my memory may be faulty, but I thought it was on MTV in at least some markets. I’m probably mis-remembering. It probably should have been on MTV, though.
No, that’s mostly accurate. However, Scooby Doo did mix things up a few times. There was one episode where the “ghost” turned out to be a good guy who was trying to scare off some real estate scammers.
Don’t worry, your memory’s fine. MTV and Nickelodeon are both owned by Viacom and because much of Ren & Stimpy’s viewership overlapped with MTV’s, MTV also ran the show.
in the early to late 00s cartoon network ran a series of movies that for the first 5 or 6 movies the monster was real even if there was a scam involved
like scooby doo on zombie island the one where they were looking for aliens in nm and the two that helped them were aliens sent t o stop what was going on ……and once those were popular the movie came out and then whats new scooby doo… and it returned to original form more and less
Whatever your feelings about Scooby-Doo, it deserves credit for one thing: no matter what sort of creature they ran up against, it always, without exception, had a rational explanation. It was never ghosts, it was always some person trying to pull some sort of a scam. Later iterations of the show, including ones that were objectively better In other ways, eventually dropped that, but for all its cheap production values and formulaic plots, it’s worth noting that at heart, the show was originally all about rational skepticism.
I liked their cartoons growing up. Liked, not loved.
But I heard a story once. It seems a daycare center put up pictures on their walls of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and other Disney characters. Somehow, Disney found out, and sicced their lawyers on the daycare, making them take down the pictures. Hanna Barbera heard about it, and sent the daycare free wall pictures of the Flintstones and Scooby Doo and Snagglepuss.
I love that story. I always felt Hanna Barbera had class.
The only one that might have ‘sank after a couple of issues’ is Wacky Raceland. (Or the unsatisfying ending may have just been a matter of being ill-paced.)
The other finished series from the first wave, Flintstones and Future Quest, were always meant to be 12 issue series, and Future Quest spun off a second series after it ended.
Everything after the first wave has run exactly as many issues as they were solicited for (6 or 12).
According to Snopes, that story is true.
No, I was in grad school then and didn’t have much time for cartoons. I remember being vaguely aware they were back on and that there was a movie, but I never saw them.
I recall fans being upset that Judy was being voiced by some pop star, but I had no idea who Tiffany was until she posed for Playboy. (I still have that issue. :o )
Ah, Hanna-Barbera! Has Sturgeon’s Law ever applied more to the output of a single company? Maybe some Poverty Row film studios, and that’s what Hanna-Barbera was: Strictly Poverty Row, making lots of product, product in job lots, and probably never losing money on any of it. Never making a lot of money, either; certainly never making enough money to add some more cardboard to their characters, or to buy another joke book, or to draw a few dozen more original frames of animation.
We have them to thank for the Renaissance of American animation: By the 1990s, Hanna-Barbera was ripe for reaction, and boy did it get it in the end. They thought animation should be bland and interchangeable? We’ll make it outrageous and unmistakable! They thought animation was strictly for kids? Suck on South Park and Beavis and Butt-Head! They thought animation should be cheap and conserve every resource? Say what you will about Ren & Stimpy, its lovingly-detailed gross-out gags were definitely not done with an eye to sparing the pencil. They thought animation couldn’t have story, characterization, or intelligent humor? Batman: The Animated Series, Animaniacs, Daria, Mission Hill… why, it’s almost like the form doesn’t dictate quality after all!
Am I picking on Hanna-Barbera? At least two whole shows on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim picked on it as their entire basis: Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. Both of them did more worthwhile with those characters than Hanna-Barbera ever did, and that’s not even talking about the weird Jonny Quest pseudo-spin-off that is the Venture Brothers.
Yes, we still remember their characters. They rode the fell engines of mass media homogenization as well as they could be rode, and as long. They got their characters onto as many surfaces as possible, and the best work anyone ever did with them was defacing them.
Birrrrrdmannnnnnn
I’ll take the case!
<raises hand>
The recent Be Cool Scooby Doo was sort of a reboot, sticking absurdist comedy into the cliche storylines. This show was kind of weird, it was like they couldn’t decide whether or not to stick to the new formula. IMHO the episodes that are the most absurd are the best episodes. The parody episodes are good as well.
My local comic shop never carried more than three issues of any of the HB comics except Future Quest. I thought it was because they stopped publishing them.
For the most part I considered HB second rate to just about everyone: WB, Jay Ward, etc.
A few I sort of liked such as Yogi Bear and Top Cat, but that was far different from the others.
In particular, I did not like Tom & Jerry. Compare to the similarly themed Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. If you’ve seen one T&J you’ve seen them all. Very repetitive and quite simple. RR&WEC, OTOH just had amazing, complex stuff in them. Some real humor.
you know the odd thing ? in the late 60s early 70s MGM hired chuck jones who created road runner and coyote for a few years and he created some of the most mentally and physically sadistic but funny as hell cartoons to the point one was banned for almost 25 years from tv
after the grim fiasco that was “scooby doo mystery incorporated” that was so disliked it took CN almost 3 years to finish it (in fact I didn’t get to see the the last 5 eps and the ending until boomerang reran the entire series like 2 years after it ended ) they decided to go with goofy/funny ala teen titans go
I think the animation threw people off but the running gags were hilarious tho like daphnes puppet obsession…
My dad was an exec at CBS when they held the copyright on Peanuts. A woman asked him if it would be OK to use Snoopy pictures to advertise the school fair. He said “Let’s pretend you didn’t ask me that.”
Remember the Flintstones was just “The Honeymooners” set in cartoonland. I think there was a desire for a short time to have cartoons imitate real sit coms.
And “Top Cat” was a feline version of “Sgt. Bilko” mixed with The Bowery Boys.
“The Jetsons” were a futuristic version of every family sitcom featuring a bumbling father that had been aired on TV and radio over the previous 30 years.
Actually, all of this can be summed in the following “Simpsons” clip.
http://www.simpsonsworld.com/video/320760387605
Although it should be noted while H-B was most notorious for doing this, pretty much every animation studio did this. Even Disney wasn’t above it. Their Prof. Ludwig Von Drake character was a steal … I mean … homage to Sid Caesar’s Professor.