Laff A Lympics

Format

The sporting competitions that the characters would be called upon to perform in would often be comical and offbeat versions of Olympic sports, races, and scavenger hunts. Each segment took place in a different location around the world.

Each episode was presented in a format similar to an Olympic television broadcast, with announcing/voice-over duties handled by an unnamed/unseen Announcer character. Hosting duties and commentary were provided by Snagglepuss and Mildew Wolf from the It's the Wolf! segments of Cattanooga Cats (though unlike It's the Wolf!, Mildew was no longer voiced by Paul Lynde; he is now voiced by John Stephenson). Since the show was airing on ABC, Snagglepuss and Mildew wore the then-traditional yellow jackets of ABC Sports announcers. Non-competing Hanna-Barbera characters such as Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Jabberjaw and Peter Potamus made appearances as guest announcers and judges. Other non-competing characters included parents of contestants (who were interviewed by Mildew before events) and various monsters and creatures that would serve as antagonists during events.

The Laff-A-Lympics competition was based upon a point system. Various events were worth a certain point total for the first, second, and third-place winners (usually 25, 15, and 10 respectively; however, the last event was often worth either double points or a larger point bonus for the winner). The team that had the most points by the end of the half-hour was declared the winner and received the gold medal. Points could also be subtracted for treachery and sabotage, which were the specialties of the villainous Really Rottens team.

The "good guy" teams, consisting of the Scooby Doobies and the Yogi Yahooeys, were good friends and their respective team members gladly helped each other whenever they got into a jam. The Really Rottens, however, always cheated and pulled dirty tricks which would ultimately cause them to be the last-place losers in most episodes. Much like Dick Dastardly and Muttley on Wacky Races, typically the Really Rottens would be just on the verge of winning, before they would make a fatal error at the very end that allowed one of the other two teams to end up at the top. Occasionally, though, the Rottens' cheating technique wouldn't actually be against the rules, which resulted in them (unlike Dastardly and Muttley) actually winning in a few episodes; there was even one episode where they won through sheer chance. Only one complete season of Laff-A-Lympics episodes was produced, with eight new episodes combined with reruns for the second season of Scooby's All Star Laff-A-Lympics (billed as Scooby's All-Stars). When it premiered in the fall of 1977, the series consisted of several segments, including "Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels" (which led off the two-hour program and later was spun off onto its own half-hour show), "The Scooby-Doo Show" and "Dynomutt" (both of which featured a small number of newly produced segments alongside repeated segments from earlier seasons) and the "Laff-A-Lympics" segments themselves. The show resurfaced in 1980 as a half-hour series on its own (sans the "Captain Caveman," "Scooby-Doo" and "Dynomutt" cartoons) simply titled Laff-A-Lympics and was later rerun on ABC in 1986. It has also been frequently rerun in later years on USA Cartoon Express, Cartoon Network and Boomerang, often during the time periods when the Summer and Winter Olympics are being held until 2014.

The Scooby Doobies

This team drew mainly from the 1970s Hanna-Barbera cartoons, particularly the "mystery-solving" series derived from Scooby-Doo, whose titular character served as team captain. The early production art for the series showed Jeannie from the Jeannie series and Melody, Alexander, Alexandra, and Sebastian the Cat from the Josie and the Pussycats series as members of the "Scooby Doobies" team, but legal problems with Columbia Pictures Television, Screen Gems' successor, prevented it. Hanna-Barbera owned Babu, but Columbia controlled all rights to Jeannie's image. As a result, Babu appeared alone as a member of the "Scooby Doobies". Likewise, Archie Comics held rights to the Josie characters. In the actual series, Jeannie was replaced by Hong Kong Phooey and the Josie characters were replaced by Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels.

Among the members of the Scooby Doobies are:

The Yogi Yahooeys

This team drew mainly from the 1950s and 1960s Hanna-Barbera cartoons and is the only team of characters made up completely of anthropomorphic animals. Grape Ape is the only post-1962 character in the line-up.

