What’s New, Scooby-Doo? is the 2002-2005 ninth incarnation of the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo, and a revival of the original show Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.
It was the first time the franchise was revived in over a decade. The animated series was developed and produced by Warner Bros. Animation. This is the first Scooby-Doo series to have Mindy Cohn and Grey DeLisle voice Velma and Daphne respectively, as well as the last to have Casey Kasem voice Shaggy.
The new show follows the same format as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, but is reimagined as taking place in the 21st century and is more “realistic” than the previous, more cartoony incarnations, and features music from contemporary genres and all-new, original sound effects to replace the classic Hanna-Barbera sound effects. Even a distinctive thunderclap sound that was used frequently on older Scooby-Doo TV series was very rarely used on the show. A laugh track was only used for the Halloween special.
The classic formula was also frequently parodied throughout (in a manner similar to A Pup Named Scooby-Doo), including the line “And I would’ve gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.” As such, it returns to the formulaic version of humans in monster disguises, rather than the real monsters and ghosts of the prior four direct-to-video films (or the 1980s versions that preceded them).
The pop-punk band Simple Plan is strongly connected to What’s New, Scooby-Doo?. They perform the theme song (written by Rich Dickerson), and appeared as themselves in the episode “Simple Plan and the Invisible Madman.” Two of their songs appeared in chase scenes: “I’d Do Anything” in the episode “It’s Mean, It’s Green, It’s the Mystery Machine”, and “You Don’t Mean Anything” in “Simple Plan and the Invisible Madman”. Also, they contributed to the theatrical movie Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.
“When Simple Plan’s driving, hooky little theme song for What’s New Scooby-Doo?: Complete 1st Season came blasting out, my little kids went absolutely nuts, and they sat for over two hours, watching all of the new Scooby cartoons gathered here. And when it was done, after an hour or so, they asked to watch them again. I guess you can’t ask for a better recommendation than that…” Paul Mavis, DVD Talk
Buy What’s New, Scooby-Doo? on DVD from Amazon.com
