Mystery Mask Mix-Up

"Mystery Mask Mix-Up" is the second episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! season two. It aired on September 19, 1970 on CBS. It was produced and directed by William Hanna and Joe Barbera, the co-founders of Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Daphne gets kidnapped by Chinese ghosts when she buys a valuable mask from a curio shop.

Detailed summary
In a seemingly abandoned temple in San Francisco's Chinatown, the Ghost of Zen Tuo materializes in a puff of smoke. He orders his minions to retrieve his mask, and not return without it.

Elsewhere in Chinatown, Fred, Daphne, Velma, Scooby, and Shaggy are watching the Chinese New Year parade. After the parade, the gang stops by at an antique store and Daphne purchases a golden Chinese mask encrusted with jewels. The gang leaves and two hooded ghosts arrive at the antique store and ask for the mask. The store owner, frightened, tells the ghosts that a girl took it.

While walking down the streets, the gang runs into the hooded ghosts who attempt to take the mask. Scooby creates a smokescreen from a steam press and the gang flees. Mystery Inc. heads to an oriental art shop where a dealer, Mr. Fong, informs them that many centuries ago, the mask was stolen from the tomb of Zen Tuo, a Chinese warlord whose ghost returns to seek the mask. He warns them that they are in great danger.

While driving in the Mystery Machine, the hooded ghosts start following them in their car. A car chase ensues, leading the gang to crash into Fisherman's Wharf and land in a pile of fish. In the conclusion, Daphne is kidnapped (bound and gagged in the back seat of the ghost's car) and the mask is taken and the hooded ghosts drive away. The kidnappers leave behind a paper that reads "The Temple in the Hills".

The gang heads to the temple and enter. Splitting up, Fred and Velma find a secret room. They enter, hear a noise and look to see a bound and gagged Daphne. She struggles to speak through her gag. They remove it and she says it's a trap: the door closes and locks and they are all trapped inside.

Scooby and Shaggy run into Zen Tuo (now wearing the golden mask) and the hooded ghosts who chase them. They eventually are captured and placed in a room tied up on a pile of fireworks, a lit fuse making it's way toward them. They manage to escape, and in the process, let Daphne, Fred and Velma out of the room.

Daphne leads the gang to a secret room that she saw on her way in, full of pigeons in a coop. They find messages that read dates and times have been tied to their legs.

Freddy formulates a trap, where Zen Tuo comes in, he steps on a train powered by Roman candles, and the trap is set. But Scooby doesn't finish laying the track pieces out and the train runs into Scooby Doo. In spite of this, the villain is captured.

Zen Tuo is Mr. Fong, and the hooded ghosts are his henchmen. Mr. Fong has been the leader of an international smuggling ring. Information about dates and times entered the country inside masks and then the info was sent to other gang members by the pigeons. When the police question how the gang had gotten the mask in the first place, Daphne explains that the mask was delivered to a curio shop by mistake, where she ended up buying it as a souvenir. The ghost act was to scare people away from the temple, their center of the operation.

With the case settled, Shaggy and Scooby are now concerned about their next meal; Velma offers a Scooby Snack, but she only has one for them both. She tosses it in the air for them to catch, but they fumble and fail to catch it, hitting the floor and being momentarily knocked out. In that moment, a mouse runs out its hole and takes the Scooby Snack for itself; eliciting laughs from everyone about them being outfoxed by a mouse.

Memorable quotes
Shop owner: Perhaps you would be interested in this golden mask? Fred: No, thanks, palm faces are more my thing. Daphne: I think it's groovy. I'll take it. Shaggy: Looks like Daphne wants to scare up a couple of new boyfriends. Daphne: Very funny.

Shaggy: Don't you know it's illegal to shoot off fireworks and wreck a storeroom? Ghost of Zen Tuo: We will build a new storeroom. Shaggy: Like, who's going to build a new us?

Shaggy: How do you like that? Outfoxed by a mouse.

