RIP Takamoto. Scooby lives on.

My all-time favorite cartoon is Scooby-Doo. I’ve got the cookie jars, tooth brush holders, telephones, statues, and action figures to prove it. In fact, I have the world’s largest collection of Scooby-Doo boxers, which just so happen to be my one and only layer (last layer) of security against terrorists and other ill-bringers.

Sad news: the animator who created Scooby died today. Reuters reports:

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Iwao Takamoto, the animator who created the cartoon canine Scooby-Doo as well as characters on such shows as "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons," died Monday after suffering a massive coronary, a spokesman said. He was 81.

Takamoto died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for respiratory problems, said Gary Miereanu, a spokesman for Warner Bros. Animation.

I always figured that it was Hanna or Barbera that created Scooby.

Takamoto received “informal illustration training” from fellow Japanese-Americans while in an internment camp during WWII. I don’t know much about the internment camps, but I would have guessed them to be ugly, dark, depressing, imagination-stomping kind of places. Thinking about a group of prisoners huddled together drawing cartoons in such a place makes me smile.