Ok, I’ve narrowed it down to the fact that they represented 5 Massachusetts colleges…still looking for names. I know Shaggy represented a school known for being VERY liberal (lots of pot smoking), and Velma was possibly MIT. I’m thinking Fred was Harvard. Not sure yet. Definitely don’t quote me.
I ask not what you can do for me, but what you can do for me right now.
Is Hampshire College in Mass or Conn? Shag could have been from there.
Where was Daph from?
And the unforgettable theme song. This is from memory so I could have some of it wrong.
(Everybody sing along!)
Scooby dooby do, where are you? We got some work to do now.
Scooby dooby do, where are you? We need some help from you now.
Come on Scooby-Doo, I see you pretend you have a sliver(?)
Your not fooling me 'cause I can see the way you shake and shiver.
You know we got a mystery to solve so Scooby-Doo get ready for your act-- how 'bout that.
And Scooby-Doo if you come thru for us you’ll have yourself a scooby-snack-- that’s a fact!
Scooby dooby doo, where are you? Your ready and your willing.
We can count on you, Scooby-Doo, I know you’ll catch that villan.
I have a CD of old cartoon songs re-done by punk rock bands. I love this CD.
Maybe the 5-college consortium?
Fred: Amherst
Daphne: Mt. Holyoke
Velma: Smith
Shaggy: Hampshire
Scooby: Umass
Hmmm. Shaggy looks like he definitely ‘tuned in, turned on, dropped out’; but Fred and seem mature and clean-cut enough to be a freshman at business school. I’d say that they’re either A) just out of high school, and spending a year travelling the country before settling down for college; B) on college break; or C) all independently wealthy from various inheritances (hey, you never see their parents, now do you? Every once in a while, you get one of Shaggy’s great-uncles popping out of the woodwork, but never a “so how’s your mother” out of them. Hmmm…
SR hit the nail on the head. Besides, given the camera view when she doesn’t have her glasses on, she suffers from a rare condition called ‘fuzzy-sightedness’, for which you can’t make contact lenses.
Replace the first letter in every word with an ‘R’, and that’s Scooby-talk. “Raggy, ri rink re’re rin rouble!” Hey, not only do the kids notice, but sometimes the adults do, too. Is it a mystery? Fred and Velma can’t believe in ghosts and supernatural, but talking dogs are a-OK? Maybe they’ve all been doing too many Scooby snacks.
Well, when the gang splits up to investigate, it’s invariably Fred off with Daphne, Velma off by herself, and Shaggy with Scooby. I leave inferences to be drawn by the astute reader, but my opinion is that Fred and Daphne are making that Mystery Machine rock, and occasionally inviting Velma in for a three-way. She’s not proud of that, but when it’s the only way a geeky chick like her can boff a hot scarf-wearing stud like Fred, well…
[quote]
• The dog has a “nephew?” Like Donald’s and Mickey’s purported “newphews,” huh?
[QUOTE]
A-yep.
About the same, quality-wise.
As a final note, I heard one of my friends saying that the kids in Scooby-Doo were based (in looks) on the characters from ‘The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis’, with Shaggy being the Bob Denver/Maynard G. Krebs character, Fred on the Warren Beatty character, etc. Having never seen ‘Dobie Gillis’, I can’t really say.
JMCJ
“Y’know, I would invite y’all to go feltch a dead goat, but that would be abuse of a perfectly good dead goat and an insult to all those who engage in that practice for fun.” -weirddave, set to maximum flame
The formula for the show came from it’s extremely carbon copy predecessors: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, and Speed Buggy. They always had some good looking hero teen, his pretty girlfriend, a gawky hippy teen guy, and a dog.
Jiminy, I had no idea I had stumbled onto such a treasure trove of Scooby-dom!
Connor, this is a short (350-word) humor piece for Movieline; I won’t be writing it till this weekend, so we still have two days. Not for kids—it’ll be a sarcastic review of whatever video it was I bought (I’ll let you know tomorrow which one it is).
