Foul Play in Funland

"Foul Play in Funland" is the eighth episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season one. It aired on November 1, 1969 on ABC. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joe Barbera, the co-founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Funland, an upcoming amusement park, mysteriously turns on, with a rampaging robot on the loose.

Detailed summary
Fred, Daphne, Velma, Shaggy and Scooby are clam-hunting on the beach when the nearby amusement park mysteriously starts running, lights, rides and all. Velma states that the carnival was not supposed to open for weeks. The gang checks it out and split up. Surprisingly, the gang is able to order food and play games, but there is nobody around. Everything is running with no operators or cashiers.

Scooby and Shaggy then catch sight of a fleeting figure dash across the aisle. They chase it into the Hall of Mirrors, but flee from it. Fred, Daphne and Velma catch sight of the robotic man on the Ferris wheel, but when the ride comes back down, the man is nowhere to be seen. As they wonder at this, the lights and rides shut down all around the park. Mystery Inc. head to the caretaker's house, Mr. and Ms. Jenkins and explain their story, but the caretakers dismiss it and send the kids off.

The teens decide to stake out the carnival. Soon enough, the lights and rides come back on, but this time, everything is going haywire, like the stalls spitting out huge amounts of food and the rides running backwards. The gang chases the robot into the Tunnel of Love, but the gang's boat crashes. Then, the robot gives chase to Shaggy and Scooby on the roller coaster, and the two narrowly escape. Then, the robot dives off the roller coaster and crashes through the roof of a tent. When the gang enter the tent, the robot is gone.

They decide to try to capture the robot with an electric kart. But Shaggy accidentally sets it on, and Velma and Scooby go riding off, causing Velma to lose her glasses. The runaway kart causes chaos for a few minutes and finally, Scooby and Velma collide into a huge pile of cotton candy. The gang devise a trap. Scooby lures the robot into a crate, Scooby is lifted up out of a trapdoor by a basket and the robot is captured. Scooby goes off, and the robot finds him, chases him through the Wax Museum and finally they lead him into the crate but the robot breaks out and slams through a brick wall and is gone. Then, Mr. Jenkins appears and explains he created Charlie the robot to help run the amusement park when Mr. Jenkins was busy. But somehow, the robot got out of control.

Setting up a Jeep rigged with a huge electromagnet, the gang, with Jenkins, sets out to find Charlie. The magnet begins to work, but all of a sudden, the magnet stops working and then the robot short-circuits; it is evident now that the cable has been cut. Scooby discovers a person lurking by a fence, and Ms. Jenkins steps out with wire cutters. She confesses that she was the one who caused Charlie to go out of control. She did not think that robots should operate in a place where children were there to have fun. Mr. Jenkins plans to rebuild Charlie to be nice, and by the next day he has already succeeded, with Charlie gently scratching Scooby's ears.

Memorable quotes
Shaggy: I've seen a bird dog, and a rabbit dog, but you're the first clam dog I ever heard of. Scooby: Clam dog? Yuck! Daphne: Shaggy, you know Scooby doesn't like clams.

Velma: Good throw, Freddie! Fred: Well, I've still got the old touch.

Characters
In order of appearance:


 * Scooby-Doo (Don Messick)
 * Shaggy Rogers (Casey Kasem)
 * Daphne Blake (Stefanianna Christopherson)
 * Velma Dinkley (Nicole Jaffe)
 * Fred Jones (Frank Welker)
 * Charlie the Funland Robot
 * Mouse
 * Sarah Jenkins (Jean Vander Pyl)
 * Mr. Jenkins (Don Messick)
 * Leoplode, the Terror of the Jungle

Locations

 * Beach
 * Funland
 * High Boy
 * Caretakers' place and workshop

Objects

 * Scooby Snack (mentioned)

Vehicles

 * Funland Express
 * Mr. Jenkins's Jeep

Development
Joe Ruby and Ken Spears either wrote or story edited, as they were unable to remember what they specifically did past the fifth episode.

Behind the scenes

 * This is the first time the culprit is a female and one who doesn't wear a monster costume. The "monster," who for the first time is quite real, is controlled by a person.
 * This is the second absence of The Mystery Machine.
 * Shaggy alludes to Superman when he says that Charlie is faster than a speeding bullet, which is confirmed by Scooby.
 * Kewpie dolls were first made in 1912 from popularity of the comic strip in 1909.
 * The reflection of the mouse's design closely resembles Pixie and Dixie.
 * The eerie robot music whenever Charlie the Robot walks is from The Jetsons.

Errors

 * There are two sets of balls on the counter, which randomly disappear and reappear, as well as the number of balls being inconsistent.
 * When Daphne asks if they should re-stack the bottles for the ball toss game, her headband is green.
 * Daphne's sclera are white (when they should actually be flesh-coloured), when she comments on what such a cute doll Fred won and then immediately after when she and Velma react to the cash register working by itself.
 * When a stuffed bear lands on Scooby's back and he runs yelling, "Relp! Raggy, rhe's got me!", his mouth never moves.
 * The two close-ups exclusively on Mr. Jenkins while in the Jeep, clearly have him in standing position.
 * At the beginning of the episode, when the gang is digging for clams, Scooby seemed disgusted at the thought of eating the seafood. However, in the The Scooby-Doo Show episode "A Creepy Tangle in the Bermuda Triangle", when the gang was stranded on the island, with Shaggy and Scooby in charge of cooking dinner, Scooby seemed eager to be eating the clams, stating "One for Shaggy, two for me."
 * Shaggy asks for all the trimmings on his hot dog, but the animator(s) only adds mustard.
 * The reflection of Scooby's dog tag isn't reversed in the funhouse mirror.
 * When the hot dogs are mysteriously fired from the stand, they all have mustard on them until they land on Shaggy's plate, and seemingly disappear.
 * Perhaps somewhat embarrassingly, a moment after the hot dogs being fired from a random stand, a stand specifically made for selling hot dogs (highlighted by the roof being carved into one) is close-by.
 * The steam locomotive was running without an engineer and fireman. It was possibly rigged by Sarah.
 * The roller coaster is full of errors: Shaggy and Scooby hide in one of the middle seats, but they're on the front car when the rest of the gang see them. They also managed to change sides at some point during the ride. When they leap into another coaster, they land in the first car, but when it stops, they are in the middle. The robot begins his ride in the last seat, from which he begins climbing toward to Shaggy and Scooby. No matter how far he climbs, he never gets any closer to them, but is shown in the last seat again.
 * When Scooby spots Sarah in the shadows, he's suddenly out of the Jeep, and walks on-screen from the right.

Everlasting influence
This episode has been adapted several times in the following decades:
 * In the Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law episode "Shaggy Busted", Charlie is depicted as a disguise of an inmate still wearing the costume. The person underneath, gets their helmet stuck.
 * This and "Bedlam in the Big Top" is combined to form the basis of the "Sugarland" level of Scooby-Doo! Who's Watching Who?
 * In Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, a sequel with a reboot twist (in modern conventional terms), has Velma's parents use the Funland robot as an exhibit in their Crystal Cove Museum.
 * The episode is rebooted in the Be Cool, Scooby-Doo! episode "Me, Myself, and A.I."