The Scooby-Doo Show


The Scooby-Doo Show is an American animated mystery comedy series. The title of the series is an umbrella term for episodes of the third incarnation of Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo franchise. A total of 40 episodes ran for three seasons, from 1976 to 1978, on ABC, marking the first Scooby series to appear on the network. Sixteen episodes were produced as segments of The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour in 1976, eight episodes were produced as segments of Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics in 1977 and sixteen episodes were produced in 1978, with nine of them running by themselves under the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! name and the final seven as segments of Scooby's All-Stars.
Despite the yearly changes in the way they were broadcast, the 1976–1978 stretch of Scooby episodes represents, at three seasons, the longest-running format of the original show before the addition of Scrappy-Doo. The episodes from all three seasons have been rerun under the title The Scooby-Doo Show since 1980; these Scooby episodes did not originally air under this title. The credits on these syndicated versions all feature a 1976 copyright date, even though some were originally produced in 1977 and 1978. Outside the United States, reruns aired on CBBC in the United Kingdom until 2015. Like many animated series created by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, the show contained a laugh track created by the studio.

Overview

When television executive Fred Silverman moved from CBS to ABC in 1975, the Scooby-Doo gang followed him, making their ABC debut in 1976 as part of The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour. This hour-long package show featured 16 new half-hour adventures in the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! format, with Scooby's country cousin, the Mortimer Snerd-inspired Scooby-Dum, joining the gang as a semi-regular character. In addition, Pat Stevens replaced Nicole Jaffe as the voice of Velma. The other half of the hour was filled by Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, a new Hanna-Barbera cartoon about a superhero named Blue Falcon and his goofy mechanical canine sidekick, Dynomutt. The Mystery, Inc. gang made guest appearances in three of the Dynomutt, Dog Wonder segments. The show was renamed to The Scooby-Doo / Dynomutt Show when ABC added a rerun of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! to the show in November 1976.
In 1977, ABC had a programming block called Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics. The Scooby-Doo segment of this two-hour block included 8 new episodes of Scooby-Doo, plus reruns from the 1976–1977 season. The name of the block was changed to Scooby's All-Stars for the 1978–1979 season, when the program was shortened to an hour and a half, after the cancellation of Dynomutt. 16 half-hours of Scooby-Doo were produced this season, and began airing earlier in the morning before the Scooby's All-Stars block as a third season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! in September. Scooby's All-Stars instead aired reruns of the 1976 and 1977 episodes for the first nine weeks of the 1978–79 season. By November, the early-morning airing of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! had been cancelled, and the new 1978 episodes began airing during the Scooby-Doo segment of Scooby's All-Stars.
Scooby-Doo creators Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, by 1976 working at ABC for Silverman as production supervisors for the Saturday morning lineup, were involved in the development and production of the 1976–77 and 1977–78 episodes.

Cast

The 1976 episodes were released on DVD by Warner Home Video with the Dynomutt episodes they originally aired with as The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour: The Complete Series on March 7, 2006. The 1977 season has not been released in a season set, but some episodes have appeared on DVD. This leaves four of the eight 1977 episodes that ran as part of Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics as the only episodes not yet released on DVD from this 40-episode incarnation. The 1978 episodes were released on DVD as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! - The Complete Third Season from Warner Home Video, H-B Cartoons and WBFE on April 10, 2007, although only nine of those originally aired under the title Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! in their initial run, and none of the 1978 episodes were presented under the Where are You! title for 28 years following their broadcast debuts. All 40 Scooby-Doo Show episodes are available for purchase and download from the iTunes Store and Amazon, as either individual episodes or a season set. The 1976 and 1977 episodes are grouped under The Scooby-Doo Show, while the 1978 episodes are listed under Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!
DVD nameEp No.Release dateAdditional information
The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour – The Complete Series16March 7, 2006
  • 2 featurettes
  • Image gallery
Scooby-Doo's Spookiest Tales1August 21, 2001
  • "Vampire Bats and Scaredy Cats"
  • Rough cut
    • Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Run for Your 'Rife Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Surf's Up Scooby-Doo1September 10, 2013
    May 5, 2015
    • "Hang in There, Scooby-Doo!"
    Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Around the World1May 15, 2012
  • "The Ozark Witch Switch"
    • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! The Complete Third Season16April 10, 2007
  • 1 featurette
    • Best of Warner Bros. 50 Cartoon Collection: Scooby-Doo!''.2August 13, 2019
  • "The Chiller Diller Movie Thriller"
  • "Vampire Bats and Scaredy Cats"