Hide the Scooby-Snacks! Mystery Inc. Meets Food Network Icons Bobby Flay and Giada DiiLaurentis!

In one of the many iterations of SCOOBY-DOO, way back in the days of Saturday Morning cartoons, Scooby and the gang used to meet celebrities. Granted, they were celebrities who had enough free time to show up and do some voice acting for Hanna-Barbera, but they were still celebrities. Don Knotts, Mama Cass, a handful of others.

I was reminded of that series with this new release, SCOOBY-DOO AND THE GOURMET GHOST. The story finds the gang going to stay with Fred’s Uncle Bobby — Bobby Flay, whom Fred apparently didn’t know was a famous chef, much to Shaggy and Scooby’s disbelief. Flay is opening up a cooking resort with tons of “only in the cartoons” mechanical helpers that make cooking a breeze for anybody. He’s assisted in this by other celebrity chefs, including Giada DiiLaurentis, who is presented here as a sort of Wonder Woman in training as far as her surprising capabilities go.

Ah, but there’s trouble at the resort, as it’s built from the bones of an old restaurant, run by Bobby Flay’s heat great great relative from the Revolutionary War. This ancestor was also a noted chef, known for serving Americans and British alike on neutral territory. But he disappeared one night, with the townsfolk hearing him call out, “Red Ghost! Red Ghost!”

Now, I have enough of a history background to know that anyone in that era shouting out something like that probably would have been actually heard saying something else, but it gets the plot ball rolling here, so we’ll go with it.

Sure enough, the Red Ghost appears again, and the fate of Flay’s investment is jeopardized. With a creepy groundskeeper, a greasy real estate developer, and a kindly old historian on hand to play their respective roles, it’s up to the gang to discover what’s really going on in time to save the day — as well as the reputation of Bobby and Fred’s ancestor!

This DVD also includes a handful of Scooby-Doo cartoons from various series, all of which focus on a food plot. But what I’d have really liked would have been something featuring interviews with Flay and DiiLaurentis about their involvement with this latest installment in Scooby history.