A LEGO Horror Chronicle, Part 5: Scooby-Doo

Not too long after Monster Fighters, LEGO was back with another spooky theme, just a less real one! As anybody who knows Scooby-Doo knows, the franchise deals primarily with a gang of teenagers and their dog investigating supernatural events that turn out to be hoaxes perpetrated by criminals in monster disguises, though the franchise has gone into actual supernatural territory quite often as the decades have gone on. LEGO's theme arrived in 2015 and is based predominantly on the original 1960s Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? series, though, where it's all elaborate hoaxes and all of the monsters are thus depicted as humans in costume. Buncha frustrated theater kids, if you ask me. Sign the crooks up for community plays and I'm sure there'd be no more incidents.

The Scooby-Doo theme strikes me as one of LEGO'S first cartoon licenses not to directly adapt the license's art style with its figure designs, instead sticking to the typical LEGO minifigure art style's rendering while bringing in shaping and some simplicity from the animation without affecting the facial style. Some LEGO art style shifts had been criticized for looking uncanny or ugly, most infamously their Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated-series minifigure faces, which were accurate to the show but far less appealing in minifig form.

A Clone Wars Anakin minifigure.

Poor reception to art style changes might have gotten to LEGO and inspired the pivot toward maintaining their own minifigure art style whenever possible. This has been a contentious move and less successful endeavor in its own right when it comes to characters that are so stylized that their shift to the minifigure style loses some charm and likeness, but the Scooby-Doo figures work alright. Certainly, it's more successful than Playmobil's renditions of the characters once they got the license afterward. Playmobil got the Scooby-Doo license after LEGO, and the Playmobil versions of the same character designs, particularly the monsters, often shift art style to try emulating the Hanna-Barbera art, to their detriment. 

Here's the Mystery Gang!

Left to right: Scooby-Doo, Norville "Shaggy" Rogers, Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley.

All four teens debuted new hairpieces, with only Fred's mold seeing (limited) further use outside this theme. The figures have scared alternate expressions, though Velma seriously misses a trick by not having a bare-eyed squinting "I lost my glasses!" face instead. 

I think today, figures of Velma and Daphne might try fabric or plastic skirt elements instead of fully-printed skirts, but perhaps not. 

The Playmobil versions of the gang actually look alright, probably because they stick to Playmobil's own style.

Daphne looks a little mean, accidentally.

LEGO's Scooby-Doo is a figure constructed of two parts, and had two body molds across the theme, with one seated and one walking. The head was the same mold the whole time, with print variation, and attaches with a standard LEGO bar for a neck on the body pieces.

The Scooby-Doo theme consisted only of one wave of sets, with Shaggy and Scooby being the most prominent of the Mystery Gang, appearing in every set and having some variant prints that the others didn't get due to them having fewer releases. Daphne appeared in two sets with both appearances being identical, while Fred and Velma were exclusive to one set each. That means Velma's hair sculpt was a mold that featured in only one set ever! The license also extended into the contemporaneous LEGO Dimensions toys-to-life video game crossover, but no exclusive minifigures, let alone monster minifigures, came of the Dimensions avenue. We just got yet another issue of a Shaggy and Scooby we already had for the Scooby-Doo Dimensions packs.

The Mummy

As with Studios and Monster Fighters, the mummy got the cheap seats, appearing in the small set "Mummy Museum Mystery".

Are horror mummies doomed to haunt smaller LEGO sets? Maybe it's a double standard--premiere antagonist in LEGO adventure themes, D-list baddie in LEGO horror. This mummy is the "Mummy of Ankha" from the original series, a monster role created by the criminal Dr. Najib.

In the cartoon, the Mummy of Ankha guise looked a lot like the previous two bareheaded LEGO mummies, but to let him have Dr. Najib's visage as a second "unmasked" face, the minifigure is wearing a pharaoh's nemes headdress to cover the back of his head print. The headdress is the common metallic gold, but the stripes are dark red rather than the usual blue. The design of the mummy has tighter, tidier white bandages, which makes sense for a fake monster without actual rotten flesh to show, and his face is Sand Green with a fairly goofy expression that's pretty fun. The yellow eyes don't match the original cartoon, but look spooky. Black eyes with white highlights would just be standard minifigure design, so I see why LEGO changed it. A few grey spots make the bandages look slightly dirty.

The Minifigures Series 3 Mummy still wins the printing game. 

Here's Dr. Najib unmasked. The headdress still looks good with the uncovered face.

Playmobil did some Scooby-Doo mummies, but none were recognizable as Dr. Najib's costume.

The Headless Horseman

This is the only LEGO monster archetype that was debuted by, and still remains exclusive to, the Scooby-Doo theme. He featured as the antagonist of the "Mystery Plane Adventures" set.

