A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: Complete 1st Season (review)

Here's yet another incarnation of the classic mystery-comedy cartoon series, and an entirely superfluous one. Think Scooby-Doo Babies: the teenaged characters from the original series have been shrunk down to elementary-school size, and the mysteries they solve are commensurately smaller, too -- a stolen bike and a Headless Skateboarder are the orders of the day. And, of course, there's not so much of the barely disguised stoner humor that ensure that the first Scooby-Doo will live in the annals of pop culture. These 13 episodes from the series first Saturday-morning seasonin 1988 are "geared toward preschoolers and kids," according to Warner Home Video, and indeed, only very small children will not be bored with this, yet there's tons better stuff very small children could be watching, if they must watch TV at all. (The punny episode titles -- "Cheddar Alive," "Now Museum, Now You Don't" -- are way cleverer than the episodes themselves.) The image does not appear to have been remastered but it's crisp and sharp; the original mono sounds remains, however. Extras include stuff that won't be of any interest to the targeted tykes, including background material on the characters, plot comparisons with the series Scooby-Doo Detective Agency, animatics, and more. [buy at Amazon]

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