1. What a Night for a Knight

Mr Wickles, the curator of the County Art Museum, has organized a scheme to create art forgeries. The originals are stolen, while the counterfeits are placed in the museum. This is not a large and prestigious museum, so Wickles isn't counterfeiting and selling the artworks of the great masters, he's likely selling locally famous artwork and its not enough for him to flee the country or live the high life of the typical art thief. He's counterfeiting and floating art to make ends meet while working at a state job. That's a bad sign for the economy when even public sector employees are engaging in felonies ... to make ends meet.

2. A Clue for Scooby Doo

Captain Cutler fakes his own death, then fakes his own haunting, and under the aegis of stealing yachts and ships to repaint and rename them and sell them on the black market. Man is straight-up Craig's listing stolen boats for cash. His supposed window was in on the scam, playing up being a witch. The Cutlers don't live a lavish life, don't seem to have any vices, and it doesn't look like they are socking away the sweet sweet stolen boat money. Possible reason? The Cutlers have a hideous mortgage on their property, and the only way to pay it off was to fake his death and start stealing boats. The money goes to the rainy day fund, putting food on the table, and paying down an upside-down mortgage or ballooning payments. 

3. Hassle in the Castle

Bluestone the Great is a former stage magician wanted in six states, and engineers a walk-in haunting experience, for the purpose of scaring people away from where the treasure of a 17th-century pirate, Vasquez, is supposedly buried his treasure. A highly accomplished magician, and engineer, has worked out an elaborate plan to keep people from finding a lost pirate treasure. This is just wild desperation, really. The amount of effort required and the time expended to find something that may or may not exist is reflected in real-life treasure hunting mania, and those guys are going after pirate treasure with ground penetrating radar, heavy machinery, and lawsuits. Bluestone was mad broke.

4. Mine Your Own Business

The Gold City Guest Ranch is a dead business venture, there is no tourism for a western-themed dude ranch, and things are grim enough that there is nothing left of the Ranch other than a bit of the hotel. After discovering oil under the ranch, the sole employee, Hank, decides that he would rather come up with a scheme to run the business down so that the young, portly owner, 'Big' Ben would play it quits and leave, leaving Hank access to the oil and eventually the mineral rights of the land, so he could make money. He was in the process of selling the crude oil in small batches, meaning that people were randomly buying barrels of oil. That's a desperate sign, and if there is a cash market for civilians to sell crude, that is an even worse sign. The country isn't just broken, the fuel pumps might be looking dry. (this did roughly correspond to the 1970s fuel crisis, so, grain of salt there)

5. Decoy for a Dognapper

Buck Masters has set up an elaborate ruse so that he can ensure that his dog wins the important dog show, after which the other dogs would be released. Winning a prestigious dog show drives up the value of a dog, especially when it comes to breeding rights. Master's ruse would have given him a blue ribbon/gold medal winner, and then the money he could charge letting Big Red breed other dogs, or running his own operation and selling Big Red's pups for a lot of money could be a major deal. Prize money could be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, breeding rights for hundreds of dollars per service, and pups going for a thousand or more dollars, and the dog itself being insured for tens or even a hundred thousand dollars. It's big money, and when things are bad, the big money people are still generally okay, buying fancy cars and expensive dogs.

6. What the Hex is Going On?

Stuart Wetherby wants the Wetherby family fortune, and to facilitate this, he fakes his own death, a supernatural haunting, and commits the aggravated kidnapping (kidnapping a minor) of his niece to carry out his scheme. The man was thirsty for money, and he didn't care who he hurt, because we have no idea what his endgame was with his teenage niece, who knew who he was. Had he succeeded, there likely would have been murder added to his list of crimes. Thankfully, Scooby and the gang rescued Sharon Wetherby and ensured her safety as well as Stuart's unmasking and arrest.

This one was serious, and involved equally serious felonies, for an undisclosed amount of money, by a man who faked his death.

7. Never Ape an Ape Man

Carl, the stuntman, was so upset over not getting the leading role in John Maxwell's The Ape Man of Forbidden Mountain, a b movie if there ever was one, that he faked kidnapping himself, multiple counts of assault, aggravated assault, and other crimes. This one really isn't financial in nature, as Carl wanted fame, not so much money. It might be more an issue of Carl having long-term post-concussion syndrome and self-control issues stemming from stunt-related undiagnosed brain injuries.

