They're four kids who have next to nothing in common; they have no visible means of support, parents, or responsibilities; they travel as much as they want, wherever they want; they have a dog whom they've addicted to a treat--and they use the dog to do anything they deem too dangerous to do themselves. Oh, and they regularly take the law into their own hands, trespassing and breaking and entering whenever it suits them. This is a kids show?

Looking back, it's sometimes tough to figure out what really made Scooby-Doo so popular, and the four episodes included here--chosen by a Warner Bros. Online poll--don't really go that far in explaining the phenomenon. Hassle in the Castle, the first episode, has virtually no plot (the gang is out boating in the fog when they run aground on a haunted island); in A Clue for Scooby Doo, the fivesome sinks a husband-and-wife pirating scam; The Backstage Rage is a step up, and involves the gang's foiling a puppeteer's counterfeit operation. The last episode, Jeepers, It's the Creeper, asks more questions than it answers--it opens with the gang headed out to their school dance, and no other students ever show up.

It's hard to believe that any collection of fan favorites wouldn't include any of Scooby and the crew's classic team-ups (with Batman and Robin, Laurel and Hardy, etc.). With all the other Scooby compilations available, this one has dubious claim to the title Greatest Mysteries. --Randy Silver