The Creature Came from Chem Lab is the first half of the fourth episode of The New Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show, and was written by Jeff Segal and Alan Burnett. Airing on September 17th, 1983 this episode sees the gang at Hillside High School to help Daphne’s Cousin named Jennifer out from a creature who’s appearance has canceled the School dance.
The Creature Came from Chem Lab – Episode Review
The episode begins in the Hillside High School gym where four cheerleaders are cheering on the game. Outside the gym, a janitor mirrors the cheerleaders using his mop head as a pom pom outside the chemistry lab. The creature busts out scaring the janitor away and crushing a metal bucket. The creature then crashes the gymnasium scaring all the kids away.
Daphne, Scooby, Shaggy and Scrappy all show up to Hillside High in the Mystery Machine. Scooby is wearing his finest school sweater. We also are introduced to Jennifer, Daphne’s Valley Girl Cousin who speaks with a lot of Val Girl slang.
We learn the Creature only comes out at night and we also learn from Toby that the school’s dance has been cancelled for the night.
Daphne interviews Professor Marsden, the school’s science teacher, and he’s a bit of a grouch and has no interest in the creature at all. He says instead of dancing, the kids should be doing homework instead.
Searching for clues, Scooby releases hundreds of frogs, which seems like a cute nod to the film ET to me. Amidst the chaos, Scooby also finds a piece of the creature’s skin, which Daphne goes off to analyze.
Shaggy and the dogs go off to the gym to investigate more clues and Scooby has a run in with the creature. Shaggy tosses a basketball at the creature enraging the monster even more, but everyone is able to escape.
Daphne shows up and says the creature’s costume is just painted foam rubber. Shaggy also shows off a computer disc that they have found.
Distracted by the smells coming from the home economics class but are swindled into washing dishes instead of eating delicious food. Once again they bump into the creature where Shaggy lets it slip that Daphne is in the computer room.
Daphne plugs the 5 1/2 inch sized floppy disc into a mainframe computer where the video game called ‘Star Puppy’ is displayed. Scrappy is excited to play but Professor Marsden kicks them out of the lab.
Soon the entire gang is chased by the creature but a fast thinking Scooby uses football maneuvers to outwit the Chem Lab creature by ringing the dismissal bell and having the creature trampled by dozens of happy kids leaving the classroom.
Daphne unmasks the creature and we learn that it is Toby Wallace. You see Toby was pirating video games. Toby needed access to the school at night so he could use the computer lab to make copies of the game and then sell them for money. Jennifer tells Toby to ‘Bag It’ and we end with the school dance where Scooby shows off his tubular to the max dance moves.
My Score
I give this one a 7 out of 10. I dug the creature’s claw like hands and the Valley Girl slang certainly fit in with the early 80s times. The floppy discs take me back to my younger years where I’d trade games with my friends at school. The 80s were an exciting time as new technology emerged.
This one isn’t the spookiest but neither is this particular series. I do love how it sort of is influenced by the 50’s creature films and the students were somewhat preppy still and had a 50s look to them. Scrappy, excited to play a video game, was also fun to see.
