Cartoon Character Voices

I'm watching a modern Scooby Doo cartoon on Boomerang with my 3 1/2-year-old. I think Mindy Cohn is very good as the current voice of Velma. This episode is actually from 2004, but http://www.imdb.com/ shows her as still being the voice today. Not a bad gig for a former child TV star.

Casey Kasem is Shaggy in this episode, although imdb shows that the movie version of Shaggy, Matthew Lillard, is the cartoon voice of Shaggy starting in 2010. Kasem sounds good still in 2004, but over the last few years his voice really started to show its age. So even though I'm not too fond of Lillard as Shaggy (although oddly I found him very good in the movie, just not so much as a cartoon voiceover), I suppose it was time.

You know who is a supreme cartoon voice talent? Frank Welker, the long-time and still voice of Fred. He also does the voice of Scooby in more recent times. Check out his imdb profile; it's quite amazing his list of credits.

Back to Cohn for a minute, the show from which The Facts of Life spun off, Diff'rent Strokes, also brags an alum in today's cartoon industry. The voice of Mrs. Puff is the actress who played the Drummonds' maid after Mrs. Garrett moved on to Facts, Mary Joe Catlett. So now you know why her voice is so recognizable!

Catlett is in her 70s now, so not to wish any ill will on her, but if her voice goes "Kasem" on her, I've got the perfect replacement for her Mrs. Puff character already picked out: Linda Kozlowski. She's Mrs. Crocodile Dundee if you don't recall, and if you happen to get a chance to catch it on late night cable TV, watch her last piece of work on film, 2001's Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles and tell me she wouldn't be perfect.

This is the kind of stuff I do when my kids rule the TV set. Or when I'm up late alone watching bad movie sequels and logged on to the Internet.