Esoteric? Perhaps. But it’s been bugging me for awhile.
After the original series, there was a Scooby Doo relaunch featuring Shaggy and Scooby, and Daphne. I believe at one point they mentioned that Fred and Velma had taken other jobs, but maybe other fans can help with the specifics.
Was there ever an explanation for the phasing out of these characters? Were they considered superfluous?
I do believe Fred left to become a mystery writer, and Velma became a research scientist. I’m fairly certain they said that at some point in the miserable abomination The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo. (Yeah, I watched it. I was 8 at the time, and it’s not like I actually enjoyed it or anything.)
As for why they got rid of Freddy and Velma (actually, come to think of it, didn’t 13 Ghosts just have Daphne, Scrappy, and some twerpy little kid in a track suit?), presumably they realized that pretty much nobody liked Freddy. He was a boring non-entity with nothing to hold the viewer’s interest. Shaggy and Scooby were funny, Velma was smart and usually very helpful, Daphne was pretty, and Freddy was…a big blob of blah. I have no idea why they got rid of Velma.
I don’t know, I didn’t hate Fred. He didn’t seem to do as much, but he came up with some good clues and theories.
Besides, I’m more interested in the reasoning behind Hanna-Barbara phasing those two characters out. It’s not like they wanted to pursue other opportunities, being ink and all.
According to this, Nicole Jaffe (Velma) left H-B in 1973, though she returned to the role for four videos. Her TV role was taken over by Patricia Stevens, who evidently left the busines in 1984.
Frank Man of a Thousand Voices Welker has pretty much always been busy with one project or another, they probably had trouble fitting into his schedule.
Fred and Velma were the only two characters who NEEDED to get jobs, really. Daphne’s parents were bubble-bath magnates, so she could sponge off them. And Shaggy and Scooby probably were quite happy being shiftless bums.
Bubble bath…sponge off…
Heh.
In the recent videos and the newest TV series (‘What’s New Scooby Doo?’), the classic Scooby Gang is intact.
Frank Welker’s doing both Freddy and Scooby, and Casey Kasem’s back doing Shaggy. Mindy Cohn’s the new voice for Velma.
So did they do the episode where Velma steals the Mystery Machine with her friends Tootie, Blair and Jo and crashes it, ending up working in the cafeteria at the prestigious Eastland School for Girls?
Maybe they were on a quest to throw Scrappy-Doo into the fires of a giant volcano?
Ah, the giant, simultaneous, multi-mind, rolling continuation dream of every Scooby fan…
Tonight, on a very special episode of “Scooby-Doo,” Shaggy huffs an entire cannister of nitrous oxide and drives the Mystery Machine into the Gulf of Mexico.