u/GravityFalls6_18

I might be biased since it was my first introduction to Scooby-Doo, it was through a first season DVD, since ive never gotten one from season two I dont have much contact with it, but I'll start watching it someday.

At first glance it might seem like just cliché, characters getting babyfied happened in a lot of cartoon and still do (We Baby Bears and Dramarama being the most recent ones I remember) but this show managed to reivent the series quite nicely with new stuff, cool art style, nice designs, funny new jokes and more. It was the series after some years after 13 Ghosts had been cancelled and the series would need to reinvent itself again if it wanted to stay relevant, and this show managed to keep the formula nice and fresh for more time until Whats New Scooby-Doo launched.

The designs for the characters are all nice and cute, specially Velma, Shaggy and Scooby (I hope there are plushies of him), although the art style seems more childish than older versions it works for the tone and this world in general nicely. It has a bunch of very iconic monsters, the ones I vively remember are Al Cabone, Boogedy Bones, Dr Croaker, Chef Pierre Goulash and the Ice Demon, but Ive seen people also love Chickenstein and the Ghost of Pevis Parker (I didnt watch their episodes as a kid unfortunately) which is great since there was some time without iconic villains.

I also like the portrayal of the characters. They may seem stereotypical (they are) but its funny and endearing. They look and act like a bunch of friends having fun and solving mysteries and they have to. Fred being more like a conspiracy theorist and focusing on blaming Red Herring, Velma with her super computer and talking more about clues and Daphne showing more as a rich girl and a lot of the time saying how ghosts arent real and being more active altogether. Shaggy and Scooby mostly act the same as ever but also as little kids. I think this show does better with characterization than Mystery Inc. which is a show that gets a lot more love (the story is great but the annoying personalities they gave their characters are not in my opinion).

The fact that the characters are kids even leave room for some plot points to happen, like Shaggy bringing newspaper to houses as a part time job, them going into a comic festival, a babysitter, etc. Which are things that they normally wouldnt do in other shows, just like this one likes to put some modern stuff (modern for the time) in its episodes.

Some of the new stuff also shines new light in the series, the treehouse being a base of operations, Scooby's doghouse and the new reocurring characters (like Red Herring) are all pretty enternaining. The jokes and style serve somr pretty funny scenes, this series does more with its cartoony styles, doing more impossible and toon force stuff than most of the other series, even doing things like talking to the audience, teleport through phone calls, transforming into rockets, etc. Maybe this wouldnt work that much for the other shows but the art style here serves to make this scenes even greater.

While on the topic of talking to the audience, it's also good that in this series they leave even more of an opportunity to the audience to solve the mystery, recapping every clue and talking through what they discover. It might seem forced to some people but I think is great for the kids to pay more attention to details, even if a lot of the time they can deceive you.

The chase scenes in A Pup Named Scooby-Doo are one of its greatest perks, the songs and dances and crazy shenanigans through them are funny and pretty entertaining, as a kid I loved to sing together with them. On the topic of song, the intro is great and its song is a bop and very fun to sing to.

I wouldnt say this show is on my top three, (Scooby Doo Where Are You, The Scooby-Doo Show and Whats New Scooby-Doo) but it deserves more recognition for what it did to the series in my opinion, it even sedimented their hometown as Coolsville, something that would come back in the Live Action Movies.

This is just my opinion at the end of the day, so its fine if you dont like this series at all, just wanted to give my reasons to like it