Zoinks! Scooby-Doo Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog in this Canine Clue-Chasing Caper

Dogs and mysteries have been the peanut butter and jelly of children's cartoons for decades, featuring such sniffing sleuths as Woofer and Wimper, Dynomutt, Hong Kong Phooey, and the whole gang from Disney's 101 Dalmations. But, of course, the king of them all has always been Scooby-Doo, the Great Dane mascot of Mystery Inc. For years, Scooby and the gang have been busting mysteries and proving that the things that go bump in the night are nevery more than a greedy person in a rubber mask.

On the other hand, however, there's Courage, a little pink mutt from Nowhere who defends his family from true weirdness, monsters, alients, and the like, often without them realizing it and always without reward. But never has the weirdness been anything explainable as a prosaic prank.

Their two worlds couldn't be any different -- but they're about to collide in this Warner Brothers home video event, Straight Outta Nowhere: Scooby-Doo Meets Courage the Cowardly Dog. When Scooby runs off after a mystery is solved, the gang tracks and chases him to Nowhere, where Courage is similarly hearing strange sounds that make him react weirdly. The gang arrives just in time for dog-sized cicadas to come burrowing out of the ground! Welcomed into the house by Muriel for snacks, everyone is present with the family is given an invitation to the mayor's banquet -- a surprise, as they did not even realize Nowhere had a mayor.

This animation is a departure from the standard Scooby-Doo fare, as there is a lot of seemingly supernatural weirdness that cannot be explained by the gang. Well, not in the normal sense of wires and pulleys and costumes. Instead, the explanation for it all stems from a source of dark matter that plagues Nowhere, which changes all the laws of physics in the vicinity on a whim. That seems a bit of a cheat, but we'll take it, as the team tries to remain grounded at the end when they attempt to pull the masks off the true villains behind the giant cicada queen, the strange hypnotic sound, and the string of robberies being commited all over. This makes up for some of the more bizarre events that happen because of the dark matter source, like Daphne being turned into a 16-bit videogame character, or the furniture in the mayor's mansion coming to life and trying to eat the guests.

You're more likely to enjoy this if you're a fan of Courage than a fan of Scooby-Doo, as the show tends to favor the dynamics of his world. Overall, however, this was a teamup that had to be done, and I don't see how it could have really been done any differently.