Was Scooby-Doo based on Enid Blyton's Famous Five?

[CalMeacham]

I recently read Edgar Cantero’s novel Meddling Kids. From the title and the premise (years later, four kids and their dog, who solved mysteries together – generally unmasking someone who was planting false evidence of the supernatural – reunite to revisit one of their old cases that turns out to have Real, Lovecraftian (actually more Ashton Clark Smithian) roots) I would have thought that it was based on the Scooby Doo series. But something seemed “off” about that. Before I actually read the book and learned that Cantero, by his own admission, intended it as “The Famous Five meet Lovecraft”.

This lead me to look up The Famous Five, which I’d never heard of before. It’s a series of books written by British author Enid Blyton from 1942-1963 and published in Britain, about – well, four kids and their dog, etc. ( The Famous Five - Wikipedia )

Blyton’s books were published in Britain and Europe, and turned into movies, comics, TV series, cartoons, etc. in Britain and Europe. I’d never encountered them before, but they were obviously a Very Big Deal.

There are differences between Famous Five and the Scooby Gang – the Five are younger, riding bikes rather than The Mystery Machine. Their characters aren’t exactly the same (although we get the strong male lead and The Bookworm and The Dog). Cantero definitely has the Famous Five more I mind, although he makes some concessions to Scooby culture (Zoinx creek is one location in the story. And, of course, the title of the book), probably to help rope in American audiences unfamiliar with the Five.
The set-up of Five Meddling Kids and their Dog is too damned similar to be coincidental, and Blyton’s bunch was clearly there first. I know that American producers frequently borrow or outright steal ideas from elsewhere in the world. So did Scooby rip off the Famous Five?

None of the histories of the creation of Scooby even suggest the idea. Even before it was revealed that they’d based the four on the characters from the late 1950s/early 1960s TV show The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis/Dobie, it was obvious to me that they had gotten the characters from there – Shaggy was too obviously Maynard G. Krebs, and Velma and Zelda practically had the same name, fer cryin’ out loud! But apparently one early title for the series was Mysteries Five, which is suspiciously similar to Famous Give (although at that point it was apparently five humans, and no dog). That the series was to have five characters, and that one got turned into a dog, and had a title similar to Blyton’s really suggests that this was another case of strip-mining non-American sources for an idea. But not even the Wikipedia page on Scooby Doo suggests any sort of influence. ( Scooby-Doo - Wikipedia )

what do you think?

[Sparky812]

It’s been a while since I read the Famous Five books as a kid in the 70s so I don’t remember much but I do have a vivid memory of one of my teachers reading one of them to us in class!

I was also an avid Saturday morning cartoon viewer but I don’t think it ever occurred to me that they were similar. IMHO, it’s a pretty standard formula repeated in many children’s books, TV, and film.

[GuanoLad]

Probably, for all the reasons you list, but not necessarily. The dynamic could easily be reached organically too, and Hanna Barbera rehashed it out again and again multiple times.

If you want to watch an excellent version of Famous Five reduced down to the core elements, Five Go Mad In Dorset, a parody made by The Comic Strip Presents is highly recommended.

The problem with Enid Blyton is she was so very twee and jolly about what should really be thrilling and harrowing adventures for kids so young, which makes me think there should be a way to adapt them into a more Indiana Jones-style full on epic period piece, but without the stilted awkwardness.

[ElvisL1ves]

There is persistent folklore in western Massachusetts that each of the Scooby Doo characters represents a member of the Five Colleges consortium of the Amherst area. Fred and Daphne, the preppies, stand for Amherst College and Mount Holyoke. Velma, the lipstick lesbian, is Smith. Shaggy, the stoner, is Hampshire College. And Scooby, much larger than the others and smarter than he looks, is UMass.

[RealityChuck]

The Famous Five were practically unknown in the states.

About the only reference I’d seen of them before Scooby Do was John Lennon’s “The Famous Five through Woenow Abbey,” and few Americans knew what he was parodying.

OTOH, The Happy Hollisters had five kids who solved crimes.

[CalMeacham]

@ElvisL1ves

There is persistent folklore in western Massachusetts that each of the Scooby Doo characters represents a member of the Five Colleges consortium of the Amherst area. Fred and Daphne, the preppies, stand for Amherst College and Mount Holyoke. Velma, the lipstick lesbian, is Smith. Shaggy, the stoner, is Hampshire College. And Scooby, much larger than the others and smarter than he looks, is UMass.

I only heard this recently. As others have pointed out, Hampshire’s founding in 1970 postdates the Scooby gang, so this seems pretty unlikely as an inspiration.

[ElvisL1ves]

I did call it folklore.

BTW, Scooby seems likely to outlive Hampshire College, too.

[Wrenching_Spanners]

Just a small aside that there’s a current set of parody Enid Blyton books in the UK book stores.

Five Give Up the Booze (Enid Blyton for Grown Ups): Amazon.co.uk: Bruno Vincent:...

(If the link doesn’t work, search for “Five Give Up the Booze”.)

So if the Mystery Machine is traded in for a hybrid van, Daphne joins the #MeToo movement, or Fred becomes a hipster, you’ll know where it came from.

[CalMeacham]

@Wrenching_Spanners

Just a small aside that there’s a current set of parody Enid Blyton books in the UK book stores.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Give-Booze-Blyton-Grown/dp/1786482266
(If the link doesn’t work, search for “Five Give Up the Booze”.)

So if the Mystery Machine is traded in for a hybrid van, Daphne joins the #MeToo movement, or Fred becomes a hipster, you’ll know where it came from.

Boy, there’s a bunch of them, isn’t there.

[Folly]

There is also ‘The Boxcar Children.’ A series with the original novel published in 1924. (Then heavily revised and republished starting in the 40s.)

The Boxcar Children

Interesting how commonly it’s 2 boys, 2 girls, and a dog.

After the first novel, the children become amateur sleuths, and the subsequent series involves the children solving various mysteries and occasionally traveling to other locations as they do so. They stumble across a mystery no matter where they are, whether on vacation or in their own backyard. They usually solve the mystery with very little adult intervention, although adults are present in the novel (the author said she wrote about mostly-unsupervised children because that would appeal to children). Some of the mysteries border on the supernatural, although the practical Henry and Jessie always find the practical reason for anything that appears other-worldly. Most of the mysteries involve thefts and usually involve the Alden children helping someone they know.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@CalMeacham

This lead me to look up The Famous Five, which I’d never heard of before. It’s a series of books written by British author Enid Blyton from 1942-1963 and published in Britain, about – well, four kids and their dog, etc. ( The Famous Five - Wikipedia )

Blyton’s books were published in Britain and Europe, and turned into movies, comics, TV series, cartoons, etc. in Britain and Europe. I’d never encountered them before, but they were obviously a Very Big Deal.

I’ve never read any of them, but I did read at least one of Blyton’s “Adventure” Series books when I was a kid. (Instead of four kids and a dog, they feature four kids and a parrot.)

I observed in another thread:

@Thudlow_Boink

British literature seems to have had a fairly strong tradition of books involving groups of boys and girls (often siblings) having adventures together, as in the works of E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome, and Enid Blyton; and I think Lewis was thinking along those lines when he wrote The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe.