Scooby-Doo and The Case of The Missing Costume

“Zoinks!” Lars bellowed while looking for a shirt for his Shaggy costume. “No one is going to know who I’m supposed to be without the perfect green shirt!”

“You think you’ve got problems!” Lindsay yelled, “James just got called to work, so now we’re down a Fred!”

“Lucy is refusing to let me attach her Scooby dog tag,” Sophie fretted.

It seemed that nothing was going right for the gang this rainy Saturday afternoon. The plan to dress up as Scooby and the gang had been a long time coming. Ever since adopting Lucy, the Shepherd/Chow cross, the family had always received plenty of compliments on this doggo’s lovely look.

Often, due to her oversized blue-collar and dark brown colouring, many folks would call her Scooby-Doo.

This gave Lindsay an idea.

“We should dress up as Scoob and the gang for Halloween this year!” She announced to her family one day in mid-June. Everyone agreed, and ever since then, they’d been making plans on how to execute the family ensemble to perfection.

Unfortunately for the Brown family, there seemed to be more problems than solutions. Between a Daphne dye job gone terribly wrong and all of the other costume malfunctions, things weren't looking great for the family's Halloween dress-up plans.

Just as Lindsay thought all was lost, Sophie yelled, “Got it!” She had managed to affix the Scooby tag to Lucy the Dog. And there, before the family’s eyes, Lucy transformed into Scooby-Doo.

Detective Scooby was on the case!

As with any great mystery, our heroes would have to pinpoint the problem at hand.

And who better for this critical thinking task but our very own Velma Dinkley!

“Jinkies! I believe that we’ve got a case of the ‘not good enoughs’ here,” Velma exclaimed.

“Can you explain that?” Daphne inquired.

“Of course! What I mean to say is, we’ve been planning this group costume for so long, now that the time has come to bring it to fruition, our efforts are falling down the proverbial mineshaft!”

“Jeepers! Well, isn’t that the pits!” Daphne exclaimed unhelpfully.

“I guess there’s only one thing left to do then,” Fred piped up from nowhere, “If we ever want to solve this case, we’re going to have to split-up gang!”

The rest of the group looked unimpressed by Fred’s suggestion but decided to split up anyway to humour their friend.

Scooby and Shaggy did what they do best and took some downtime on the couch to think things over. Maybe they'd be able to dig up some answers to this mystery while relaxing.

“Like, I don’t know about this Scoob! The idea of creating an entire photo-collage story out of these costumes is freaking me out!”

“Mee Roo!”

"I sure wish there was a pizza under this blanket!"

Unfortunately, the impending pressure of being caught in the spotlight drove poor Shaggy and Scooby to their usual cowering position of fear beneath a large blanket.

We can only hope that eventually, they'll gain the courage they need to help solve this costume-case mystery!

Meanwhile, Velma searched the seemingly endless reaches of her brain.

...and Daphne made herself useful by taking another selfie.

Then! “By Gawds,” Velma and Fred cried in unison, “I think we’ve got it!”

“Come on, Scoob, nows not the time to be dressing up as scaredy cats! Fred needs our help!” Shaggy said to his pal when hearing Fred and Velma's announcement.

Scoob was having none of it and remained motionless from fear.

“Would you do it for a Scooby snack?”

“Roh, kay!”

Now that Fred and Velma had the undivided attention of the rest of the gang, they explained.

“As you all know, we were suffering from the inability to go forward with our Halloween costumes this year due to several insignificant challenges popping up with our costumes,” Velma began. “To an outsider, this would seem silly, but for some reason to us, we thought that it was the making of a disaster.”

“Of course, it wasn’t a disaster at all! Shaggy, would you do the honours of pulling the disguise off of our problem, please?” Fred asked.

“As you can see, the issue was simply ourselves! We were blowing our worries up into an impossible problem, therefore blocking our problem-solving skills from figuring out any solutions,” Fred explained.

“Once we allowed ourselves to have fun with what we had, then all of the parts fell into place!” Velma continued. “Look, Lindsay was able to pull off both a Daphne and Fred look. Lars only needed to find his inner Shaggy to nail the part perfectly, despite his shirt colour, and Sophie rocked her modern-day Velma!”

Another mystery was solved, thankfully, due to those meddling kids!

The gang looked to their beloved, Lucy-Doo, who was the inspiration for this Halloween extravaganza and realized that the Halloween spirit had nothing to do with the costumes themselves and everything to do with the people (and dogs) who wore them.