Scooby-Doo's Original Mysteries
"Well, gang, it looks like we're up to our armor plates in another mystery." Oddly enough, this line comes from the very first episode ofScooby-Doo, Where Are You?, the part-mystery, part-haunted house animated series that premiered in 1969. The first five episodes are  featured onScooby-Doo's Original Mysteries, in which Freddy, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and of course the practical-joking Great Dane Scooby-Doo drive around the country in their lime-green van "The Mystery Machine" investigating haunted castles, ghost towns, and a host of alleged otherworldly beings. Ventriloquist, gymnast, and resident hippie Shaggy and fraidy-cat canine Scooby provide the comic relief between clues, and can usually be bribed into anything with a yummy Scooby snack (the ingredients of which remain the show's real mystery). Sure, the animation is flat, the music receptive, and the jokes not nearly as funny as the laugh track would have you think, but that's par for Saturday morning animation. If you grew up with Scooby and the gang, these original episodes are like a nostalgia train to Saturday morning yesteryear, yet after 30 years the shows have hardly aged (even beatnik Shaggy could pass for modern grunge). The DVD also features an abbreviated music video (not as good as Matthew Sweet's rendition of the theme song onSaturday Morning Cartoons) and a trivia quiz.  The episodes: "What a Night for a Knight," "Hassle in the Castle," "A Clue for Scooby Doo," "Mine Your Own Business," and  "Decoy from a Dognapper."--Sean Axmaker