LEGO hasn't done a non-licensed Horseman yet, possibly because they don't do headless characters at all. They've never suggested a minifigure torso be displayed or considered complete with no head on top. This figure is fair game, though, since the actual character was never genuinely decapitated, being the human criminal Elwood Crane in disguise.

Crane wears a jack-o'-lantern mask as a disguise, and that brought us this LEGO jack-o'-lantern sculpt which fits over a human head (and must be placed over a head or round brick if it is to be placed in a scene as a pumpkin decoration) and has a bar handle for a stem which minifigures can hold. The piece was also used as scenery pumpkins in the Mystery Mansiom set in this theme. The rest of the Horseman's costume is accurate to the show, if more vivid, and he carries a broadsword and goblet. He has Elwood Crane's face for his unmasked reveal, with the head print being only one-sided. The blank back of the other side is used to fill the pumpkin face.

The unmasked face doesn't really work with the mask over it.

The copy of the horse I ordered has wonky legs for some reason and doesn't stand evenly or attach properly on all feet to a LEGO grid. I'll probably get another copy later.

This current horse sculpt is jointed at the neck and hindquarters so it can rear up.

The hind joint is a later edition, with horses before 2012 only having the neck joint. 

The saddle slots into a gap in the horse's back so the minifigure rider can stand up in the saddle without it looking too awkward. The saddle has a clip on each side.

For horses without a saddle and rider, the common practice is to fill in the gap in the back with a 1x2 brick-and-plate stack in the matching color.

Playmobil did this character too, with a more awkwardly-sculpted pumpkin mask, but it worked better for the unmasking gimmick since his head was fully unmasked underneath. When I tried to order this figure, I got a pack without the torso, so I don't have him complete.

Source: Playkingdoms.

The Zombie

This figure was the antagonist of the must-have set featuring the Mystery Machine, causing trouble alongside a monster tree model (indicated to be an animatronic by levers and a control panel on its back).

Among the LEGO Scooby-Doo monsters, this one's a little vague. The Zombie costume was worn by multiple criminals in the theme, and while the first was a guy named Zeke, the color palette LEGO used for the Zombie was not Zeke's version of the costume, and this figure is not able to be unmasked.

The rendition of the Zombie guise the minifigure most resembles.

I like how different this figure ends up from previous LEGO zombies with his pale yellow-green skin. He'd be great even as a non-IP figure design. The undershirt section is printed Sand Green on the figure, but LEGO's later color addition of Teal would be a better match. I don't think LEGO printing is always restricted to the color palette LEGO casts their bricks in (though it definitely should be), but I imagine that in the current moment where Teal is part of the molding palette, this figure would be printed with Teal as the color of the undershirt.

Because this minifigure and monster design is bald, this is the only monster in the theme not depicted with a second face, and there wasn't even an alternate separate head element to let this criminal get unmasked, so it's not indicated who the crook is here.Unlike the Mummy of Ankha, LEGO didn't alter the character design to give him a head covering that would allow him an unmasked face. Separate head pieces should have been the move, honestly. You can't stage the Mystery Gang ripping off the monster masks like in the show when the monster heads and unmasked heads are one piece, and two heads per crook would have solved the Zombie issue. 

Here, the back of the head is printed to look like buttoned-up fabric to indicate this is a disguise, but the face of the criminal was not depicted.

Buttons are a weird choice, too; a mask like this almost certainly wouldn't be cloth. And this solution makes it impossible to cover the truth that this is a costume. I love the look of the figure, but it's a messier entry.

Playmobil didn't do this one.

The Swamp Monster

This character is one of two monsters/crooks in the "Haunted Lighthouse" set. 

The Swamp Monster is the closest to being LEGO-original IP in the cast of minifigures in this theme, with the monster and crook being created for this licensed collaboration rather than being LEGO adapting an existing character. He's a dark green and lavender fishy swamp monster costume worn by a monocled Mr. Brown, but no monocled criminal named Mr. Brown dressed in a swamp monster costume that looked like this in preceding Scooby-Doo media. 

I don't know why LEGO made up a villain for this licensed collaboration. If they wanted another foe suited to the Haunted Lighthouse set, then surely they could have made the Ghost of Captain Cutler?

A monster guise donned by a very-much-alive Captain Cutler.

LEGO molded an antique diving helmet for Minifigures Series 8, and the mold was probably still available when Scooby-Doo's sets were being made. It's criminal this sculpt was purely a one-off the way things played out.

Regardless, I do really like the Swamp Monster's design with his dark green and lilac colors. He uses the Monster Fighters fish mask again, and I think it's an appealing minifigure. The face print unmasked is excellent.

