Scooby-Doo: A Legacy With Appeal That's No Mystery

Come on, Scooby-Doo, I see you

pretending you got a sliver.

But you're not foolin' me, 'cause I can see

the way you shake and shiver.

Takamoto has other credits, too. We don't mean to slight them. He learned illustration from his fellow internees at the Manzanar camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. He worked as an illustrator and layout artist at Disney before moving to Hanna-Barbera in 1961. He created Astro, the Jetsons' dog, and did design work on "Cinderella," "The Flintstones," "Josie and the Pussycats" and "Peter Pan." He co-directed the 1973 animated version of "Charlotte's Web." He married and had children.

But his masterwork was for a cartoon show originally called "Mystery Five," about a quintet of kids who tool around the country solving silly mysteries. (Gasp! The Snow Ghost is not a real ghost! It's old man Mills in a costume, scaring people away from the gold mine!)

Takamoto drew the group's mascot as a misshapen Great Dane, named for a Frank Sinatra scat at the end of "Strangers in the Night": "Scooby dooby do." He didn't have spots at first. His jaw was too big. His back was bent. When running, his legs spun around in circles. He bumped into things a lot. He and Shaggy (Scooby's human alter ego, voiced by Casey Kasem) would start running from the villain, about 16 minutes into each episode, and you could cue the theme music for a chase montage. At the end, Velma, the smart girl, would find a clue. Daphne, the babe, would need to be rescued. Fred? Fred seemed to be a 16-year-old with an ascot. I dunno.

As it turned out, Scooby had star power, had edge. The rest of the cast became supporting characters. He was the one with the pratfalls, the funny lines. Every block had some kid with a dog named Scooby. By the time 1969 kids turned into 1970s teens, they were seeing Scoob and Shaggy as stoners who made ganja jokes. They had the munchies, man, all the time, don't you get it? It's a doobie riff tucked into a kid's cartoon. How hip is that ? And Scoob had that I'm-so-high giggle, that thing where his head went, like, up and down. (Takamoto reportedly called it all urban myth.)

Like good art, Scooby has outlived his creator. There are new live-action movies, cartoons, direct-to-video animated movies. They come out all the time. They don't have any original ideas, but then they never really did.

They had Scooby, a creature not fully understood without the benefit of a Saturday morning sugar rush, and his careful creator, who knew a man's best friend was sometimes his pen.