A few years back I had purchased Betrayal at House on the Hill and fell in love with it and it’s randomly user-drawn house system. The game having 50 ‘Haunts’ or scenarios that could unfold based on what rooms were drawn was also a big plus. This means that having the same Haunt twice doesn’t even feel repetitive since the house is going to be completely different every time.
I saw where some people over on BGG were modifying their game to be Scooby-Doo themed, at least the character cards and minis. This was right up my alley, though I wasn’t satisfied with the miniature options I was seeing people using. Most were cardboard standee cutouts, and some were pewter pieces from a Scooby-Doo version of Clue or Monopoly. This not being good enough, I started hunting.
The lack of Scooby-Doo miniatures troubles me.
There were very few options. Newer version of Monopoly and Clue seemed to be using either cardboard standees or some type of pewter mini bust, no longer in print were the full body pewter minis. Generic Scooby-Doo games that would pop up here and there also just used cardboard standees because it’s way cheaper than trying to figure out what these kids look like in 3D and messing it up. Of the actual miniature options, there is a Scooby-Doo themed train set that goes for about $300 bucks and comes with a few poorly painted Polly-Pocket style and size minis. (Speaking of, there are allegedly at LEAST TWO Scooby-Doo theme micro-machine style playsets that I can barely find any information on but would give an arm for) and some war gaming miniatures that are ‘inspired’ by the gang, but a little more gritty and apocalyptic (possibly fitting) but seemed out of print as well.
After all my searching, I only found one sort-of practical solution.
I snagged a copy of The Electronic Talking Scooby-Doo Thrills and Spills Game! off of e-bay for around $20. I primed and painted Scooby, Fred, and Shaggy. Theeeeen sort of forgot about it and never got around to the last two. I think I may have been upset with a botched spray paintjob on shaggy, causing him to be a little rough to the touch, I think it was only then that I realized there we only one of each mini except Scooby. So I just.. sat it aside since I didn’t have any real practical purpose for them anyway.
Well, cut to now and we have an actual Scooby-Doo Betrayal game dropping this week (in addition to ANOTHER Scooby-Doo board game, but more on this later) so I finally go around to finishing painting these bad boys. I’ve learned quite a bit since doing Scooby, Fred, and Shaggy initially, so I also ended up touching up and resealing each of them. I opted to not paint the eyes in on any on of them except Scooby since the minis are already sort of off-character-model enough that it may draw more attention to that and make ’em look even more off model.