Mr. Brown unmasked is a monocled older fellow who reminds me of the Penguin, though he's not as short.

I really like this take on a swamp monster, and he stands apart from the Monster Fighters design. This was the last certifiable horror fish-man to date, with the aforementioned LEGO Movie 2 take on the first Swamp Creature then being the third, most recent, and likely, final use of this fish-mask mold. 

Since this character only exists in the LEGO-specific Scooby-Doo universe, there is no Playmobil counterpart.

The Lighthouse Ghost

The Scooby-Doo name for this guise was the Creepy Keeper, and it's a more modern monster from the What's New, Scooby-Doo series. The disguise is a ghostly old male lighthouse keeper played by female criminal Verona Dempsey.

The minifigure does not do a great job. The Creepy Keeper's skin was flesh-toned while the minifigure's face is glow-in-the-dark white, and the Keeper had a cape and a nautical official's cap, whereas the minifigure just reuses a hatless dwarf hair/beard sculpt from The Hobbit, its second and so-far final application in the brand. I do appreciate the face print and the turtleneck sweater seen in the torso, though. The back is also printed.

Here's the face glowing.

Not worth it in my opinion, given it's part of why the figure is so inaccurate.

Verona Dempsey's face is on the other side.

...drag icon?

No Playmobil counterpart here.

The Ghost

This is the costume of magician criminal Bluestone the Great, though the guise was called the Phantom in the show.

The minifigure is identical to the leg-bearing Monster Fighters Ghosts save for an alternate face depicting Bluestone unmasked. Like the Horseman, his head is printed only on one side, with the blank back of his head filling the costume face for masked mode.

Here he is with the shroud over the unmasked face:

When I used to display all of my LEGO monsters together, this minifigure wasn't worth putting out because he's so indistinct, but I have him out now with the Scooby-Doo monsters getting their own display.

I think Playmobil won with their version of this antagonist. I love the pose of the shroud, and the hood is a separate piece so Bluestone's head can be uncovered while he wears the rest of the fabric. Playmobil did have some monsters whose "unmasked" faces were on double-sided heads, but they did a good job of having a few costumes where you rip off the face covering just like the Mystery Gang at the end of a case.

The Black Knight

This was supposedly a haunted suit of armor, but was actually a role played by the criminal Mr. Wickles. 

The helmet looks really off. In the show, he has a rounded helmet with a visor divided into vertical bars, but they gave him a cylindrical bucket helmet with a single eye slot instead. This has always bothered me. To this day, no LEGO knight helmet or visor fully matches the Black Knight's. The pointed-nose knight visor piece has only two slots, not three, and is too sharp.

A figure with the visor in question.

I think the rounded helmet with the vertical-bar face grille would be the much better choice than this, though. Its inaccuracies are extremely minor compared to the helmet LEGO chose.

LEGO used to have a plume mold that matched the cartoon knight, and I have a copy. It helps a bit.

This plume and the round helmet make the figure basically perfect. It's as close as possible without molding a new slightly more accurate helmet.

These aren't swaps I can keep as a monster-minifigure curator, though! Additive changes, yes. Not parts swaps.

The front of the Knight head is very minimally printed, with just the spooky little yellow eyes on black. There's torso printing under the breastplate, with metallic armor over Wickles' brown suit jacket.

Mr. Wickles' face is opaque over the black base, but his skintone ends up darker than in the source material, perhaps due to excess pigment.

I can't recall a single time Light Nougat (the typical LEGO "white" skintone) was printed perfectly on black and didn't look washed-out, so maybe LEGO deliberately chose a darker pigment or just over-printed. I know there were some tanned-looking Batmen during this time too.

Playmobil's version of the Black Knight has the pointy visor idea, which isn't quite correct. I think the armor is also far too light, and Wickles' face is too obvious, but the plume is better.

Dracula

The supposed Dracula was actually a criminal named Big Bob Oakley who wore multiple disguises in his episode.

In the LEGO theme, he's the star antagonist of the biggest set in the theme--the Mystery Mansion, also featuring the Ghost and Black Knight.

There's a geared rotating platform in the tower, so the platform spins and reveals Dracula when the hand points to twelve!

The Dracula minifigure is accurate to the show, but he ends up feeling like an heir to the Studios vampire too with his two-color cape and having a custom coffin lid with himself on it!

Drac's coffin uses the Monster Fighters flat lid with a custom print instead of a more frivolous custom sculpt, though the visual mirroring is obvious with the posing and cape shaping on the lids.

Dracula's cape is two pieces, collar and cape, and the collar is a different silhouette, but the pieces would be a respectable replacement for a Studios Vampire's one-piece cape that got too shabby. 

