Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays (2012)
Scooby-Doo and the gang participate in a toy store's holiday parade where they discover the abandoned haunted clock tower with a troubled past. A sinister snowman haunts the streets and accompanied with a large blizzard, threatens to close down the toy store for good.
rating 6/10 User rating 105 votes 82% ❄ Christmas Connection
The entire special takes place during a town Christmas parade, with a rampaging snowman, a toy store under siege, and Santa Claus as a supporting character. Snow, holiday decorations, and Christmas-themed peril drive every scene from start to finish.
Our Review
Twenty-two minutes is not a lot of time to build a mystery. Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays, the 2012 animated TV special produced by Warner Bros. Animation, doesn't pretend otherwise. It sets up a Christmas parade, introduces a sinister shape-shifting snowman, puts a toy store at risk, and wraps everything up before the credits roll. The result is slight, cheerful, and more competent than it has any obligation to be.
What Actually Happens in Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays
The gang is volunteering at the Christmas parade for Menkle's Toy Store, a family business struggling to survive in a bad retail season. The problem gets considerably worse when a "Sinister Snowman" shows up, exhales an unnatural blizzard, encases Scooby in ice, and sends the parade into chaos. Mystery Inc. takes shelter inside the store alongside Santa Claus (voiced by Fred Tatasciore, who also voices the monster) and a store employee named Fabian.
The investigation leads them to a haunted clock tower connected to the store, complete with a glockenspiel and mechanical elves. The mystery is resolved not through clever deduction but through a piece of mechanical luck: as midnight strikes, one of the glockenspiel elves swings its mallet and clobbers the Sinister Snowman, knocking off the costume. Fabian, it turns out, was the snowman all along. His motive: force the store to close so he could take over the business from his uncle.
It's a thin mystery, and the reveal is telegraphed early to anyone paying attention. The side characters are functional rather than interesting, and the setup for Fabian's guilt is not particularly fair to the viewer. But these have been Scooby-Doo's structural weaknesses since 1969, so criticizing this special for them is like criticizing a cheese pizza for lacking toppings.
The Animation Is Better Than It Needs to Be
Director Victor Cook, who had been working in animation since the 1990s, puts real craft into the special's visual presentation. The character designs use the classic Scooby-Doo look rather than any of the more experimental styles the franchise has occasionally tried. The animation is fluid and uses the holiday setting well: the snowman's entrance, the parade balloons flying loose, and the glockenspiel room all have some genuine visual flair.
Robert J. Kral composed the score. Kral won an Annie Award in 2005 for his music on Duck Dodgers and had already scored Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated (2010-2013), so he was familiar territory here. The music is appropriately atmospheric without overselling the scares, and the holiday cues fit without becoming obnoxious.
The Voice Cast in 2012
Frank Welker voices both Fred Jones and Scooby-Doo in this special. Welker had originally played Fred when the show debuted on CBS on September 13, 1969, but had taken over Scooby-Doo himself only in 2002, when Don Messick's long tenure ended with Messick's death in 1997. By 2012, Welker handling both roles was simply the established norm.
Matthew Lillard voices Shaggy. Most people know Lillard from the 2002 live-action film, where he played the character alongside Sarah Michelle Gellar. What's less widely remembered is that Casey Kasem, who had voiced Shaggy since the original 1969 series, retired from the role in 2009. Lillard stepped in and has been the primary Shaggy voice since. He's good at it. Shaggy and Scooby get a genuinely funny sequence near the end involving the clock tower's mechanical workings, and Lillard's performance sells it.
Mindy Cohn (Velma) and Grey DeLisle (Daphne) round out the core cast. DeLisle, who records under both that name and Grey Griffin, is one of the most prolific voice actresses in the business. She's been Daphne since 2001.
Released as a DVD Bonus, Aired on Cartoon Network
The special was released on October 16, 2012, bundled inside the compilation Scooby-Doo! 13 Spooky Tales: Holiday Chills and Thrills, a two-disc DVD set collecting holiday-themed episodes from various Scooby-Doo series. Haunted Holidays was the only newly produced content in the set. It made its television debut on Cartoon Network on December 4, 2012, at 6:30 p.m. ET, slotted into the network's holiday programming block.
The DVD approach defines what this special is: a bonus feature made to anchor a compilation release. It doesn't carry the weight of a standalone Christmas film. Measured against what it actually had to do, it holds up fine.
Is Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays Worth Watching?
For adults, probably not on its own. The mystery doesn't hold up to scrutiny and there's no emotional depth to compensate. For children, especially those already invested in the franchise, it's 22 minutes of competent, energetic animation featuring characters they like, doing things that are funny and mildly scary without being actually frightening. That's a reasonable ask for a Tuesday night in December.
The Scooby-Doo formula was designed in 1969 specifically to be inoffensive. Fred Silverman, then a CBS programming executive, commissioned the show because parent groups were complaining about violent superhero cartoons on Saturday morning television. What Ruby and Spears created was a mystery format so mild that the monsters were always someone in a costume. Haunted Holidays is faithful to that legacy, for better and worse.
The glockenspiel elf accidentally unmasking the villain is a better ending than anything the writers came up with deliberately. That's probably the most honest thing to say about this special.
Fun Facts
Scooby-Doo's name came from Fred Silverman's interpretation of Frank Sinatra's scat line "doo-be-doo-be-doo" at the end of "Strangers in the Night." Silverman was on a red-eye flight to a production meeting when he was struck by the idea and renamed the dog on the spot.
The show's original working title was "Mysteries Five," and it featured five teenagers in a rock band. CBS rejected it as too frightening. Silverman ordered the concept retooled to soften the scares and shift focus from the teenagers to the dog.
Frank Welker, who voices both Fred and Scooby-Doo in this special, was part of the original 1969 cast. He is one of the highest-grossing voice actors of all time, appearing in films that have collectively earned billions at the worldwide box office.
Matthew Lillard, the voice of Shaggy, did not audition for the animated role. He got it because his live-action performance in the 2002 film was so similar to Casey Kasem's vocal interpretation that the transition was considered natural when Kasem retired in 2009.
Composer Robert J. Kral was born in South Australia and began learning drums at age four. He won an Annie Award in 2005 for Best Music in an Animated Television Production for his score on Duck Dodgers.
The special premiered on DVD on October 16, 2012, as part of a 13-episode holiday compilation. The television broadcast on Cartoon Network didn't happen until December 4, 2012, nearly seven weeks after the disc was already in stores.
Fred Tatasciore, who voices the Sinister Snowman and Santa Claus in this special, is known for voicing the Hulk in numerous Marvel animated productions. He's voiced both a rampaging snow monster and Santa Claus in the same 22-minute production.
Cast
