Scooby-Doo: Seasons 2-4

Inspired by the 1969 to 1972 Hanna-Barbera Scooby-Doo Where Are You? television series, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo aired on television in the late 1980's and early 1990's, featuring Shaggy, Fred, Velma, and Daphne as junior-high school students and Scooby as a pup. While the gang may be smaller in stature than in the previous series, their appetite for mystery (and pizza) is heartier than ever, and bedtime never seems to stand in the way of solving a mystery. Knowing that monsters and ghosts don't exist doesn't seem to stop the gang from encountering everything from the enormous Chickenstein to Zombo the clown ghost, the sesame-seeded Burger monster, the hairy Bigwig, and even the slimy Snail monster. Scooby's nose for clues (and Scooby snacks) and Velma's logical thinking, combined with some bumbling help from the ever-hungry Shaggy, the Red Herring-blaming Fred, and the spoiled, Butler-invoking Daphne, always seem to be enough to unmask the villain and solve the mystery at the end of the day. There's always a good chase in every episode, but the humor and comedy are more satirical and extreme than in the Scooby-Doo Where Are You? series, which translates into less emphasis on the fright of the chase and more on the animation of bugging-out eyes and other frights of face. Notably, this collection features the one episode in which Red Herring actually proves to be the villain, as well as an episode where Scooby, rather than Velma, solves the mystery. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo is set squarely in the late 1980's, as evidenced by its animation style, the music and dance that weave throughout the episodes, and Velma's stash of hi-tech equipment. Nonetheless, there are plenty of nods to the original series and the 1960's. The addition of the bonus 2006 "Party Arty" episode from the Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get A Clue series is a weird juxtaposition of startlingly different animation styles and is simply jarring.

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