Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo Clones: How the Formula Worked

After Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! became a hit in 1969, Hanna-Barbera returned to the same basic idea again and again.

The teenagers changed. The vehicle changed. The comic sidekick might be a ghost, a talking dune buggy, a shark, or a caveman.

The resemblance was rarely subtle.

Fans usually call these shows Scooby-Doo clones, although not every series copied the formula to the same degree. Some reproduced almost the entire setup. Others borrowed only the mystery-solving group, the mascot, or the travelling-band structure.

What makes the period interesting is not simply that Hanna-Barbera repeated itself. Television animation has always reused successful ideas. The unusual part is how many variations one studio produced within a single decade.

This is how the Scooby formula developed, how it spread through 1970s Saturday morning cartoons, and why the original survived when most of its relatives lasted only a season or two.

What Is the Scooby-Doo Formula?

There was no official studio checklist pinned to a wall, and several shows break one or more of the supposed rules.

Still, the same ingredients appear often enough to form a recognizable Hanna-Barbera mystery-cartoon formula:

• A young ensemble: Usually teenagers with easily understood personality roles
• A comic mascot: An animal, ghost, vehicle, or unusual character who creates most of the physical comedy
• A travelling setup: A van, dune buggy, boat, tour bus, or other reason to encounter a new mystery each week
• A threat to investigate: Often a monster, ghost, criminal, or disguised villain
• A chase or action sequence: Frequently supported by recycled music and sound effects
• A final explanation: The apparent supernatural threat is often exposed as a person with a plan
• Sometimes a band: The musical element from Scooby’s earliest development survived in several related shows

The formula was not only a writing shortcut. It fit the practical needs of weekly television animation.

A small cast could be reused in every episode. A travelling group could enter a completely new setting without much explanation. A mystery provided an automatic beginning, middle, chase, and resolution.

Once the structure worked, changing the mascot created the appearance of a new show without forcing the studio to reinvent the storytelling machinery.

Where the Scooby-Doo Formula Came From

The story begins with a different hit show.

The Archie Show premiered on CBS in 1968 and turned its fictional band into a commercial success. Fred Silverman, who oversaw children’s programming at CBS, wanted another series about teenagers, music, and mystery.

Hanna-Barbera assigned writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears to develop the idea with character designer Iwao Takamoto.

The first concept was called Mysteries Five. It followed five teenage musicians and a dog named Too Much, who even played bongos with the group. When the band was not performing, its members investigated supernatural mysteries.

Cartoon Research’s history of Scooby-Doo documents how that pitch changed during development.

CBS considered an early version, titled Who’s S-S-Scared?, too frightening. Ruby and Spears reduced the horror, dropped the band, and moved the comedy toward the cowardly dog and his equally frightened friend.

The familiar gang emerged from that rewrite.

Where Did the Name Scooby-Doo Come From?

Fred Silverman said he heard Frank Sinatra’s “doo-be-doo-be-doo” at the end of “Strangers in the Night” and realized the dog should be named Scooby-Doo.

Silverman repeated that account in his Television Academy interview.

Writer and animation historian Mark Evanier has offered another possibility. He argues that the clearer source may have been “Denise” by Randy and the Rainbows, which repeats a sound much closer to “Scooby-Doo.”

The Sinatra explanation comes directly from the executive who named the show, so it remains the standard account. The competing theory is worth noting because cartoon history often becomes cleaner in memory than it was in the studio.

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! premiered on September 13, 1969. Don Messick voiced Scooby using a deeper variation of the growling dog speech he had developed for Astro on The Jetsons.

The series became a hit, and the variations began almost immediately.

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Hanna-Barbera’s Scooby-Doo Clones and Relatives

The timeline is easier to understand when the shows are treated as a spectrum rather than a row of identical copies.

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Scooby-Doo Clone Comparison

The table shows why some series feel like direct copies while others are better described as relatives.

Did Hanna-Barbera Reuse Animation?

Yes, although that practice was much larger than the Scooby clone cycle.

Hanna-Barbera produced television animation under tight schedules and budgets. Its series regularly shared sound effects, musical cues, voice actors, background techniques, and design conventions.

