A Joke From the Past

This is Steven Petrick posting.

When I was a kid, one of the cartoon shows that was running was "Scooby Doo." As an adult, I seldom watch the various cartoon shows (I did watch the last one which had a running plot all through the series, which is why I say "seldom") since then (like the one where Scooby and the gang are all pre-teens (I have never seen a single episode). I have, however, tended to watch the various cartoon movies (and the live-action ones).

Recently I caught the one where they go to "World Wide Wrestling" and contend with "the Ghost Bear." Putting that aside, the biggest thing in it was the scene where the gang first gathers at a burger bar before heading out. Fred has his new camera and briefly tells everyone what it it.

Instant flashback.

I do not know why, but one of those things caught in my brain and readily accessible if jogged is the first time I ever saw Bugs Bunny go "Rabbit-o a' Martian-o" with the Warner Brothers character who eventually came to be known as "Marvin the Martian."

The name of Fred's camera was the same as the device needed to fire Marvin's weapon to destroy Earth, because it was obstructing his view. Bugs steals the device, leaving Marvin to expound: "Where's the kaboom? There should be an Earth-shattering kaboom?"

The reminder gave me a brief spurt of chuckles which really had nothing to do with the movie (although it was obviously intended to provoke the response in an older audience such as myself that it did).

The only other really favorable thing I would say about this particular film is that they got pretty imaginative with the Ghost Bear chasing the "meddling kids" through the caves. Beyond that, it was pretty standard fare. That is to say the "monster/ghost" du jour had access to a technology wholly out of place and that is what makes it possible to pretend to be a "monster/ghost."

Of course the Scooby gang has mostly stayed the same (which was also a joke in the film, but I will not further expose that one), but only mostly. Some of the shows have resorted to the gang encountering the "truly supernatural," which is at odds with what was their main trope of it always being "Old Man Whithers" (or come other merely mortal human trying to scare people away while he did his nefarious business). The Scooby gang started with the idea that they would always end the show by "debunking" the ghosts/aliens/monster and pull the Halloween mask aside and show us that there was nothing to be afraid of really than another human playing tricks.