Scooby-Doo

Scooby-Doo is the eponymous character and the protagonist in the Scooby-Doo animated television series created by the popular American animation company Hanna-Barbera. Scooby-Doo is the male dog and lifelong companion of Shaggy Rogers and in many iterations, including the original series, is regarded as a unique Great Dane dog who is able to speak in broken English, unlike most other dogs in his reality, and usually puts the letter R in front of words spoken. Other incarnations, such as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, present talking dogs like Scooby as quite common.

The head of children's programming at CBS, Fred Silverman came up with the character's name from the syllables "doo-be-doo-be-doo" in Frank Sinatra's hit song "Strangers in the Night".

Personality
Different iterations of the character have been developed and expanded in the various series featuring the characters, many of them contradicting, such as the original series and recent live-action movies where Shaggy and Scooby-Doo first meet as older teenagers for the first time, contradicting the "Pup Named Scooby-Doo" animated series where they know each other from almost infancy.

In all versions of the character, ‎Scooby-Doo and Shaggy share several personality traits, mostly being cowardly and perpetually hungry. But their friends (Velma, Daphne and Fred) encourage them to go after the costumed villains, usually with "Scooby Snacks", a biscuit-like dog treat or cookie snack (usually shaped like a bone or, in later versions of the cartoons, Scooby's dog tag), though Scooby's inherent loyalty and courage does often force him to take a more heroic stance.

Scooby has a speech impediment and tends to pronounce most words as if they begin with an "R", though most characters are able to understand him perfectly. In most iterations, he keeps his sentences relatively short, usually using charades for anything longer than three or four words. His catchphrase, usually howled at the end of every episode, is "Scooby-Dooby-Doo!" or "Rooby-Rooby-Roo".

Scooby was voiced by Don Messick until the voice actor's death in 1997. Messick is also known for providing the voice of dog Astro on The Jetsons. The characteristic voices of Scooby and Astro are so similar that Astro's signature phrase, "Ruh-roh!" ("Uh-oh!") is popularly and improperly attributed to Scooby (as in "Ruh-roh, Raggy!").

Appearance and anatomy
Scooby is brown from head to toe with several distinctive black spots on his upper body and doesn't seem to have a melanistic mask. He is generally a quadruped, but displays bipedal 'human' characteristics occasionally. Scooby also has opposible thumbs and can use his front paws like hands. He has a black nose and wears an off-yellow, diamond shaped-tagged blue collar with an "SD" (his initials) and has four toes on each foot and unlike other dogs, Scooby only has one pad on the sole of each of his feet (so that it was easier to draw in the Scooby-Doo Annuals).

Scooby has a fully prehensile tail he can use to swing from or press buttons. Both his head and tail are malleable and useful as a communication aid or creating a distraction.

Creator Iwao Takamoto later explained that before he designed the character, he first spoke to a Great Dane breeder, who described to him the desirable characteristics of a pedigree dog. Takamoto then drew Scooby as the opposite of this. He said "I decided to go the opposite [way] and gave him a hump back, bowed legs, small chin and such. Even his colour is wrong."

According to the official magazine that accompanied the 2002 movie, Scooby is seven years old (forty-nine in stereotypical dog years).