Scrappy

You know what really wasn't ever satisfactorilly explained? How is it that Scooby Doo has a nephew? I don't remember seeing the episode where they premiered Scrappy Doo, but I would like to take a look back and see if there's any mention of where the little guy came from.

I have my own hypothesis.

First, let's agree that this wasn't a nephew through marriage. If Scooby had an ex-wife running around out there, or if he was somehow widowed, surely he would have mentioned it from time to time. Besides, the resemblance suggests a blood relation.

I'm going with the theory that Scooby has a sister who is a bitch at some sort of Doberman breeding ground. Based on my own experience with puppies, it's probably a rural house in Ascension Parish, Louisiana.

	The Yoko Ono of Saturday morning cartoons.

Scooby's sister bitch is probably producing satisfactory litters of puppies, returning her owner a nice profit. But then one day, out comes an obnoxious little shit, who not only speaks, but who speaks without Scooby's impediment. Needless to say, no one wanted to buy this puppy.

Sooner or later, the humans who owned Scooby's sister bitch gave up trying to sell Scrappy, and took him to Animal Control to be euthanized. But as luck would have it, the dog catcher -- who was also in charge of euthanizing the unwanted animals -- was involved in a scheme to inherit sole rights to an oil well by scaring off others who had a legitimate claim to that well. In order to scare them off, he set up an elaborate ploy to make the oil field look haunted.

Furthering the coincidence, that's about the time that Shaggy, Scooby, and the gang rolled into town. They had heard that a nearby farmer had some good weed for sale, and the Mystery Machine supply was running low.

Of course, you see where this is going. The meddling kids caught wind of the haunted oil claim and couldn't resist solving the mystery. The dog catcher was exposed as the fraud that he is, and they were back on the search for good weed. As they were leaving, they heard Scrappy -- still in the back of the dog catcher truck -- yelping, as he hadn't been fed in several days. (He was also covered in his own poo.)

Because he was so filthy and hungry, Scrappy was uncharacteristically quiet, and the gang immediately noticed the family resemblance. It didn't take them long to work out the fact that Scrappy was the unwanted bastard child of Scooby's sister bitch, so they took him in.

By the time Scrappy returned to his normal self, the kids felt a certain amount of responsibility to him, and they kept him around for a number of years.

Those who helped the gang solve mysteries were not so enamored. During one fateful chance encounter several years later, The Harlem Globetrotters and Don Knotts became so annoyed with the little fellow that they arranged for him to do an errand which took him right into a wilderness reserve that was known to be populated by a family of Bigfoots. The little guy never returned.