Laff-A-Lympics is the co-headlining segment, with Scooby-Doo, of the package Saturday morning cartoon series Scooby's All-Star Laff-A-Lympics, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions beginning in 1977. The show was a spoof of the Olympics and the ABC television series Battle of the Network Stars, which debuted one year earlier. It featured 45 Hanna-Barbera characters organized into the teams (the Scooby Doobies, the Yogi Yahooeys, and the Really Rottens) which would compete each week for gold, silver, and bronze medals. One season of 16 episodes was produced in 1977–78, and eight new episodes combined with reruns for the 1978–79 season as Scooby's All-Stars. Unlike most cartoon series produced by Hanna-Barbera in the 1970s, Laff-A-Lympics did not contain a laugh track.
The sporting competitions that the characters would be called upon to perform in would often be comical and offbeat versions of Olympic sports, races, and scavenger hunts. Each segment took place in a different location around the world.
Each episode was presented in a format similar to an Olympic television broadcast, with announcing/voice-over duties handled by an unnamed/unseen Announcer character. Hosting duties and commentary were provided by Snagglepuss and Mildew Wolf from the It's the Wolf! segments of Cattanooga Cats (though unlike It's the Wolf!, Mildew was no longer voiced by Paul Lynde; he is now voiced by John Stephenson). Since the show was airing on ABC, Snagglepuss and Mildew wore the then-traditional yellow jackets of ABC Sports announcers. Non-competing Hanna-Barbera characters such as Fred Flintstone, Barney Rubble, Jabberjaw and Peter Potamus made appearances as guest announcers and judges. Other non-competing characters included parents of contestants (who were interviewed by Mildew before events) and various monsters and creatures that would serve as antagonists during events.
The Laff-A-Lympics competition was based upon a point system. Various events were worth a certain point total for the first, second, and third-place winners (usually 25, 15, and 10 respectively; however, the last event was often worth either double points or a larger point bonus for the winner). The team that had the most points by the end of the half-hour was declared the winner and received the gold medal. Points could also be subtracted for treachery and sabotage, which were the specialties of the villainous Really Rottens team.
The "good guy" teams, consisting of the Scooby Doobies and the Yogi Yahooeys, were good friends and their respective team members gladly helped each other whenever they got into a jam. The Really Rottens, however, always cheated and pulled dirty tricks which would ultimately cause them to be the last-place losers in most episodes. Much like Dick Dastardly and Muttley on Wacky Races, typically the Really Rottens would be just on the verge of winning, before they would make a fatal error at the very end that allowed one of the other two teams to end up at the top. Occasionally, though, the Rottens' cheating technique wouldn't actually be against the rules, which resulted in them (unlike Dastardly and Muttley) actually winning in a few episodes; there was even one episode where they won through sheer chance.Only one complete season of Laff-A-Lympics episodes was produced, with eight new episodes combined with reruns for the second season of Scooby's All Star Laff-A-Lympics (billed as Scooby's All-Stars). When it premiered in the fall of 1977, the series consisted of several segments, including "Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels" (which led off the two-hour program and later was spun off onto its own half-hour show), "The Scooby-Doo Show" and "Dynomutt" (both of which featured a small number of newly produced segments alongside repeated segments from earlier seasons) and the "Laff-A-Lympics" segments themselves. The show resurfaced in 1980 as a half-hour series on its own (sans the "Captain Caveman," "Scooby-Doo" and "Dynomutt" cartoons) simply titled Laff-A-Lympics and was later rerun on ABC in 1986. It has also been frequently rerun in later years on USA Cartoon Express, Cartoon Network and Boomerang, often during the time periods when the Summer and Winter Olympics are being held.
Cast[]
Character Gallery[]
| Gallery | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||