That's Hollywood for you.

8. Foul Play in Funland

Funland has problems, the main one being that it has no guests. The revenue was so thin that Old Mr. Jenkins built a robot to help him work the part, meaning that really, the beachside amusement park, with rides and attractions, had no employees other than the owner/caretaker and a robot man he built. The robot is broken, and there are no crimes committed, but the backdrop is a stark one. Who goes to Funland? When Sarah Jenkins worries about kids and the robot getting along, is she serious about children being harmed, or is the robot an unwelcome visual cue to her imagining children at the park, years before, when she was young, and the park was a vibrant experience?

9. The Backstage Rage

Pietro is a performance artist who works up a horror con to keep people scared away from his money counterfeiting operation. He's straight up printing fake $20 bills and distributing them, equivalent to about $150 by current dollar values.

10. Bedlam in the Big Top

Harry the Hypnotist is very likely a career criminal because generally, petty theft doesn't land people in long-term jail sentences, or, the laws over theft have been exceedingly strict that a case of minor theft does land a long jail term. Why minor? Because if it was grand theft, there is no reason Mr. Barnstorm would have rehired Harry. Harry decides to drive Mr. Barnstorm's circus out of business as an act of revenge. That's petty, and things must be pretty slim that instead of drawing massive crowds (come see the wicked Ghost Clown, what villainy might he try next) the people go eh, let's not spend any money here, it's a 3rd rate act.  Wallets are tight.

11. A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts

In a tour de force of costume, makeup, and acting, Big Bob Oakley raids the catalog of Universal Studios' famous monsters. Posing as a gypsy fortune teller, Dracula, the Wolfman, and Frankenstein's Monster, Oakley is busy seeking out the Franken Jewels, a treasure of Franken castle, a tapestry of rubies and pearls. Oakley is a talented man, not just an actor but a special effects master, a makeup demigod, and can pull this all off with blistering speed, to steal jewels, from a castle. The man had talents, and they weren't making him money, such that he turned his skills to looting and general theft. Is the industry in trouble, is Oakley himself now problematic and unable to find work? Unusual, even blacklisted celebs and actors can find some work somewhere.

Things are grim, eh?

12. Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too

Dr. Najib dresses up as the mummy Ankha to steal an ancient artifact he was looking for. This disguise allowed him time a14.nd space to find the ancient coin, and then lose it to Shaggy. The Coin was a key to unlock a statue of Tawaret and reveal the Diamond of Ankha concealed within. This being said, Dr. Najib had a solid job, and prestigious work, and aside from just greed, no real reason to crack up this entire scheme, unless things were much more dire, and the money he could get from selling the diamond on the international market was worth more than his career. Desperate times make for desperate people.

13. Which Witch is Which?

Zeke and Zeb are successful bank robbers, having stolen an armored car full of money, and then lost it. They come back in costume to keep people scared away from where the vehicle might be missing in the swamp. While in costume they were more jerks than criminals, they are bank robbers, and that is a felony. This isn't to say that things are okay, they stole an armored car, lost it, and instead of stealing another one or robbing a different bank, they come up with a crackpot scheme of costumes and haunting. The heat is either still on them, or robbing banks is much more difficult, maybe the number of banks is down, and the amount of money they have on hand is too. Not a good sign for the economy.

14. Go Away Ghost Ship

C.L. Magnus, owner, and CEO of Magnus Shipping was on the verge of bankruptcy. That's a bad sign, shipping companies tend to be flush unless they have serious losses, or there are major disruptions to the global logistics system. Things are bad enough that C.L. Magnus is willing to dress up as a ghost, commit piracy against his own ships, and do so as a form of supernatural-sourced insurance fraud. Ghosts stole the cargo, insurance has to pay out, and Magnus Shipping can pay its bills for another month, another quarter. How long can that plan work before something else has to change? This, to me, is a damning sign that things are not well in the ScoobyVerse.

