Tag Archives: scooby doo

Rejected Hannah Barbara Cartoons

image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QPS6As0tqY

You may not know this, but my first foray into writing didn’t involve this website or the Bob and the Cyber-Llama series. When I was a young lad living in the mountains of Tibet, I had dreams of employing my writing skills to aid in mankind’s greatest venture: Hannah Barbara cartoons.

Unfortunately, every one of my ideas was rejected as “disturbing” or “not appropriate for children.” But that doesn’t mean I can’t share them with you here:

 

The Flatulent Wilma Flintstone

This was my take on the classic modern, stone-age family. The entire show was nothing more than a series of reruns from the original Flintstones series…with a brilliant twist!

In the middle of each of her dialogue scenes, Wilma Flintstone would pause, squint her eyes a little, grit her teeth, and rip a massive fart. Your average dialogue scene would play out something like this:

Fred: Wilma, where’s my dinner?

Wilma: It’s not ready yet, Fred.

Fred: “It’s not ready…” Darn it, Wilma! When a man gets home from a hard day of work, he expects his dinner to be prepared!

Wilma: Fred, I was at the grocery store all day looking for those dino eggs that you insisted I…[Wilma stops speaking. Her lower lip quivers and she bites it determinedly. Clenching her eyes shut, she puts a fist in the air and raises one of her legs. A juicy blast erupts from her sphincter like the bursting of a dam. Her skirt billows like a flag atop Everest. Then, the hurricane of flatulence over, she stands erect once again.]

Wilma: Those dino eggs that you insisted I buy for the casserole.

 

Scooby Doo: A New Perspective

My second series was a new take on Scooby Doo.  Instead of focusing on the perspective of the Scooby gang, the series would let viewers see the mysteries through the eyes of the other characters. Because let’s face it: the Scooby Doo gang was high. Like, all of the time. And I’m sure that skewed their perspective a bit.

I imagined the average scene playing out like this:

Police Officer: Hey, uh…are you kids alright?

Velma [stumbling around incoherently]: Dude…there’s like…a guy in the amusement park over there.

Police Officer: A guy?

Fred: Yeah…and he’s dressed like an eighteenth-century pirate so he can scare people away from the ferris wheel and protect his Spanish doubloons!

Police Officer: I see. I think you should come back to the station with me.

Daphne: And I think we should split up, gang. Shaggy and Scooby, you go find the pirate’s ghost and lead him to the fun house.

Police Officer: That’s a hobo and a dead chihuahua, ma’am.

 

George Jetson’s 1984

In this dystopian future, the Jetsons have left their skyscraper cities behind and exchanged them for identical gray suits and an undying loyalty to “the Party.” Rosie, no longer the whimsical, smart-talking robot maid, has had cameras installed in her eyes and watches the Jetson family scrupulously.

We watch the slow indoctrination of Elroy as he learns how to discern whether or not his parents are defectors, the words “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Tom is Jerry” inscribed on his schoolhouse. And we slowly see George begin to question the system as he sees the higher standard of living enjoyed by the Party’s officials.

By the end of season one, we see that George’s entire family has “disappeared” thanks to the higher ups and George sits in a cell. He is confronted by his former boss Mr. Slate, who yells “Jetson! Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four!”

If only Jane could, in fact, stop this crazy thing.

 

Amazingly, Hannah Barbara didn’t want to pursue any of my ideas. But such is life, I suppose. Anyway, it gives me more time to work on my magnum opus: Citizen Snagglepuss.

“Scooby Doo” and Its Bizarre Implications

If I wasn’t clear enough a few weeks ago, let me state it again: cartoons are weird. They live in their own worlds where the physical laws of nature do not apply. But that’s why we love them. The Flintstones wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it authentically depicted the difficulties of using an elephant as a shower, and if the physics in Loony Tunes were even the least bit realistic, those cartoons would contain more blood and gore than the Saw movies and the Spanish Inquisition combined. But sometimes, even in context, cartoons just make you wonder about their strange little worlds and especially the characters that inhabit them.

Which brings us to today’s topic: Scooby Doo. As is the case with most great cartoons, if you start asking questions about how the Scooby Doo universe works, all you’ll find are more questions. I know I’d just be stating the obvious if I said that Scooby Doo makes no sense, but there’s more to Scooby Doo than meets the eye. There isn’t an episode of Scooby Doo I’ve watched that doesn’t make me wonder about the thought processes of some of the characters.

We could talk at length about the Scooby Doo gang themselves and their bizarre issues—why Shaggy and Scooby are willing to put their lives on the line for dog food, why the characters always run using the same repetitive body movements, or why they never seem to stop and wonder whether, just maybe, the monster could be a guy in a costume just like the last twenty-seven monsters they’ve encountered—but the Scooby Doo universe is home to a much more interesting group of psychotics: the villains. Say what you will about Yogi Bear or the “I Love to Singa” owl from that one Warner Brothers cartoon, but the Scooby Doo villains are, without a doubt, the most bizarre group of cartoon characters around.

Scooby Doo villains generally want to accomplish something fairly simple like smuggling diamonds out of the mountains or obtaining ownership of a hotel to access the precious oil beneath it. But how does every Scooby Doo villain they plan to accomplish their goal? By dressing up in a slightly-above average Halloween costume and running around yelling at random people. Remember, it’s not like they’ve already tried to commit their crimes using more traditional methods. Dressing up in a rubber hunchback costume was Plan A. I really wish we got to see the moments these plans were conceived. I always imagine the villain sitting in his dingy, dimly-lit basement and saying something like, “Okay, Jimmy. We’re going to smuggle these diamonds through the underground caves in the mountains, but we have to keep tourists away from the ski resort so they don’t expose our operation. So I’m going to dress up like a giant ghost lobster.”

But the real question is this: what will these people do with their lives after the cartoon’s over? Sure, they’ll have to spend some time in prison because of those meddling kids, but they’ll eventually be released. None of them are committing really serious crimes; no one in Scooby Doo dies or gets seriously injured. Eventually, these people are going to be back on the outside, trying desperately to fit back into normal society. However, for these scarred individuals, that’s never going to happen. It doesn’t matter how hard a former Scooby Doo villain works to turn his life around. He’ll never shake off the stigma of having dressed up in a rubber monster suit and yelled at passers-by. I mean, how will they ever find a job? “Alright, Mr. Stevenson, let’s have a look at your resume. I see you got your Master’s from Columbia University, spent a few years working for the Harrington Law Firm, and…dressed up as a ghost pirate and chased innocent hikers away from an old mining town in order to perpetrate a real estate scheme. Uh…we’ll be in touch.”

Those meddling kids don’t just solve mysteries. They strip away their nemesis’ dignity and stain their futures. Still, being a former Scooby Doo villain wouldn’t be all bad. I guess it would be kind of cool to tell your grandkids that you spent a summer as the Phantom Walrus of Crystal Cove.