wasn’t enough to have Avenger on Harvey Birdman snatch Scrappy away, but then in several further episodes of that show, continue to show his dead corpse!) I usually reject judgments of “generations”; most often by an older one claiming younger ones are more “selfish” or “spoiled” or something like that, but in this case, there has been a point to it!

Where do we go from here?

Some fans are reacting tho this, with even a petition being created. for him!
https://www.change.org/p/warner-brothers-scrappy-doo-deserves-better-reintroduce-the-scooby-doo-character-in-a-positive-way?recruiter=11135209
In addition to this, we must also include the need for writers to stop projecting their own personal feelings about him into their productions, and aiming to speak for everyone. Yes, there is “artistic freedom”, but a fixation like this is more that just that. They’ve had over 20 years for their “jokes”, and it never seems to satisfy them to where they’ve vented their feelings and made their statement, and becomes boring and they move on. They act like Scrappy has been pushed in every production the whole time, and they’re the ones trying to convince their higher ups and the world that he’s no good. Or worse, they act like the series before him was erased and replaced by him, or that he was crudely spliced into every copy of the old show. If you didn’t like him, just skip over those seasons! Don’t force your hatred of him on everyone!

This is some kind of deep psychological issue (it’s called “Shadow projection”; especially when you see a lot of the stuff in that “Capacity to Hate” video, below. Some of this stuff is a bit psychotic, so people must not have been exaggerating when they said Scrappy ruined their childhoods, because that’s exactly how they’re acting! This stuff shows what people might wish to do to real people they don’t like if they thought they could get away with it! Or if not particular writers themslves; whoever they have carelessly allowed to shape their thinking.
Scrappy has been made into a “trope” (“the Scrappy”), or basically “archetype” (ruling pattern) of a later addition to a show that people hate (building upon the earlier “Cousin Oliver”). But he’s obviously having another (more classical) archetype, called the “Demonic Personality” projected onto him; most manifest in Gunn’s “Scrappy Rex” mutation (and one of those early Usenet posts calling him the “demon bastard puppy”!) It’s about ultimate evil, and “undermining” (recall, Stern using that very term regarding Scrappy’s supposed effect on Scooby!) It often accompanies stuff like trauma, and involves feelings of the fear of the destruction of the ego, which is clearly evident, when people accuse Scrappy of ruining their childhood, and then wish sadistic things on him as if he had actually done so. A “projection” is when you see stuff that’s actually inside you, in others on the outside, including fictional characters. “Shadow” is the darkness we don’t like to think is in ourselves, and so usually suppress into our own unconscious, so we only see it in others! That’s why their portrayals of Scrappy, from the live action movie on down, bear no resemblance to the actual character. But they are so sure this was who he was! It’s all stuff inside them, not him, as evident in all the other dark things they have done on some of these cartoon shows. (I on the other hand, project the “Hero” archetype onto Scrappy, because of how he burst in and broke the rut Scooby was in, and challenged bullies who attacked Scooby. I feel many other cartoon characters could have used a sidekick like that, and would have loved to have one or even be one myself in real life. Positive things can be projected as well).
Another example of the projection is that what the critics and haters (including these current writers, apparently) are accusing the TV executives of doing 40 years ago, is exactly what they themselves, the current WB staff, are doing today with Scrappy. Making their decisions not based on the objective factor of the ratings (i.e what the actual fans want), but rather their own basically sick (and ‘clueless’) little agendas. (Modern production being more free than old network TV standards).

But why? Why are they projecting this stuff onto this shortly lived fictional character from decades ago? Something not done with other cartoons; not even the worst villains from them! I even tried asking a Jungian analyst, John Beebe, who discusses these archetypes as appearing in popular movies, and uses them with the common Myers Briggs typology, (also based loosely on Carl Jung), what this is about, but being older, he hasn’t paid much attention to Scooby.
These people really need to look into this, and maybe even see an analyst, instead of forcing their feelings on everyone else, and ignoring different opinion as virtually nonexistent. (We see this, again, with Stern’s statement “I GUESS he has fans…”). You’re supposed to be producing this stuff for US, the fans; not for some therapeutic gratification of some old resentment toward what was really an impersonal industry decision over 40 years ago!

The haters also should realize, this whole thing has the potential to ultimately backfire on them, who wish he never existed. The live action movie and all of these negative references afterward have kept drawing attention to him, and stoking the ire of people who do like him, and of course, also, these “younger viewers” Beck and others mention, who would have started out more neutral, but then notice the disparity between these modern portrayals and his actual appearance on the old show. If they had simply stopped with “Scrappy Stinks” and the Blair Witch spoof, he might have by now been largely forgotten, and perhaps thought of little more than Scooby Dum. As we see now, this is slowly creating a demand, along with blogs, videos and podcasts now discussing the absurdity of the hatred, along with a comic series (that I heard will be produced as a movie) that uses him more positively.

If one day, all these hating writers and producers suddenly find themselves ordered by their bosses; higher up WB execs, to produce something with a good use of him, or even to bring him back permanently, then they will have only themselves to blame. (Hope they enjoyed their good laugh these past 20 years!) The overall media company, while going along with their feelings now, again, is driven by profit, created by demand. And these younger viewers who like him are growing up, and will become more vocal and influential. If they see a demand, they, unlike these lower level people (writers, etc.) will put feelings aside, and no longer care about Scooby “jumping the shark” over 40 years earlier. (Just like they continued airing him all throughout the period of open hatred).

The real casualty in the hatred!

