Sunday, July 18, 2021

A Pup Named Scooby-Doo - S02E04 - Chickenstein Lives! - Toonstalgia

A Pup Named Scooby-Doo - Chickenstein Lives!

Season 2, Episode 4

Premiered September 30, 1989

Quickly

Fred gets a job writing for the Daily Exaggerator for his uncle.

Thoughts, Details and Recap

Fred does the voiceover opening narration for this episode. His uncle bought the Daily Exaggerator and Fred is going to be a reporter. Uncle Eddie is voiced by Frank Welker. The newspaper is one of my favorite running gags. The stories sound great. When he goes to Mr. Schlock, the editor, he finds Chickenstein in the Editor's office. He uses his usual Fred Jones voice. Then they find out from Uncle Eddie that Chickenstein is driving the paper out of business by scaring away the reporters.

They meet Bad News Bitterman and Scoop Byline while investigating Chickenstein. Bad News is the former number one reporter and Scoop is the number one reporter who first broke the Chickenstein story. They also meet Granny Sweetwater, a fortune teller who claims to have called Chickenstein from the other side. I would have preferred a more Frankenstein backstory with Chickenstein being created by Laughenstock, the man falsely accused on being Chickenstein.

The chase music in this episode is provided by Velma on a reel-to-reel tape. Reel-to-reels were like cassettes without the plastic casing. The music was stored on a magnetic tape. I won't question whether kids would have recognized it then. I don't think it really matters. But they probably would have since most people had tape decks. They would have understood the music is coming from the machine and Reel-To-Reels are visually interesting.

Anyway, Granny Sweetwater is Chickenstein but Granny isn't Granny. Casmer Codwaller disguised himself as Granny and Chickenstein to cover up his fencing operation.

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