STEVE GOLDSTEIN: The animated dog Scooby-Doo is 51 years old — or nearly 360 in dog years. He and his pals Shaggy, Fred, Daphne and Velma were solving mysteries from the very beginning.
FRED: Looks like we've got another mystery on our hands.
DAPHNE: And the first thing to do is find Mr. Simms.
VELMA: And I bet he's in that ancient village.
DAPHNE: That's a perfect place for ghosts.
SHAGGY: Aw, who wants to find an old haunted village?
SCOOBY: Not us.
FRED: Oh, yes, you do.
SHAGGY: Like, no way!
GOLDSTEIN: A new release called "Scoob!" revisits the classic characters with a different spin. ASU associate professor Kevin Sandler has a new book coming out about Scooby-Doo, and he's with me to talk about one of fiction's favorite canines. Kevin, Scooby-Doo is created in the 1960s. Now we have this latest update. How much has the character changed and how different is this new movie from the original concept?
KEVIN SANDLER: It's extremely different. I think the, the generational appeal of "Scoob!" goes back to its original series, which premiered in September in 1969, and that is the love of a boy and his dog, the fact that, you know, kids meddle and life is groovy and things work out OK. Different artists and different networks have attempted to, y'know, do something different or something similar with the Scooby-Doo. I mean, it's 50 years old. I mean, there's only so many stories you can tell with the original concept. But the new "Scoob!" goes off in a completely different direction.
GOLDSTEIN: Is this something that can be multigenerational? Is this one of the, trying to appeal to kids, but also maybe their parents want their nostalgia as well?
SANDLER: Well, I think there is the fact that Scooby-Doo is 51 years old and that the concept will appeal to, you know, generations who are, you know, from 75 to 5, and thus making an expensive theatrical feature, you know, seems like a not so risky venture if you do it right, because it has the potential to appeal to parents and their children. Unfortunately, with, with "Scoob!," they pretty much gutted the original brand and the original appeal of the series in order to make it into this action-adventure, fantasy, end-of-the-world scenario that is occupying many corporate subsidiaries and their intellectual properties these days. So we have Scooby-Doo, who's — it's not about solving a mystery, but it's about joining a bunch of other members from the Hanna-Barbera universe to defeat a villain intergalactically. And that just doesn't seem like the original premise in which Shaggy and Scooby don't want to go into this haunted house because there could be a villain, and they serve, and they act as bait and through finding clues and putting things together by the rest of the crew they unveil the villain and they go back to the to the diner and eat a bunch of food — that's just completely different.
GOLDSTEIN: All right, Kevin, so we talked about this new release featuring the Scooby-Doo character. Let's go back more than 50 years ago when the character first came about. What was the landscape for children's television at that point? And how did Scooby-Doo come to be created?
SANDLER: Well, Scooby-Doo came out at a time in which there was this ultimatum that was made from the president's office and Congress that film and television had to clean up their act — reduce the amount of violence, the amount of action, particularly in regards to children's programing, and thus they had to abandon all their action-adventure cartoons and action-adventure programming. In the case of Saturday morning cartoons, we're dealing with Space Ghost and the Herculoids and shows in which people pummel each other for pretty much seven to 12 minutes. That Hanna-Barbera, who created Scooby-Doo, had to think of a new genre. They had to do it and do it well because they were under a microscope. Out of that came, you know, a show that wasn't supposed to be necessarily 30 minutes in length, but was going to be a mystery, music concept. And out of that came a half-hour mystery show, minus the music, but also minus the action-adventure. Instead, we have mystery-comedy.
GOLDSTEIN: That's Kevin Sandler. He's an associate professor in the film and media studies program at ASU. And his upcoming book is "Scooby-Doo." We've been talking with him about the history of that very famous cartoon character. Kevin, thanks so much for the time today, and be well.
SANDLER: Yeah. Thank you.
GOLDSTEIN: Take care. Bye.
