One of my favorite things to do around Halloween is to rewatch all my favorite classic Scooby-Doo episodes and movies. Some of my all-time favorites are Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, Scooby-Doo meets The Boo Brothers, and The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo; but there is one thing that makes watching a lot of them very awkward.

When Scrappy-Doo was introduced in the late 70s, the show was at risk of being canceled, and he pulled it out of the fire when his debut gave the ratings a huge boost. I was born in the 90s and only ever watched reruns of Scooby-Doo on Cartoon Network. I never had a problem with Scrappy. To me, he was just another character. In the 2002 live-action movie, they went and made him the villain, and he hasn’t been seen since. What the heck happened?

I did some research, and despite being popular among the younger audience, Scrappy had his critics, believing he ruined the show's formula. It’s one thing to quietly retire him as they did in the late 80s; if you don’t want to show him again, the reaction from his fans wouldn’t have been as bad. Even Doug Walker, the Nostalgia Critic, who admittedly is no fan of the character, admitted in his review of the 2002 live-action film that making Scrappy a villain is a little extreme, and it makes the rest of the cast look like jerks. I mean, would you throw your nephew out on the side of the street in the middle of nowhere?