15. Spooky Space Kook

Henry Bascomb dressed up as a zombie space marine to scare people away so he could commit ... real estate fraud ...and resell the land to the government so it could expand an airbase it was going to reopen. Bascomb is a real estate cheat and having insider information, and the money to buy large amounts of land, even cheaply, he is likely involved in some sort of investment. The man is ballsy enough to go real estate fraud and then sell it to the military, that's some impressive brass.

Or desperate brass.

16. A Night of Fright is no Delight

Cosgood Creeps and Cuthbert Crawls (what fucking fantastic names, omg) are a pair of attorneys who I would assume specialize in settling wills, estates, and other end-of-life financial affairs. Posing as ghosts, they attempt to swindle the heirs of Col. Beauregard Sanders out of his million-dollar fortune ($8m adjusted for inflation). This is a situation where a pair of attorneys decided to dress up in costume to scare people away from a financial windfall. This wasn't them getting caught, it was the first time they were caught in the act, and there is no way to tell how many estates they managed that went into default and into their pockets. That's serious corruption, and to find that kind of graft, you need wild success or soul-breaking failure.

I think the Offices of Creeps and Crawls are predating the old money from people as they die, flushing out their pockets and protecting themselves from the decline of the ScoobyVerse economy.

17. That's Snow Ghost

Mr. Greenway owns Wolf's End Ski Lodge and is involved in a jewelry smuggling ring that moves stolen gems across the border into Canada. Guy owns a ski resort and resorts to dressing as a snow ghost, repeated attempts at aggravated assault and attempted murder, and other technical felonies to get his cut of briefcase loads of jewelry going to Canada. He's not even in charge, he's a middleman in a jewel fencing scheme. Either he owes those men in the ring serious amounts of money, or he needs to cash to keep himself in the lifestyle he's become accustomed to. Normally the owner of a mountain ski resort usually has to spend more time keeping his dickhead son from getting into fights with the plucky resort employees, who challenge the son into a skiing contest to make the dad not sell the resort to a real estate developer who wants to turn Cool-Ski Mountain into a condo and mall complex.

Instead, he's huffing and puffing around in the cold, in a costume, and this is a fat redheaded man. He is not doing this out of greed, he's out there running this felony machine because he has to.

SEASON TWO

18. Nowhere to Hyde

Dr. Jekyll is a disgraced scientist with absolutely no morals willing to commit scientific experiments on unwilling human subjects, which is some Nazi Dr. Mengele level insanity. Being a complete and total failure at science as well as ethics, Jekyll turns to garden variety costumed crime, and uses his intellect to set up ... his ... housemaid ... Helga. Have you ever sucked so hard at a career that following Nazi codes and practices and framing the people closest to you to cover for breaking and entering, grand theft, and a variety of other crimes seemed like a good idea?

On this one, I'm not sure if I would call it a bad economy, or the fact that Dr. Jekyll was a sigma male enthusiast before it was a thing. Christian Bale would play him in a movie like Patrick Bateman.

19. Mystery Mask Mix-Up

A. Fong is an international art dealer, just kidding, he's an international smuggler bringing in goods from Asia. These are goods that he is willing to commit arson, murder, assault, and fraud across the spectrum to ensure that he isn't caught. Let's be honest, the main things being smuggled into the US from the Orient are opioids, pharmaceuticals, counterfeit goods, and Asians. This is going to be the case pretty much regardless of the economy, because people who want heroin will always find money for heroin.

20. Jeepers, its the Creeper

Mr. Carswell is the president of a bank, one that he is willing to rob. He robs his own bank, and I pick this term over embezzlement because the latter infers cooking the books, financial legerdemain, and general fiscal fuckery to make money vanish from one place and end up somewhere else. Instead, he was doing proper embezzlement and then covering it by framing a monster for robbing the bank. This seems like double-dipping because with the former option, he steals the money and that's it. With the latter, he steals the money, and then the FDIC kicks in and the money is replaced. This is an act of financial desperation because Carswell is not that smart of a man, as he doesn't see through a talking great dane wearing a chicken costume. He's a family appointment to bank prez, and he's got people leaning on him to rob his own bank to put money in his pocket, and theirs.

