American animation icon Joe Ruby, the co-creator of the classic cartoon series Scooby-Doo has died. According to Variation Ruby died at his home in Westlake Village, California home to natural causes. Ruby was 87. In addition to collaborating with his production partner Ken Spears to create Scooby-Doo, the pair also developed two other classic Hanna-Barbera cartoons in both Dynomutt, Dog Wonder and Jabberjaw. Ruby’s extensive career also included work on the original Space Ghost series plus The Herculoids, Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, and even some live action shows such as the sitcom Punky Brewster.
Together with Spears, the couple brought a new class of cartoons to Hanna-Barbera Productions, which has been part of the company at the company since the late 1950s. “I’ve done some cartoons for cartoons years before, but I’ve never worked hard (worked as a writer),” Ruby said in an interview with Scooby-Doo fansite Scooby addicts. | It was just a ‘freak’ opportunity that came to Hanna-Barbera in 1959. They desperately needed people to write the short openings, closings and 30 second bridges for the Huck Hound and Yogi Bear Shows, and both Ken and I started writing them on the side while we worked our regular jobs in the editorial office. “
Some of Ruby’s other works that fans might know and love were the short-lived TV series Planet of the Apes and even the hugely popular 1980s version of Alvin & the Chipmunks. He also had a hand in bringing various live-action characters and franchises into the medium of animation, including Mister T, Police Academy: The Animated Series, and even the cartoon version of Rambo.
By far his most popular work was the Scooby-Doo franchise they co-produced in 1969. Spears and Ruby co-wrote the first five episodes of the series and had a hand in making the rest of the original run. The pair returned to the franchise in both 1976 for The Scooby-Doo Show and in the 1980s for Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo.
“We skipped a lot of names, and just decided which layman best suited her personality,” Ruby said in the same interview. “There was no story behind Shaggy, only that ‘Shaggy’ came first, then we came up with his formal name (Norville).”
Ruby received a special tank in credits for CG animation this year Scoob! along with Spears, a film that features not only the characters they co-created with Scooby-Doo, but also Blue Falcon & Dynomutt, but Captain Caveman.
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