Jonny Quest was hawking PF Flyers for a while, the Flintstones were plugging Winston cigarettes!
(Half-jokingly) Wait… Was there a Scrappy-Doo breakfast cereal?
I still buy them and I’m 65 years old.
About 10 years ago my grandson (6 at the time) saw an unopened Hot Wheels car I had bought sitting on the kitchen table. He asked if he could have it.
No.
But not during the episode.
Us kids could tell the difference.
OK I had to see what the fuss was all about. There must be a video somewhere. Is he as bad an the consensus says?
Oh My GOD! He’s worse.
I lasted 1:15 seconds.
He talks! Clearly. But that attitude! STFU, Scrappy!
So, the big mystery is, if Scooby only rawks ra rittle rith ran raccent, where did scrappy get his perfect english? Cross bred with a human? 
Most cartoon dogs can talk; the sober ones better than the hay burners.
I think there were two factors.
The first was the older crowd who watch TOS in first run. To them, adding Wesley was about inserting children into an adult- themed show. (Not that mind of adult show.) So you take military adventures on exploratory and scientific and delicate diplomatic missions and insert a teenager. Not just as a peripheral character (like transporter chief Miles O’Brien), but an equal part of the ensemble. Put him in a position of authority and real work assignments. That seemed very much like “Cousin Oliver”.
The second factor was the “he’s so smart” element. It was definitely a thing that “Wesley saves the day” was an irritating trend. I mean, you have a dozen highly trained professionals that are flumoxed, and then here comes this 15 yr old kid to solve all their problems. Thus Wesley drew more ire for being to smart. And he was a bit arrogant about it.
As teen at the time (I’m one year older than Wil Wheaton, it was interesting to have a similar viewpoint character - except when he was being an insufferable know-it-all (like I never was). But the “Wesley saves the day thing” even irritated me.
If you have a teen in a situation like that, it’s because they have already demonstrated exceptional ability, which means they will show up the adults occasionally. They are a level above them. The story potential should be in exploring how he still needs to be a kid even while he’s in an adult high risk environment. I think they did try that, but it didn’t come across very successfully.
One, Wes isn’t a Cousin Oliver because he was there from the beginning. He’s not disrupting an established group.
Two, in the beginning, most of the characters had annoying traits. Did anyone think Riker was anything but Kirk-lite? That Deanna the Babe Counselor added anything? I sense no. How about the endless parade of disposable chief engineers, with the show specifically trying to be its own show by not having the CE be a major character?
Three, the Wes saves the Enterprise episodes are really about 3-5, depending on how you define “Wes” “Saves” and “Enterprise”. Does being part of a team count? Does it count if it is just Geordi or Dr Crusher or Picard being saved, and not the whole ship? And how does it count if the reason it needed saving was that Wes caused the problem?
And The Game is so bad it doesn’t matter whether is was Wes or Data, it still both sucked and blew.
Data probably saved it more times, and you could argue “a wizard did it” for all the near-magic abilities he had.
I’m talking about Transformers, GI Joe, My Little Pony, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, Rainbow Brite, M.A.S.K., She-Ra, and He-Man.
Don’t forget the original 1/2 hour commercial, “Linus The Lionhearted”, starring mascots of Post cereals.
Note that Star Trek’s creator was named Eugene Wesley Roddenberry, and that by the 1980s a Star Trek fan could recognize Ensign Mary/Marty Sue in a Vulcan minute
Mark Evanier didn’t create Scrappy-Doo, but he was in the delivery room when the little guy arrived, so to speak. Scrappy Days – News From ME
Was “Crispy Critters” in usage anywhere before the cereal?
That was a really interesting read. Thank you.
It was. It is a nice look inside the business. As a kid, I dreamed of being in the biz. So glad I did not!
But, similarly, even today, Shatner can’t understand the hate for STV. When you’re too close to the problem, you can’t see the issues clearly. You can’t hate your children, even if they are anti-social.
And he wrote Scrappy even more scrappy? And he was toned down? Oy.
Dammit! another hour lost to reading TV Tropes.
You also have to remember there were only about 7 channels on then-- maybe 10 if you had cable (the selling point of cable then was that the picture didn’t go out in bad weather). Parents and kids watched TV together, so kids watched Sonny and Cher. I knew perfectly well who they were.
I knew who Maude and Kojak were, for that matter, but yeah, they didn’t fit Scooby’s paradigm of goofiness, or something.
This is probably what killed my interest more than Scrappy. I truly hated Scrappy from the first time he opened his mouth, but losing the skeptic angle was like some kind of lost innocence for me.
7?!? [Four Yorkshiremen]Luxury![/Four Yorkshiremen]
There were three networks—four if you count PBS—and I don’t remember any other channels in my area before we got cable. Big cities might have had independent local channels, but as far as shows that were available nationally, there were only four channels—unless I’m forgetting something?
Yeah, to get back to the original thinking, I always had the distinct impression that Wesley was brought on board as a sort of reinforcement of the whole “Enterprise is not a warship and has families living aboard” sort of thing they harped on early in the series. By putting a teenager in the main cast as the son of one of the principal characters, it reinforced that pretty effectively. They also probably felt like it was interesting to youth, but as someone who’s a few months younger than Wil Wheaton, it seemed strange and vaguely patronizing, as if teenagers weren’t already interested in the adventures of Picard, Riker, Data, Worf, etc…