21. Scooby's Night with a Frozen Fright

Professor Wayne's partner, Professor Ingrstrom invented a marine life communicator. Driven wild by greed and jealousy, Wayne created a frozen caveman, let it be found by the Oceanland Institute, fabricated it thawing and escaping, making Ingstrom vanish, and then claim the Aquaman device as his own and reap the millions of dollars such a machine would garner him. The gang thwarted his plans, and from what I looked up, and not remembering this episode, I don't know if he actually killed Ingstrom, or if he reappeared offscreen. I'll kill you for the money your invention will make doesn't seem like a professor-ly motivation. Jealousy over academic accomplishment, or wanting to prove himself the superior scientist, sure. Money, that seems like a base concern for a guy who has a Ph.D and works at Oceanland.

22. Haunted House Hang-Up

Asa Shanks cooked up an elaborate scheme to steal his neighbor's family fortune. That neighbor, Penrod Stillwell, didn't know where the fortune was, and to deter treasure hunters he dressed up as a ghost to scare them off.

The man seems like he might have some dementia/Alzheimers going on, dressing up to scare away trespassers instead of ... calling the police. Asa ran around in a costume trying to find the treasure himself, while ostensibly helping Old Penrod defend his home.

That's just weird, and exploiting the elderly. When your neighbor is willing to do that sort of fuckery with the intent of robbing a person, something is rotten in Denmark.

23. A Tiki Scare is No Fair

John Simms is a pearl poacher in Hawai'i and to cover his robbery of the natural world, he and his henchmen build a fifty-foot-tall robot tiki god. The Tiki Witch Doctor is likely among the most famous Scooby-Doo monsters that aren't lifted from pre-existing properties like Dracula or Frankenstein. That being said, if the mark up on poached pearls is so high that fifty-foot robots and culturally insensitive costumes are financially viable, there is something wring with the state of money and the economy. As far as gems and precious stones go, pearls are not on the high/rare end. Bivalves can be seeded to grow them, and the most expensive have historical significance or are part of fixtures with other valuable stones inset. That being said, that would mean that machinery and skilled labor to build and operate them are worth less than wild pearls being poached off of Hawai'i. So that means the value of the tech is severely depressed.

That is a grim portent.

24. Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf?

The unnamed Sheep Rustler is using a goblin-looking werewolf costume to keep people scared away from his gang's operation that is stealing sheep. While an individual sheep is only worth a few hundred dollars, and on the black market maybe less as they are stolen merchandise and tend to be marked. What stands out about this isn't the crime of livestock rustling (and low-end livestock at that) but that the criminals have operations in the forest, an abandoned mill, and an abandoned harbor. The economy in this part of the Scooby-Doo verse is dead, considering the amount of abandoned real estate, and the fact that the hottest criminal enterprise is stealing sheep. These guys are desperate and hungry to be stealing sheep.

25. Don't Fool with a Phantom

Roger Stevens was a man with a plan, and a television station. He had been embezzling money from his station and decided to wrap things up by stealing money from the station safe (1970, I know, right?) before escaping to South America while letting an angry man with a weird skin condition take the fall. I don't know, but these days owning a television station doesn't seem like such a dull and poor affair. I'm sure even if it was a local station, there would be plenty of local prestige to go along with it. The station would have to be successful for Stevens to rob it consistently enough to plan on South America without it collapsing first, so this is no public access/UHF station. Why then? Is the station going out of business, are advertisers crapping out, and are syndicated programs skyrocketing in price? Can he only broadcast heavily dated public domain material and hope that he can keep his news anchors running until their checks start bouncing? This isn't a great situation, the media is generally safe, if you are in the business of showing shows, and not making them.

This is the End

There are only 25 episodes of the original Scooby Doo, spread across two seasons and aired in 1969-1970. Other series would follow, but they are under different names, with different writers, and different production values. I will make a concession to the costs of traditional animation in terms of time and money. Many of the episodes heavily used painted backdrops, and only animated the characters as they moved, and in quite a few episodes the locations seemed abandoned and deserted because the cost of adding a bunch of rando people into the scenes would have been too costly. So, we have a series of dark episodes (painted backgrounds) with a relatively small cast (a concession to animation costs, and lots of animation was reused, even within an episode) 

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