Scooby-Doo

Few properties have been worked as relentlessly as Scooby-Doo. Born in 1969 with Hanna-Barbera's Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, it set a template so rigid it became a joke about itself: four teens, a talking Great Dane, a psychedelic van, and a ghost who always turns out to be a real-estate crook in a rubber mask. That formula has proven almost infinitely portable.

What makes the franchise interesting is how it keeps reinventing the same five characters. The direct-to-video film line that began with Zombie Island flirted with actual supernatural stakes, Mystery Incorporated brought genuine serialized plotting, and the live-action features leaned into knowing camp. Alongside the cartoons sit theatrical movies, video-game cameos, and a long shelf of read-along books, all orbiting one durable idea: that the scariest monster is usually just a grown man with a grudge.

The Scooby-Doo franchise spans 13 series, 11 books, 42 films in the CrossBinge catalog.