Among the members of the Yogi Yahooeys are:

The Really Rottens

This team is composed of villainous characters that frequently cheated by either giving themselves an unfair advantage in a contest or sabotaging the other teams (and usually had points deducted from their score as a result). With the exception of Mumbly and the Dalton Brothers, all of the members are original characters, many of whom are based on various characters that appeared in cartoons and comics prior to Laff-A-Lympics. Originally, Muttley and Dick Dastardly were planned as the leaders of the Really Rottens; however, they could not appear on the show due to those characters being co-owned by Heatter-Quigley Productions. In their place, Hanna-Barbera used the existing character Mumbly and created the new character Dread Baron. Prior to Laff-A-Lympics, Mumbly was a heroic detective rather than a villain on his original show. Following the character's revision as the villainous team leader, he remained a villain in Yogi Bear and the Magical Flight of the Spruce Goose, which was also Dread Baron's only other role. The Dalton Brothers appeared in 1950s and 1960s shorts (including the 1958 short Sheriff Huckleberry Hound, which featured appearances by Dinky, Dirty, and Dastardly Dalton, as well as their other brothers Dangerous, Detestable, Desperate, and Despicable). However, they were given new character designs for the Laff-A-Lympics series. After Laff-A-Lympics, Dinky reappears in The Good, the Bad, and Huckleberry Hound with brothers Stinky (who bears a resemblance to Dastardly Dalton from Laff-A-Lympics), Finky, and Pinky.

Among the members of the Really Rottens are:

Voice cast

Special guest stars

Comic books

In March 1978, Marvel Comics produced a comic book series based on the cartoon. Creative staff for the comic book included Mark Evanier, Carl Gafford, Scott Shaw, Jack Manning, Owen Fitzgerald and others. The series lasted 13 issues. A Laff-A-Lympics comic book was also published in Australia in 1978 by Sydney-based K.G. Murray Publishing Company. From 1980–1982, various Laff-A-Lympics stories were reprinted in Laff-A-Lympics Annual hardback books in the United Kingdom by Fleetway.

An updated Laff-A-Lympics called the "Superstar Olympics" appeared in the Hanna-Barbera Presents #6 comic book in 1996. The Superstar Olympics featured Atom Ant, Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy, Barney Rubble, Betty Rubble, Boo Boo Bear, Chopper, Cindy Bear, Dick Dastardly, Fred Flintstone, Grape Ape, Hokey Wolf, Huckleberry Hound, Jabberjaw, Magilla Gorilla, Muttley, Peter Potamus, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, Quick Draw McGraw, Ranger Smith, Secret Squirrel, Snagglepuss, Snooper and Blabber, Squiddly Diddly, Top Cat, Touché Turtle, Wally Gator, Wilma Flintstone, and Yogi Bear.

Games

A Laff-A-Lympics hand-held pinball game was released in 1978. The game featured Scooby-Doo, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Blue Falcon, Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Grape Ape, Mumbly, Dread Baron, Mr. Creepley, Dalton Brothers, Snagglepuss, and Mildew Wolf.

In 1979, Hanna-Barbera released a Laff-A-Lympics Old Maid card game that included Scooby-Doo, Shaggy Rogers, Dynomutt, Blue Falcon, Hong Kong Phooey, Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Grape Ape, Quick Draw McGraw, Pixie and Dixie, Yakky Doodle, Mumbly, Dread Baron, Snagglepuss, and Mildew Wolf.

VHS

In 1996, four VHS editions of the show were released in the USA on the NTSC format, each containing two episodes for a running time of approximately 50 minutes:

At the same time in the UK a "bumper special" VHS tape was released in UK on the PAL format containing the following episodes (The UK episodes of this series were the US episodes divided in two with just 1 location per episode):

DVD

The first four episodes were released on Region 1 DVD on January 19, 2010, as Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics, Volume 1. Target released an exclusive second volume with the next four episodes on the same day titled Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics, Volume 2. The volume was released to other stores on October 19, 2010. A new DVD entitled Scooby-Doo! Laff-A-Lympics: Spooky Games was released on July 17, 2012. The set contains an all-new Scooby Doo special "Spooky Games", plus 12 episodes of Laff-a-Lympics on a two-disc set, to complete the first season following up from the first two volumes. This new set includes an UltraViolet digital copy of all 12 contained episodes. Later in the year Warner Brothers shop renamed this release "Laff-a-Lympics: The Complete First Collection".

On July 4th, Volume 1 and Volume 2 were released separately in Region 2,as well as in a "Gold Edition" with the previously released Spooky Games DVD; this Region 2 version of the Scooby-Doo! Laff-A-Lympics: Spooky Games DVD is only a separate version of the first disc from the R1 set, containing Spooky Games and four further episodes; therefore, only twelve episodes are currently available in R2, as of July 2016.

Region 4 received Volume 1 and 2 in July 2010.