Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed opened 20 years ago this week. Following the unexpected blockbuster success of the original, financial expectations were high, but with an odd spring release date as opposed to a summer tentpole slot, it made “only” $84 million at the Scooby bank. Now, don’t read that as “Scrat is saying it flopped lol” because it didn’t. It did do respectable business, but nevertheless wasn’t big enough for Warner Bros. to move forward with a planned third installment. For my money, Monsters Unleashed isn’t as funny or as good as the 2002 outing, lacking the crass humor that gave that film its bite. Instead, it’s focused much more on Scooby and Shaggy just dicking around and getting into trouble, which appropriately enough is kind of what happened with the cartoon show too. That said, it’s still a really enjoyable time, and it’s always nice when this franchise actually lets the gang encounter the supernatural as opposed to the usual imposters.

As with the first film, there was plenty of merch to go around, including a Burger King promotion consisting of five toys (and all but one of them were of Shaggy and Scooby, so fuck you Fred, Velma and Daphne, I guess). There was also a special “mysterious invisible ICEE” that was available at the time, and I have no idea what that means, but I’m going to assume it tasted like Scooby Snacks. And apparently, if you collected all five premiums, you could “solve a mystery” with cards that were included with them.

This was during a brief period in the early 2000s when both Burger King and McDonald’s were trying to push kids meals to “big kids,” meaning they had larger portions and cost slightly more. For whatever reason, this never really took off, and both restaurant chains abandoned the idea after a couple of years.

Have a Scooby night, y’all!