Scooby of the Jungle is the first half of the fifth episode of The New Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show and originally aired on September 24, 1983.
Written by Richard Merwin, this episode sees the gang in Africa, investigating the mystery of disappearing jungle animals.
Scooby of the Jungle
The episode begins with the gang driving in the Mystery Machine through the African Jungle. They soon arrive at a Game Reserve to investigate the occurrence of missing animals. Here they meet Randall Bakko (assistant game warden) and Mr. Rasheed (the boss). While talking to the game wardens, Scooby briefly goes into a trance. We also learn there is an ape man called Randar that they need to watch out for, along with an ape.
The Mystery Machine gets stuck so the gang heads into the jungle on foot where they come across a giant footprint. The giant ape emerges and Daphne is briefly kidnapped by the ape called Mobotu. Scrappy and Scooby also complain about a whistle noise that is driving them nuts, however, Daphne can not hear it.
Mr. Rasheed shows up and offers the gang a ride back to the headquarters but Daphne refuses. Mr. Rasheed tells them to be back by nightfall as that is closing time.
Daphne wants to find Randar as she figures he’ll know why the animals are going missing. We soon meet Randar the ape-man who has gotten a hold of Scooby’s Scooby snacks, and what a weird box it is. Rather than being rectangular, it’s a square box at times, and other times it’s a thin rectangular box while in other shots it’s a thicker rectangular box.
Daphne gets kidnapped again, this time by Randar the Ape-man so Scrappy, Shaggy and Scooby go to rescue her. But of course all three get trapped in a cage. Randar also dresses Daphne up in some sort of torn jungle dress which is kind of weird, but I guess maybe it’s a call back to King Kong.
Randall Bakko the assistant game warden shows up and tells all four he’ll be back with help, but Daphne can’t wait, so she blows a whistle that makes Mobotu the giant ape show up. The ape releases the gang and goes back into Randar’s home where they hear a radio where there is a discussion of transporting the animals. Daphne decides to collect all of the whistles as they are controlling the animals.
Randar chases after the gang, but Scooby covers up his ears and blows all of the whistles at once which makes all the animals come to help. Randar falls from his treehouse and into a cage where he is surrounded by the angry animals.
Back at the jungle headquarters, Daphne unmasks Randar to be Bakko the assistant who was disguised as the ape-man so he could profit from the sale of the animals.
My Score
I give this episode a 6 out of 10. It’s fun but not so spooky, and not really memorable other than it has some King Kong vibes which is something I like. The jungle setting is interesting too. Overall though, this is not essential Scooby-Doo and is also a bit forgettable, but given the 12 minute time constraint it would be really tough to make super memorable episodes as there isn’t a lot of breathing room to flesh out things.
This episode also has some blurry animation at times, like we saw in Scooby the Barbarian, and other times it is crisp. It feels like two different studios were handling the scenes.