Characters
In order of appearance:


 * Ghost of Zen Tuo (Keye Luke)
 * Scair Pair (Don Messick and Frank Welker)
 * Velma Dinkley (Nicole Jaffe)
 * Fred Jones (Frank Welker)
 * Daphne Blake (Heather North)
 * Shaggy Rogers (Casey Kasem)
 * Scooby-Doo (Don Messick)
 * Cat
 * Curio shop owner
 * Laundromat owner
 * Mr. Fong (Keye Luke)
 * Mouse

Locations

 * San Francisco, California
 * Chinatown
 * The Temple in the Hills
 * San Francisco Chinese New Year Festival and Parade
 * Curio shop
 * Chinese laundromat
 * Mr. Fong's oriental art shop
 * Hotel
 * Fisherman's Wharf
 * The Dingy
 * Hidden Cove

Objects

 * Scooby Snack
 * Gold mask

Vehicles

 * The Mystery Machine

Development
Credited writers are Larz Bourne, Tom Degenais, and Bill Lutz, while Joe Ruby and Ken Spears story edited.

George A. Robertson Jr. sings the bubblegum pop song during the chase sequence, which is "Recipe for My Love". It was written by Danny Janssen and Susan Steward.

Errors
One cannot be exactly sure where this episode takes place. It would appear that Scooby and the gang have traveled to China (thus making this the first time that Scooby and the gang venture outside the U.S.) but the episode could very well take place in San Francisco, which has a large Chinese neighborhood (Chinatown) and population. The chase scene ends with the Mystery Machine crashing within Fisherman's Wharf (which is located in San Francisco). In the chase scene, the cars drive through a hotel lobby, with all guests and staff not Asian. However, if the setting is San Francisco, then why is there a Chinese temple there?
 * When one of the zombies demanded the mask, he and his partner's tunic folds (the y-shapes in front) were faced the wrong way.
 * When first confronted by the zombies, the only female silhouette shown is Daphne's, which mouths "Yow!" However, it is Velma's voice that proclaims this most profoundly.
 * When Scooby opens the zombies' car and gasps, they have yellow pupils in the black eye sockets of their masks.
 * During the chase scene right after the Fisherman's Wharf sign appears, Scooby is shown in the Mystery Machine. Two seconds later he is back on top of the zombies' car.
 * When Scooby was digging for Shaggy in the fish, his arm turned the color of Shaggy's shirt, twice.
 * When Zen Tuo was crossing the first line Shaggy drew it showed another line already drawn behind him.
 * After being unmasked, the Zen Tuo costume turned black, even though it was white for the rest of the episode.
 * When the fish squirted water at Scooby, its eyes were closed, even though fish don't really have eyelids. Although the usage in animation gives it a more facial expression to the character.
 * When Daphne, Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby look out of the window and find out that the zombies are following them, Scooby's collar is red.
 * There are real-life Buddhist temples in San Francisco.
 * For comical effect, the Mystery Machine slips on a banana at the end of the chase scene. (In fact, it's the reason it ends.)
 * When the zombies come to get the mask from the salesman, he says it was "just purchased by a young girl". Considering this very generic description, it is amazing how quickly they realized Daphne had the mask. Furthermore, it would have been perfectly easy enough for Daphne to deny all knowledge of it, having never met them before.
 * Why would the zombies be carrying around a piece of paper with "The Temple in the Hills" written on it, considering they are already aware of where the hideout is?
 * All Zen Tuo and the zombies wanted was the mask- why kidnap Daphne? That's just an invitation to be followed.
 * They probably couldn't allow any witnesses, or decided that it would be quicker to grab the one holding the mask than risk a delay in a struggle.
 * Having been worn throughout the episode, why does the mask still contain messages within its mouth at the end?
 * If the mask was delivered by accident to somewhere else, how did the zombies know where to find it? They must have connections within the postal service.
 * The mouse somehow knows Scooby's catchphrase.

Everlasting influence
This episode has been adapted several times in the following decades:
 * Golden Books' Mystery Mask Mix-Up
 * Golden Books' Scooby-Doo! Mystery Adventures
 * Dalmatian Press published two different books with the same name; one with a colour and coin reveal and another colour and read-along, with stickers.
 * In the film Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, a live-action adaptation, the Ghost of Zen Tuo costume has been donated to the Coolsonian Criminology Museum.
 * PSP's Scooby-Doo! Who's Watching Who?

This episode, out of all the series, seems to have had the biggest impact on how the general public perceives Daphne, and negatively attributed to the assumption that she is the one always getting in danger (when the other members had their fair share of getting caught), which is the highlight of future incarnations, most evidently the way James Gunn wrote her in Scooby-Doo: The Movie.