Cartoon Network in General

In those days it was the Scooby channel, as in they aired it a lot. There was a programming block dedicated to Scooby at one point...

I remember the old "Mystery Inc" block, which heavily featured Scooby but also some of the more obscure Hannah-Barbera mystery shows, not like, Josie or Jabberjaw obscure, but some old Scooby knockoff cartoon called "Beaufort."

Funny to think that the original concept for Scooby Doo was to have them be a singing group (though it would perhaps better explain why they traveled so much).

... like every single other Hanna-Barbara cartoon at that time.

They still did as best as they could with the songs over the chase scenes in every episode, which was pretty good bubblegum pop music. I still hum the one about the ostrich every so often.

Would've made sense with guys like Casey Kasem on board. Wonder why they chose not to?

I'm pretty sure Scooby Doo was the first Hannah-Barbera mystery vehicle, actually, before Josie or Jabberjaw. It was their first product after the Moral Guardians killed their line of Action Cartoons (Birdman, Space Ghost, et al).

I think the only Meddling Kids groups that actually were music groups were those of Jabberjaw and Josie (which was based on the Archie comics characters anyway; do they count?), weren't they? I mean, the Speed Buggy crew was some kind of a pit stop crew that built the eponymous character, and the Funky Phantom crew was just a bunch of random teens to my memory, for example.

Technically the first products that they brought out after the end of the "weirdo superhero" fuss were Wacky Races and The Banana Splits.

I don't think Josie formed the Pussycats until Archie gave H-B the rights to do a series.

I'm still not "in love with an ostrich".

Do the Chattanooga Cats count? I don't remember any specific plots, but I think at least a couple dealt with typical Hanna Barbera mystery solving. And weren't there some Flintstones episodes where Teenage Pebbles and Bam-Bamm formed a band that got up in the typical shanenigans?

The Cattanooga Cats were more in the tradition of the Banana Splits than Scooby-Doo.

EDIT: What about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids? The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan?

edited 13th Dec '16 4:20:02 PM by Aldo930

Man, Aldo reminded me how much I'd love a new cartoon in the style of Wacky Races. Imagine a show like that, with that variety of characters, so many opportunities for jokes, a setup that allows for as many episodes as the show needs, but with actually way better animation than any Hanna-Barbara product ever had.

You know what, fuck it, Nintendo said that they're going to start making their own animated movies, they should make a series of Mario Kart shorts.

I swear at one time not long ago, there was going to be a remake of Wacky Races.

There was. I forgot what it was gonna be called.

Yeah, I remember being excited for that, but then it just never came to be. I still want a show like that to be a thing.

They brought it back as a DC comic early this year... but apparently it was pretty bad; apparently they went over-the-top grimdark on the setting. Because grimdark apocalyptic settings and Wacky Races totally mix, right?

Like, they apparently gave Dick Dastardly a tragic backstory and everything. (What makes it even worse is that nothing in it explained why he was driven to stop the pigeon.)

I'd have appreciated it if it was an apocalyptic setting with the same wacky tone as the show - then it could have been pretty good. (Like Death Race 2000, let's say.)

edited 15th Dec '16 2:59:26 PM by Aldo930

DC made a bunch of comics that turned some Hanna-Barbera cartoons grimdark. They had friggin' Jim Lee of all people make a Scooby-Doo comic.

I heard the Jonny Quest crossover one was pretty good, though. They had pretty much every Hanna Barbera superhero character - Space Ghost, Birdman, the Mighty Mightor, the Impossibles...

From what I hear, the Flintstones one is among the best things to come out of the Flintstones franchise. Haven't started it yet, but I have the first issue on the desk in front of me.

And make no mistake, when I say I want a new Wacky Races style cartoon, I do mean an animated cartoon. I feel like that'd be really uninteresting to read and just wouldn't work in comic form. Need movement for those jokes to work.

The Flintstones comic is fucking *hilarious.* It doesn't go full grimdark like the Scooby Doo one, it injects that stuff subtly and it makes it a riot of pathos.

you can see good stuff in this GAF thread.

The Scooby Gang was originally HB's attempt to ape the formula of Filmation's Archie show, which is why they were going to be a singing group (like The Archies). Scooby's name was going to be "Too Much" and he was going to be a sheep dog, just like Jughead's dog Hot Dog. The show was going to be called Mysteries 5, and then Too Much (after the dog). HB felt it was getting to be a little too close of a copy of The Archies, so they dropped the singing group element and changed Too Much to a great dane named Scooby Doo (after one of the producers heard Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Night). You can easily see, during the first season of Scooby Doo, how all of the elements present would have supported them being a singing group (the musical numbers were supposed to be their songs).

Whether or not Josie became Josie and the Pussycats because of the cartoon is a matter of some dispute, apparently. The folks at Archie Comics seem to feel that they approached HB with the idea of turning the characters into a singing group, while HB claims that it was their own idea. The characters (who had previously been essential an Archie-style cast, set in college with the genders reversed) first appeared as a rock band in the comics, but the show was already in production at that point, and debuted a few months later.

edited 15th Dec '16 6:19:40 PM by Robbery

I don't see why people accuse the current higher-ups at CN as being Moral Guardians. The characters of Teen Titans Go! frequently engage in antisocial behavior, Steven Universe is able to get away with a lot of gay subtext, and Regular Show and Adventure Time, despite their reputations for adult innuendo, lasting as long as they did.

The only show I think fits those accusations is the new PPG, with the limitations on violence (punches are punctuated with a flashes), sex (the removal is Miss Bellum for her rack in spite of her IQ), and attacks on conservatism (one of the new villains is an MRA).

Those first two are because the writers are trying to copy Steven Universe's progressivism without bothering to think why the show is progressive in the first place, and I don't see how the third one is a bad thing.

Either way, the moral guardians thing is just rumor made up by people who are angry at CN screwing over Adventure Time and Regular Show so much.

edited 16th Dec '16 1:15:13 PM by AdricDePsycho

PPG '16 just came off as kind of pretentious to me, to be quite honest. That's why I never really started watching it.

And in all honesty, if the Moral Guardians rumor really was just started off like how Adric is saying, then I wouldn't be surprised. This is the same fandom that spawned a rumor that Uncle Grandpa was going to be really racist towards Garnet in ''Say Uncle" just because they were mad that the shows were crossing over after all.

edited 16th Dec '16 1:32:22 PM by kablammin45

I'm referring to the Adventure Time and Regular Show fandoms, not the Steven Universe fandom. I'd prefer not to get into bashing a fandom I happen to be in, please.

Even then, pretentious is the wrong word to use. Blatant cash in with shitty animation, poor behind the scenes issues, and the executives flat out lying to people in order to make the show look "progressive" is what I say. I'm still pissed at how they fucking lied about that one episode being a metaphor for transgenderism, and it showed how little care they have when not only actual trans people took their word seriously and were insulted by it, but the writer even had to come out and say the network was lying.

edited 16th Dec '16 1:40:54 PM by AdricDePsycho