Written by Hombre Divertido
Warner Brothers brings to DVD the first seven episodes of the Hanna Barbera production The Richie Rich/Scooby Doo Hour which premiered in 1980 on ABC and ran for two seasons. As this was the first effort to bring Richie Rich from the extensively successful comic book series to television, what better way to insure success than to combine it with the already established animated juggernaut that was Scooby-Doo?
In what was clearly an attempt to market this show to the extremely young viewers of the day, the producers streamlined the previously more involved Scooby-Doo adventures into brief seven-minute episodes that featured only Scooby, Shaggy, and Scooby’s nephew Scrappy-Doo. As with the Richie Rich portion of the show, the stories are short, full of a lot of action, and for the most part, surprisingly well animated. Perfect for the short-attention span of children then and now. The succinct stories might have something to do with Academy Award-winner Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) being listed as one of the writers.
For the young at heart who are looking for the Scooby-Doo cartoons and Richie Rich comic book stories they grew up with; sadly, this is not for you. Fred, Daphne, and Velma aren’t involved in the Scooby-Doo stories other than an occasional guest appearance, the stories have little meat to them, and even more disappointing are the rare explanations at the end of the story. In most cases the monsters really are monsters, witches, etc., or there are actually no monsters at all.
The Richie Rich stories hold little elements of the classic comic books. Most of the stories revolve more around the supporting characters such as Richie’s dog Dollar, and some of his servants, and lack the simplicity of the comic book stories as far too many gadgets are used to justify storylines.
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