What a rotten weekend we’ve had, setting aside the dramatic election, as between Sean Connery, Alex Trebek, and the subject of this article, a sizable part of a lot of folks’ lives has left this mortal coil. Ken Spears, one of the creators of the lovable cartoon Great Dane that is Scooby-Doo, passed away on Friday, November 6th, at the age of 82. Reports indicate that his death was due to complications arising from Lewy body dementia.
Spears began his career in television as a sound editor for Hanna-Barbera in 1959, after befriending the son of co-founder and co-namesake William Hanna. It was here that he met his longtime writing partner, Joe Ruby, and the two worked magic to bring us shows like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, Dynomutt, and Wonder Dog. Their biggest break came when Fred Silverman, then the president of children’s programming for CBS, hired the pair in 1970, before Silverman and his new hires would move to ABC four years later.
Ruby-Spears Productions, the later studio made by the two partners, gave us series such as Superman, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Saturday Supercade, before the studio was bought by Taft Entertainment, the parent company of their previous employers Hanna-Barbera in 1981. A decade after, Turner Broadcasting purchased the rights, and several iterations of Scooby-Doo have aired since, namely on Boomerang and Cartoon Network.
For many of us, Scooby-Doo was a gateway to the mysterious and weird in our younger years. No matter which generation you belong to, odds are you have seen some iteration of the show. Interjections like “Zoinks!” and “Jinkies!” are a part of some folks’ everyday lexicon (OK, just mine? That’s fine), and we all can remember the exact moment we learned why Scooby and Shaggy loved those Scooby Snacks so much. Scooby-Doo is more than a kids’ show, it’s more than the straight-to-video movies that populated the Nineties and early Noughties, it is a cultural institution, and Ken Spears is partially responsible for bringing that to us.
And now that he has joined Joe Ruby, who passed away back in August, in the great writer’s room in the sky, we can now say...
Good work, gang.
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