Researchers have also identified individual character designs that moved between Scooby and related shows. One frequently cited example is a villain model from “That’s Snow Ghost” later appearing in modified form as Doctor Greenthumb on Josie and the Pussycats.

That does not mean entire episodes were copied frame for frame. It means the studio treated its production library as reusable material.

The familiar Hanna-Barbera house style made the shows economical to produce and instantly recognizable, but it also made their similarities impossible to hide.

Fred Silverman and the Network Connection

The Scooby formula was not created by Hanna-Barbera alone.

Fred Silverman requested the original teen mystery concept at CBS and remained one of the show’s strongest champions. He left CBS for ABC in 1975.

Several later Scooby-like shows, including Jabberjaw, Clue Club, and Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, then appeared on ABC.

The timing does not prove that Silverman personally ordered every clone. It does show that successful programming ideas travelled with powerful network executives as well as with studios.

Scooby-Doo’s Creators Made Fangface

Joe Ruby and Ken Spears left Hanna-Barbera in 1977 and established Ruby-Spears Productions.

Their first animated series under the new company was Fangface in 1978.

The setup was familiar: four teenagers travelled together and became involved in mysteries. Their comic mascot was Sherman Fangsworth, a Shaggy-like teenager who transformed into a werewolf whenever he saw the moon, including a picture of it.

Calling Fangface a simple copy misses part of the joke. Ruby and Spears were revisiting a structure they had helped invent.

Their new studio later developed very different properties, including Turbo Teen, Thundarr the Barbarian, and the 1980s Superman series. The company began, however, with one more variation on the mystery gang.

Why The New Shmoo Is a Special Case

The New Shmoo looks like Hanna-Barbera invented another strange mascot for a Scooby-style team.

The mascot was actually much older than Scooby.

Cartoonist Al Capp created the Shmoo for Li’l Abner in 1948. The creature became a national merchandising phenomenon decades before Hanna-Barbera paired a Shmoo with teenagers in 1979.

The show is therefore both a Scooby relative and a revival of an older comic-strip property.

It demonstrates how flexible the formula had become. Hanna-Barbera could insert a pre-existing character into the mystery-team structure and immediately produce something that looked like another Scooby clone.

Why Scooby-Doo Outlived the Copies

Most of the direct copies lasted one or two seasons. The Funky Phantom produced 17 episodes. Other shows disappeared after similarly short runs.

Scooby-Doo kept returning in new formats, movies, revivals, and reboots.

The difference was not only that Scooby arrived first.

The Gang Had Better Chemistry

Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby formed a simple but flexible ensemble. Different episodes could emphasize the mystery, comedy, friendship, monsters, or chase scenes without rebuilding the cast.

Many clones reproduced the roles but not the chemistry.

Scooby and Shaggy Worked as a Pair

The comic engine was not merely a funny mascot.

Scooby had Shaggy, a human partner who shared his fear, appetite, and questionable judgment. Their friendship gave the comedy an emotional centre that was difficult to duplicate by attaching one strange creature to a group of otherwise interchangeable teenagers.

The Premise Could Keep Changing

Scooby-Doo could function as a mystery comedy, celebrity crossover, supernatural adventure, movie parody, or self-aware reboot.

The franchise survived by altering the formula whenever it became tired, even when those changes divided fans.

Quick Answers About Scooby-Doo Clones

The Formula That Outlived Its Copies

The Scooby clone period can look cynical from a distance.

A successful show appeared, and the studio spent much of the next decade trying new mascots inside familiar machinery.

Up close, the shows are more interesting than that description suggests. Some were obvious copies. Some restored ideas cut from Scooby’s original pitch. Others pushed the structure into science fiction, superhero comedy, underwater adventure, or older comic-strip properties.

Most of the shows disappeared.

The formula did not.

Groups of young characters still travel into new settings, investigate suspicious monsters, trade jokes with an unusual sidekick, and reveal the explanation at the end.

Scooby-Doo was not the only show that could use the structure.

It was simply the one that made viewers care enough to keep coming back.

Which Scooby-Doo clone deserves its own deep dive next: Jabberjaw, Speed Buggy, or The Funky Phantom?

Share your pick in the comments.