It is just so hypocritical (another example of projection) for the whole issue with Scrappy being that he “changed the show”. The same writers have at times changed the other characters beyond recognition; my prime example being Fred in SDMI. This is the series with the biggest attack after Gunn’s movie, where Fred and Daphne are in a museum showing statues of old partners such as Vincent Van Ghoul and Flim Flam (here’s where it’s revealed he became bad). But then, when they get to Scrappy, Daphne is looking with curiosity, and Fred says “Look away, we promised we’d never speak of him again. Not ever!” (Which isn’t even true, as they HAVE continued speaking of him, nonstop to the present!) Keep in mind, now, all of this is because of the writers not liking him “changing the show”. This same “Freddy” in this series would go on to try to play an eight track tape cartridge on a record turntable! (This tops even anything on A Pup Named Scooby, which is where Fred first became an idiot!) Keep in mind, this was originally the intelligent leader of the gang!

And all this rampant cynicism (starting with Zombie Island, basically). “Protective of the original characters”, are you? “Character development”, right? (The common excuse for Freddy. It’s really character destruction!). So they claim Scrappy was a “d*ck” to Scooby? Look at Skip (toward the whole gang) in last year’s Funky Phantom crossover. And also, really, Velma towards Mudsy. (I believe they similarly screwed up the Magilla/Mr.Peebles underlying relational dynamic as well. Notice, in the typical dehumanizing attitude of the day, how Magilla, [who only grunts and doesn’t talk!], is now an “it”, rather than “he”, to Peebles! Somewhat paralleling Scrappy and Scooby, Magilla may have been a big nuisance to Peebles he wanted to get rid of, but at the end of the day, there was a love there and they were inseparable!)
The original Comedy movies showed that the gang could handle additions well, and it wasn’t a jump the shark moment (especially, being it was liked enough to be revived), as the spirit of the original show was still maintained (and in fact, depthened), so “additions” are no reason for the hate either.

(The other big departure from the original format I thought the modern writers were hypocritical for adding, was the ROMANCE between members of the gang; mainly Fred and Daphne (first joked about in “Bravo Dooby Doo”, which set the stage for the modern generation of Scooby, and it then picked up afterward), and even Shaggy and Velma in Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated! This to me was VERY out of character. In the teenage angst of wanting girls and being frustrated, it was nice to turn to Scooby and be able to forget all of that, and a beautiful and sexy girl was not taken or even pursued by some man (and especially the “perfect” man who was also there, who wasn’t presented as a ‘ladies man’). Both Josie and Funky Phantom had quabbling by an underdog character wanting the sexy other member who always goes with the other “perfect” attractive member of the group in splitups. Scooby had none of that!

I’ve cooled off with that now, because in SDMI, the premise was that they were younger, and tried dating each other (but Shaggy was too attached to his dog to notice Velma, and the stupified Freddy was too in love with the Mystery Machine, or devising traps to notice Daphne), but then settled on just being friends. So the romance seems to have been mostly dropped in subsequent productions

Likewse, as far as “cynicism”, this has affected the DC universe, where the characteristic modern cynicism or darkness actually happens to fit the original comics, where it was TV that made them more ‘lighter’ or, in the words of the modern cynics, ‘campy’. I didn’t like that either; favoring “Superfriends”, but realized they wanted to go back to the comics style of the characters).

All of this changes the character of the show. “He doesn’t belong”! Is THIS what Scooby is about? You can’t look at the gang the same way!

I should further explain that my annoyance about this is not simply about someone bashing a character I like; it’s about how this changes the character of the show itself; i.e. the other characters. It’s no longer merely a “joke” he’s the butt of; it’s no longer an out of control Mystery Machine running over dolls of Scrappy, or even Avenger snatching him [totally different franchise in a spoof show], now they’ve made it totally personal; it’s the gang themselves openly rejecting him, even though this doesn’t reflect how they interacted in the actual show (even if he was “annoying” at times), or even the characters apart from Scrappy (where they all annoyed each other, but still loved each other, and anyone else who joined them). So as I point out in a comment in the article in the link, (in reference to “he doesn’t belong”; “Is THIS what Scooby is about? Is this what it’s come to?” This stuff actually makes it hard to see the gang in the same way. So generation or no generation, the writers are injecting too much of their own feelings into it.

I think the lastest Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry shows finally nailed the spirit of those classic series (save for some of the gore in the former), and these “golden age” franchises are 80 years old now. So it seems like that’s when some future generation stops reimagining characters and tries to restore the original feel of the Hanna Barbera series? So I guess it might be another 30 years before Scooby enters this phase (and the generations who grew up liking Scrappy are the studio executives).

The definitve chronicle on all the hatred:

Scrappy Days

https://www.stitcher.com/show/a-podcast-named-scoobydoo/episode/017-interview-with-duane-poole-part-two-54305273

https://collider.com/why-is-scrappy-doo-hated/ (William Fischer)

A site with several articles, including one discussing my fantasy idea (from my “Facts on Scrappy” page), of a “Nega-canon” that explains the movie portrayals (and correputed portrayals of the rest of the gang as well):
https://www.ranker.com/list/why-people-turned-on-scrappy-doo/donn-saylor

other videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T726ELyvFs4 (Why is Scrappy hated)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AKx5Ajpaew (Brief history)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dj2tqs7zhow (Wasted Plotential)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fdQS-rjsnk (Rise and Fall)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhJFr2pjeis (Character Chronicles)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm2SZnoUxj8 (“Scooby Addicts” panel discussion)