Scooby Doo's Saddest Day

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Iwao Takamoto, the man who created Scooby Doo for Hanna-Barbera Productions, has died at the age of 81. His passing, less than a month after the death of Joe Barbera, marks yet another sad milestone in the annals of pop culture.

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The son of Japanese immigrants, Takamoto was born 1925 in Los Angeles. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he, like thousands of other Japanese-Americans, spent WW2 in an internment camp in the California desert. It was there that he learned illustration from fellow internees. Despite the lack of formal training, he was able to land a job as an assistant at Walt Disney Studios in 1947. He worked as an animator on several Disney features, including Lady and the Tramp and 101 Dalmatians before joining the Hanna-Barbera team in 1961.

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While he was responsible for the design of several characters, including the Jetsons' Astro and Penelope Pitstop, he'll be most remembered as the creator of Scooby Doo. It was he who brought the cowardly but adventurous Great Dane, and the rest of the Mystery, Inc. gang to life in 1969, and was largely responsible for Scoob's continuing status as a contemporary cultural icon.

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Takamoto designed the character of Scooby Doo after talking with a Great Dane breeder about the finer physical attributes of the breed--straight back, straight legs, angular jaw and the like. In classic cartoon mindset, he went the opposite direction in his design, giving Scooby a goofy humped back, huge chin and large loopy legs. The origins of his name come from a scatline in Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night." It was one of those incongruous cartoon designs that was an instant hit, and made Scooby Doo, in his various incarnations, the longest running Saturday morning cartoon character in history.

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Takamoto's Scooby Doo is, depending on who you talk to, one of the most loveable, or one of the most ingratiating cartoon characters to come out of the Hanna-Barbera studios. Even though the stories were thin and formulaic, the comic relief that Scooby and his allegedly stoner cohort Shaggy lent to the series resonated in the public consciousness. Besides the cartoons that remain popular even with the youngest generations, Takamoto's creation inspired two regrettable live-action feature films. The CGI incarnation of Scooby Doo in those films was a pale imitation of the character Takamoto created.

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Iwao Takamoto created an immortal character in Scooby Doo. And now he enters the pantheon of departed but immortal animation legends.