Pop Culture Flashback: Scrappy-Doo Came to Town (Sept. 22)

Very few people actually like Scooby’s nephew, Scrappy-Doo, but that little mutt helped to save the Scooby-Doo franchise from extinction.

SATURDAY MORNING TV

Remember watching your favorite cartoons with a bowl of cold cereal? Here are some that began airing on this day. How many do you remember?

1979 – TV’s Most Hated Cartoon Character

Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo — Scrappy-Doo and Scooby-Doo *(Hanna-Barbera via TVDB)*

It might be a bit of an overreach to say that Scrappy-Doo is the most hated character from the hundreds of cartoon characters that Hanna-Barbera produced, but he’s pretty high up there.

American kids met Scooby and the gang for the first time when Scooby-Doo, Where are You! aired on CBS in 1969. The show ran for two seasons and was followed by The New Scooby-Doo Movies. After a few years on CBS, Scooby moved to ABC. The Great Dane and his friends have always been popular, but after a few years of re-packaged shows the ratings began to drop. ABC threatened to cut ties with Scooby, but on this day in 1979, Scrappy-Doo was added to the cast, and the show was hit…at first.

While Scrappy was proud of his “brave” uncle Scooby, he was feisty and always ready for a fight. He became less cute and more obnoxious. The show’s writers began to put more of a spotlight on Scrappy and eventually, Fred, Daphne and Velma were written out of the series entirely and new episodes were shortened to just seven minutes in length.

Long-time fans were not happy with these changes and by the end of 1985, Scooby-Doo went off the air for the first time.

In 1988, ABC began airing, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo where the gang were turned into elementary kids. Scrappy was nowhere to be found.

Years later, Scrappy’s name has only been mentioned a few times and usually with disdain. In 2002, the puppy turned out to be the villain in the live-action Scooby-Doo: The Movie.

1979: Spider-Woman

Jessica Drew, aka Spider-Woman, was the first female Marvel superhero to headline her own cartoon series which aired on ABC. Jessica’s “day job” is editor of Justice Magazine who must sneak away at times to become the heroine.

1979: Casper and the Angels

Based on Harvey Comics’ Casper the Friendly Ghost, Hanna-Barbera created an updated version where Casper serves as a “guardian ghost” for Mini and Maxi, female space police officers in the year 2179. 1000-year-old Hairy Scary ghost is onboard too.

1979: The Super Globetrotters

This CBS show is both a spin-off of an earlier Harlem Globetrotters cartoon and a remake of 1966’s The Impossibles. Here, the Globetrotters travel the world playing basketball, and serve as undercover superheroes.

1979: The New Shmoo

This NBC cartoon centers on a character from the Li’l Abner comic strip created by Hanna-Barbera which follows familiar territory with a small group of teens solving mysteries alongside the “Shmoo”, who can transform into a variety of shapes as needed.

1986: Dennis the Menace

Other TV Shows That Debuted on This Day:

1979: The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show; Fred and Barney Meet the Thing; The New Adventures of Flash Gordon; Hot Hero Sandwich; The World’s Greatest Super Friends!
2007: Eon Kid

OTHER EVENTS THAT HAPPENED ON THIS DAY:

1976 – Charlie’s Angels – Heaven on Earth?

Jacklyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett from "Charlie's Angels". — Jacklyn Smith, Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett from *Charlie’s Angels. (ABC via TVDB)*

Produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions, Charlie’s Angels became one of TV’s biggest hits during the 1976-1977 season.

Charlie Townsend owned a detective agency where three “angels” were hired: Jill Munroe (Farrah Fawcett), Sabrina Duncan (Kate Jackson) and Kelly Garrett (Jaclyn Smith). All three had graduated from the L.A. Police Department but none of them got to work out in the field. Instead, they got stuck serving as a meter maid, a crossing guard or an office worker. Charlie knew that they had potential to do more.

David Doyle played John Bosley who helped the women with their assignments. As for Charlie Townsend, he was never seen. John Forsythe provided his voice when he would speak through a speakerphone during assignment meetings.

Reviews of the show were mixed, and the show got the reputation for being nothing more than “Jiggle TV”. Obviously the show was a hit with men, but women were fans too. By spring of 1977, Charlie’s Angels finished fifth in the Nielsen ratings.

Fawcett bowed out of the show after the first season, and Jackson stuck around through the third. Their roles were replaced with Cheryl Ladd (season 3-5), Shelley Hack (season 4) and Tanya Roberts (season 5). Smith managed to be an angel throughout the whole series.

During its run, Charlie’s Angels was nominated for seven Golden Globes, and four Primetime Emmy Awards, but the show didn’t win any of them.

By season 5, Charlie’s Angels was ranking in 59^th place and so the angels took their bow on June 24, 1981.

Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu starred in two Angels movies in 2000 and 2003 and a reboot of the show also debuted on this day in 2011, but it only lasted for one month before being cancelled.

The Hair of an Angel

After the debut of Charlie’s Angels, women and girls went to their salons to get Farrah Fawcett’s feathered haircut called simply, “The Farrah”. The funny thing, no one knows for sure who styled it for sure. Two hairstylists, Allan Edwards and Jose Eber have both claimed to be the one who started it all. And the style didn’t just attract women. Male celebrities like John Travolta, Jeff Conaway and Rob Lowe all sported a similar feathered look.

1985 – The First Farm Aid Concert is Performed

(Farm Aid)

Blame Bob Dylan for Farm Aid. During his appearance at the Live Aid event during the summer of 1985, He said, “I hope that some of the money…maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe…one or two million, maybe…and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks.”

Many were upset by Dylan’s remarks as Live Aid was a fundraiser for African famine relief, but the sentiment seemed to resonate with others and so on this day in 1985, the first Farm Aid concert was held that featured Willie Nelson, Neil Young, John Mellencamp, Sammy Hagar, Lou Reed and others. Since that day, Farm Aid has raised over $33 million to support “good food from family farms.”

1994 – The One with the Six ‘Friends’

The cast from "Friends" — Jennifer Aniston, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Courtney Cox and Matt LaBlan from *Friends. (NBC via TVDB)*

Created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, the ensemble comedy, Friends featured a group of young, single adults living in Manhattan, New York City (although filmed in Los Angeles, California). Originally titled as Insomnia Café while it was being developed, the show also went by the names Six of One and Friends Like Us before landing on the simple title of just Friends.

This “must see TV” show for NBC featured a runaway bride, Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston); her best friend, uptight chef and roommate, Monica Geller (Courtney Cox); the ditzy, vegetarian masseuse, Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow); Monica’s newly-divorced paleontologist brother Ross (David Schwimmer); the wise-cracking Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) and his roommate actor whose always looking for his next gig, Joey Tribbiani (Matt LaBlanc).

During the show’s ten-year run, it never fell out of TV’s top ten, jumping to #1 during season 8. Not surprisingly, every other network wanted to create their own Friends shows, but none were as successful.

When the show ended on May 6, 2004, 52.5 million people tuned in to see how it all ended, making it the most-watched entertainment telecast since Seinfeld’s finale in 1998 and the second most-watched show of the year. (Only the Super Bowl was more popular.)

The whole cast of Friends had been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award at one time or another, except for Cox. Aniston and Kudrow are the only actors who won Emmy Awards and the show won one for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2002. Out of the 62 nominations over ten years, Friends has only won six.

On February 21, 2020, HBO aired Friends: The Reunion special (aka “The One Where They Get Back Together”). Although fans would have loved to see a revival of the show, the group lost a friend when Matthew Perry passed away on October 28, 2023.