Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! - A Tiki Scare is No Fair - Toonstalgia

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! - A Tiki Scare is No Fair

Season 2, Episode 6

Premiered October 17, 1970

Quickly

Criminals dress up in costumes to scare people in Hawaii this time.

Notes

I did a bit a searching in old newspapers to satisfy my curiosity. At the time Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! premiered, the newspapers listed whether the shows were in color. An early press release in a couple papers listed Fred as "Harvy Jones" and erased Velma from the character list and the image. Her hands are still in the image but her head is removed. It's the iconic shot of the gang looking at a book together. It's mind boggling. The only thing I can think of is the Hanna-Barbera removed her from the image. The image was part of a feature on Scooby-Doo. It's an interesting little pop culture nugget of an interview with Joe Barbera. In it he reflects on the fact that kids don't read anymore and that many companies were outsourcing animation to other countries because it was cheaper. I learned that a single 30 minute episode required 12,000 drawings.

At some points, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! played opposite The Hardy Boys cartoon. You only have to watch one episode of that to understand why Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! has persisted. Hardy Boys had very limited animation.

Too Much Detail Recap

The gang is in Hawaii vacationing. This feels like Hawaii as imagined from postcards. They are planning to go to lost village. They are dissuaded by Mr Simms, a newspaper man acting as a tour guide. He tells Shaggy and Scooby the village is haunted. While Shaggy and Scooby eat, drumming begins, the sky turns red and a man in a mask appears. He tells everyone to leave the land of Mano Tiki Tia.

Shaggy runs to Velma, Daphne and Fred to tell them what happened. He tells them everyone disappeared and they don't believe him. Arbitrary skepticism rears its ugly head again. They go to investigate. Scooby-Doo appears from inside of a drum. They find footprints indicating a struggle took place and someone was dragged away.

Simms was both their host and apparently investigating Mano Tiki Tia. They are scared off from the search by a man in a cloak.

They manage to flee their way into the haunted village. They are scared by the "Witch Doctor". At the village, Velma finds Mr Simms' hat in a hidden room. Scooby and Shaggy are attacked by a giant statue of Mano Tiki Tia.

Fred and Daphne find oysters and pearls. Shaggy, Scooby and Velma find a plane crash that was made to look like it crashed a long time ago with a laughing skeleton inside.

They see the guy in the cloak in the water and they dive in after him then they find themselves in a cavern that leads to a secret entrance to the village. I'm really confused about the lore here and the events. It's kind of nonsensical at this point. This is the largest fake monster they've ever faced. Overall this episode skews towards "What?" and delirious. 

The Witch Doctor is a bad look if that's supposed to represent a figure from Hawaii but mainly it's nonsense. It's all kind of nonsensical. This episode feels like it was written by someone whose only knows Hawaii from postcards. Not the content written on the back but the photos on the front.

Fred comes up with a plan to lure the "Witch Doctor" by having Scooby and Shaggy play ghost drums. It kind of works. He gets caught by his own henchman in the hands of the giant statue. Mr Simms and an unnamed henchman were stealing from pearl beds. The guy in the cloak unmasks himself. He's a local police detective. He's a good character even though he only has like 3 seconds of screen time excluding the time he spent inexplicably skulking around in the mask.

Rogue's Gallery

The Witch Doctor and Mano Tiki Tia

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