I've thought about buying the "Complete Season 1 & 2" DVD set for awhile, but was wondering. Do the episodes still have laugh tracks, or have they been removed, like they later were in reruns? Or is there at least an option to turn them off?
I never understood why they put a laugh track on this cartoon and always found it annoying. Was hoping it was removed for the DVDs, or at least able to be turned off.
Most of the Hanna Barbera cartoons from that time have a laugh track, its especially annoying on a show like the Hair Bear Bunch when its not even that funny to begin with.
'When there's no more room in Hollywood, remakes shall walk the Earth.'
Just been watching that Season 1 & 2 DVD set, and can confirm that the episodes do have laugh-tracks. I'm no fan of laugh-tracks either, but on Scooby Doo it seemed quite inoffensive. Maybe that's how I saw the show as a kid, so it didn't seem "wrong" to me?
If I recall correctly - and I haven't double-checked before posting, so could easily be mistaken here - the first episode of Season 2 didn't seem to have a laugh-track on it. Thought the laugh-track might be gone from that point onward but, no, it was back on subsequent episodes.
Y'know, I don't think I ever saw Season 2 as a kid, because I was like: what the heck have they done to the title song, and why is there suddenly a musical "filler" sequence in every episode? Yikes. All of my memories were in Season 1.
Somewhere in the Warner Bros. vaults they have the masters without the laugh track (because it was added last to the finished films), but the DVDs use the laugh tracks, with no option to remove it.
There were a handful of laugh tracks on cartoons in the late 1960s - "The Archie Show" had one, and reruns of the prime time shows "The Jetsons" and "The Flintstones". Unless I'm mistaken, "Scooby-Doo" was Hanna-Barbera's second Saturday morning show to use a laugh track, with "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour" being the first.