So Scooby seems to be an ancestor of the Jetson’s dog, huh?
And that dog!!
(everybody always forgets that part)
Pretty much all of Hanna Barbera’s dog characters are voiced by Don Messick. Probably including Muttley.
http://www.funnymail.com/cgi/joke.cgi?category=infldrug&id=88576
Sorry - couldn’t help it.
And that dog!!
(everybody always forgets that part)
OK, here’s some bio info that includes full names and little known facts:
http://sura1.jlab.org/~wether/scoobct.html
I still can’t find the college info, but I think Greenbean’s on to it.
We also can’t forget Scooby’s cousin Scooby-Dumb who would occasionally.
Still looking…
I ask not what you can do for me, but what you can do for me right now.
Nope, not so much on the Mass. college scene. There are a LOT of links out there. Scooby seems to be making a comeback. Here’s a really good link I found. They’re all on a web-ring, so they’re easy to maneuver around in.
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Studio/4966/scoobs.htm
Good luck, Eve.
I ask not what you can do for me, but what you can do for me right now.
Ooh Ooh Ooh! I love Scooby Doo! I even have lots of Scooby sounds on my computer (my maximize window sound is Shaggy saying, “Look at all this groovy stuff!”) - hehehehe.
Everyone’s given you really good descriptions of the characters and premise of the show, so I really have nothing to add in that regard. But you might enjoy listening to some Scooby wav files. You can find a bunch of them here.
And here’s the one that says, “And I’d’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for these blasted kids and their dog!”
I always thought of Scooby and the gang as the hippy version of Nancy Drew and her crew, as they solved similary kinds of mysteries. Can’t wait to hear what you think of it after you’ve had a chance to watch your tape. Enjoy! 
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank
“Mom, he’s a neo Nazi! He’s a doctor also? Well…” - WallyM7
God, I hate SCOOBY-DOO.
SCOOBY-DOO was the avatar of all those revolting Saturday morning cartoons of the 1970s, the ones where there’s always a group of four teenage kids and they always have a “rock band” and the goofy one is always the “drummer” and they’re always solving “mysteries.”
I have no idea why the Cartoon Network is dedicating itself to revisiting this horror upon us, and why everyone’s falling for it. You’re all being “ironic,” aren’t you?
If it wasn’t for SCOOBY-DOO, we’d all still be making and watching cartoons on the level of the old Max Fleischers and Felix-the-Cats…or at least FRANKENSTEIN JUNIOR and FEARLESS FLY.
Uke
Well, calm down, Ike, I assure you my column will be written in my usual high-irony, one-eyebrow-lifted, Dorothy Parker style.
I will, of course, credit y’all with my immense knowledge of Scooby-dom (not to be confused, it seems, with “Scooby-dum”).
I might add that I am very proud that my column in the May issue (on an ice-cream factory video) mentions Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”—this, in a magazine with Freddie Prinze, Jr. on the cover!
For whatever it’s worth, Movieline is my favorite industry mag. WAY more sarcastic than EW. What month will this be appearing in, Eve?
Or quite possibly Clutch Cargo. Or more of those “Daffy Duck vs. Speedy Gonzales” WB cartoons that turned forty years of brilliant tradition into forty minutes of shlock.
Trust me, I’ve looked at some of the cartoons I watched as a kid. I think the main reason that Scooby-Doo get a revival is that he was one of the few Saturday morning cartoons from the '70’s that was actually worth reviving.
JMCJ
“Y’know, I would invite y’all to go feltch a dead goat, but that would be abuse of a perfectly good dead goat and an insult to all those who engage in that practice for fun.” -weirddave, set to maximum flame
And here I was assuming that “needing Scooby-Doo help” was a euphemism for “needing assistance scoring some marijuana”…
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
For what its worth (not much) I once wrote a love (?) song that had a bit of Scoobi-ness in it:
“If you’ll be my Shaggy, I’ll be your Scooby-doo, and I will save my Scooby snacks and share them just with you”
Makes me all teary-eyed just thinkin’ about it.