I like Dracula's hair choice and face a lot, with the open red mouth and orange eyes and cheekbones. The grey suit also looks really good.

Oakley's face is on the other side.

In monster mode, this is one of my favorite LEGO vampires, up there with the Studios one. Maybe it's all about the capes. Lord Vampyre or Series 2's Vampire with a dark red cape interior might have risen in my estimation!

Playmobil's rendition of this character is atrocious. The cape looks terrible and he's one of the casualties of trying to put a Hanna-Barbera monster face onto a Playmobil head.

The unmasked side.

I could do a sequel series next Halloween catching up on and compiling Playmobil monster figures, but I don't think I'd stick my wallet out for their Scooby-Doo theme. I want to collect things I want, and too few of the Scooby-Doo figures appeal to me. I suppose I could window-shop and review them from photos without buying them, but they wouldn't join my collection.

Display Stand

It's become a pattern in this series that I didn't get the display locked down immediately. 

My first rendition of the stand was to lay out scenery a bit like Monster Fighters, but in more stylized fashion like a map of small landmarks with the monsters dropped in and stylistically larger next to the scenery. The Monster Fighters stand basically scaled the scenes to the characters, but here, it's more like an overview in microscale with the monsters popping out at different scale. The Vampire, Black Knight, and Ghost are grouped on a tall rock outcropping with a suggested castle arch, the Mummy is in a desert arch, the Zombie is next to a tree next to the Mystery Machine (the miniature model from LEGO Dimensions) and the Swamp Monster and Lighthouse Ghost are on a mini lighthouse rock. I was still waiting on the Horseman at this stage. The stand is propped up on pillars on the four corners, connected parallel by plates in front and back (but not the sides), and the Mystery Gang are on studs on the front "bar" under the stand. Shaggy has a burger and flashlight, Velma has a magnifying glass, Fred has a rope, and Daphne has a shovel. I built a wall of bricks as a sky backdrop as well. Dracula is holding an orange drink glass and the Lighthouse Ghost got a cape and a lantern.

I revised this setting once the Horseman came in because he needed to have a good spot to breathe in. I fixed some of the scale inconsistencies, too, no longer having archways for the Mummy and Vampire and instead building miniatures of the castle and the museum they're found in to keep the scenery small and minifigures large. I'd also added a Batarang weapon on a clip onto the "moon" to depict a flying bat.

I didn't get a photo, but Dracula's coffin lid was built into the back half of the stand, under the base on the back "bar" propping it up.

I was still unsatisfied. The shape felt too modernist and stiff for the tone of a Scooby-Doo display, and I thought maybe I could display the scene on top of the minifigure-scale Mystery Machine. I contrived a new build with a wider, rounded-corner base and no sky backdrop to build the "map" upon and took the mini Mystery Machine out because it broke the scaling of the scenery too much. The castle got rebuilt to resemble the Mystery Mansion model better, with the moon dish clipped to the back on a clear rod. The stand is now propped on a black pillar including the coffin lid which sits on the big Mystery Machine's lid. I added a tall tree behind the Horseman. The Mystery Machine and its smaller version are perched on a black stand, while the Mystery Gang line has moved to the front of the main display.

The display isn't attached to the pillar with studs, slotting in like previous stands in this series.

The pillar attaches to the Mystery Machine roof with four studs from "jumper" 2x2 plates I added. The connection is strong enough to lift the whole display stand by the pillar alone, though.

The vans are attached minimally but sturdily to the base.

The minifigure Mystery Machine itself is a nice model, which is why  I wanted to include it in the stand and also to have it easily removable for independent use. The roof comes off and the back half hinges open. As designed, there were more fixtures in the back, but I replaced them with simple seats so all five of the Mystery Gang fit in the van.

The display is more grounded and perfectly complete as just the top piece, but I liked accounting for the vans and coffin lid with the vertical expansion. 

LEGO Scooby-Doo was too short-lived. There are so many iconic monsters LEGO didn't adapt, including many totally unique to Scooby-Doo itself, and it's a shame we didn't get more. On the other hand, Playmobil's wider run of monsters demonstrated some...stereotypical monster guises from the show that I'm glad LEGO steered clear from. Our run here can be accused of being a retread of the same monster archetypes we'd just seen years before in Monster Fighters. Playmobil was more savvy with the potential of the theme, if less tactful, getting two mystery-figures series from it to expand the cast of monsters and having a longer run. I just think LEGO mostly did the figure designs better, and I'd absolutely love a LEGO Scooby-Doo Minifigures series with the better monsters represented. Oh, well. We kind of got the next best thing, though, because a monsters-focused Minifigures series did happen very soon after Scooby-Doo, and it was one of the highlights of my collection. See you there.