Scooby-Doo’s Creator Dies At 81
Posted January 9, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
You never heard of Iwao Takamoto.
But if you grew up during the 70s, you’ll never forget what he gave the world.
The man who created the cartoon character “Scooby-Doo” has died.
Takamoto, a veteran animator who learned at the knee of some of Walt Disney’s greatest cartoonists, succumbed to heart failure in Los Angeles on Monday.
Takamoto worked on a number of iconic animated shows, including “Josie and the Pussy Cats” and “The Jetsons,” where he created another famous cartoon dog named Astro.
But while the two seem suspiciously similar in hindsight, Scooby’s creator maintains his idea of the cowardly ghostbuster never came to him until he ran into a Great Dane breeder and the two began to talk.
In a twist of fate that only great creativity could bring, Takamoto listened to the expert and then went against everything he’d been told.
He “showed me some pictures and talked about the important points of a Great Dane, like a straight back, straight legs, small chin and such,” he once recalled. “I decided to go the opposite and gave him a hump back, bowed legs, big chin and such. Even his colour is wrong.”
Although the dog’s original name was “Too Much”, his creator eventually changed it, taking the new moniker off of Frank Sinatra’s signature expression at the end of the 1966 classic “Strangers in the Night.”
Since then, the character has taken on a life of his own, being featured in a variety of different cartoon shows and even spawning a series of successful movies, combining live action with animation.
It wound up being the longest running Saturday morning cartoon show in history, battling supernatural foes on both network and syndicated schedules since 1969.
Takamoto is survived by his wife and two children. He was 81.
Photo courtesy: Warner Bros.
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