Creator of Scooby-Doo Dies

boloboffin

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The creator of Scooby-Doo, Iwao Takamoto, who learned to animate in the internment camps for Japanese-Americans during WW2, died today.

I bring it up here because there may never have been a more brilliant introduction to the principles of skepticism than the Mystery Machine gang. Until that [rule8] Scrappy-Doo showed up, you could always count on superstitious twaddle being revealed to be some white guy running a scam.

Scooby-dooby-doo!
 
I was always a bit confused about that - it seemed to me even back then (and much less of a skeptic than i am now), that there were two different 'phases' (as in "going through a") of SD. One where the ghosts were all guys in masks, and one where they all seemed to be real.
Did Scrappy Doo have something to do with that?
 
To be fair it is a kid's show. I've lost all of the love I used to have for the old cartoons. (There are some exceptions.)
 
Yes, it is a kid's show.
One of my favorite things is to watch it with my nieces and have them re-enact the scenes on tv. All in pantomime; except for the scooby snaks- for that they use chocolate.
Scooby doo was/is a connection to the happy times when I was growing up.
 
A small correction

boloboffin said:
The creator of Scooby-Doo, Iwao Takamoto...
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I'm not an expert on Scooby Doo, or on animation in general. But Mark Evanier is -- and he says that the newspaper stories such as the one you link to are in error.

Obits for Iwao Takamoto ... are all over the web and some of them are pretty loose with their assignment of credits. Most say Iwao was the creator of Scooby Doo... an honor that has also been (at different times) claimed by or attributed to Joe Barbera, Fred Silverman and the writer-producer team of Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. As far as I know, Iwao himself never claimed to have done any more than design the look of that show and its characters... and even then, he was the main designer, not the only one.

... I wish people didn't use words like "creator" and "created by" so casually. To give someone credit for something they didn't create is to deny it to someone who did. That has personal ramifications and these days, it may also have legal and compensatory ones, as well.

Iwao was a brilliantly talented artist. It's too bad more of you haven't seen his original concept and presentation drawings, which often far exceeded anything that made it onto your TV screens. And he did come up with the basic and/or final design of more popular TV cartoon characters than almost anyone else. He never wanted, nor does his memory require credit for things he didn't do.
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vIQleS said:
I was always a bit confused about that - it seemed to me even back then (and much less of a skeptic than i am now), that there were two different 'phases' (as in "going through a") of SD. One where the ghosts were all guys in masks, and one where they all seemed to be real.
Did Scrappy Doo have something to do with that?
Click to expand...

I thought that the original Scooby Doo series, including the Scrappy episodes, all involved guys in masks and/or glowing white sheets pretending to be monsters, and it was only when they did later movies and subsequent series that they got into having real ghosts? I could be wrong, though.
 
The wiki article has a section that is just too funny:

The plot varied little from episode to episode, running essentially a
s follows:

The Mystery, Inc. gang turn up in the Mystery Machine, en route to or returning from a regular teenage function--a dance, a rock festival, etc.

Their destination is suffering from a "ghost" or "monster" problem. The kids volunteer to investigate the case.

The gang splits up to cover more ground, with Fred and Velma finding clues, Daphne finding danger, and Shaggy and Scooby finding food, fun, and the ghost/monster, who gives chase.

Scooby and Shaggy in particular love to eat, including dog treats referred to as "Scooby Snacks" (Scooby and Shaggy both eat them).

Eventually, enough clues are found to convince the gang that the ghost/monster is a fake, and a trap is set to capture it.

The trap invariably fails.

Scooby Doo slips, one way or another, and hurtles toward the ghost/monster, who falls down. The ghost/monster is apprehended and unmasked; the person in the ghost or monster suit turns out to be an apparently blameless authority figure who is using the disguise to cover up criminal activity.

The offender(s) - after giving the parting shot of "And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids, and your dog!" - is then taken away to jail, and the gang is allowed to continue on their way to their destination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooby-Doo,_Where_are_You!
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I heard somewhere that the characters of Scooby and Shaggy predated the series, and appeared as characters on another cartoon.

The shows with real ghosts are very recent, maybe an unfortunate indicator of our societies increasing credulousness - or maybe the authors just got bored of the same old formulas and saw an opportunity for a fresh direction.
 
When I was growing up I didn't like Scooby-Doo cartoons. The cartooning was much less rich than the older WB cartoons and early Tom and Jerry, plus it was always obvious what the result was going to be.

For whatever reason, now that my kids are watching the original Scooby-Doo cartoons I'm finding them more entertaining. I actually find them funny.

I think it's watching them have absolutely no clue that the Riverboat Captain has the exact same demeanor as Old Man Smithers from last week, but they just absolutely can't figure out at first who's making all the spooky stuff happen on the haunted island.
 
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