Growing up, Scooby-Doo was a morning staple. I’d watch it everyday over a soggy bowl of Life cereal. We didn’t have cable at the time so it was a little grainy on cloudy days and the bright 70s stylings didn’t come through very well seeing as how the TV was black and white. But to a little tyke like myself, there was nothing like being happily scared to start my day.
Fast forward a couple of decades and I still get a kick out of ole’ Scoob and the gang. Not Scrappy, not the spin-offs, not the new versions – but the classic Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? It’s back on in reruns and it appears as though Mystery Inc. is bigger than ever.
Inkworks’ Scooby-Doo: Mysteries and Monsters is something of a catch-all for the entire Scooby-verse. It covers the old as well as the new and all things in between – the good and the bad. With Sparkly cards and stickers, it’s a set geared at young children, but adults should get a kick out of the product as well.
The base set provides an abundance of information ranging from character profiles, monster cards and behind-the-scenes cards. I found the design to be solid, although the television border on some of the subsets cluttered the card fronts.
As far as inserts, stickers come one per pack. Don’t get me wrong, I love stickers, but having just nine stickers in a set meant for a lot of duplicates and not much of a chance to do much trading with anyone else who has busted a box.
Next up are the fun Sparkly cards. Imposing a character on a shiny background is a lot of fun. And falling one in every seven packs, it’s a solid challenge for low-end collectors like myself.
Each box also comes with one of four box loaders cards, but I failed to find a real theme running with mine. Oh, well, nice card nonetheless.
The ‘hits’ come in the forms of autographs and sketch cards. Neither are guaranteed, but looking around, it looks like you should get one or the other in every other box. My box was a dud in this department, yielding neither. That’s fine as they weren’t guaranteed and the box didn’t cost a lot anyway.
Although the composition of Mysteries and Monsters is solid, especially when taking into consideration the target audience, I wasn’t all that happy with the way my box broke down. I completed one base set but was still seven short of a second despite getting a handful of triples and even a couple of quadruples. The collation woes continued with the stickers as I only finished one set from the box when I should have completed two and still had a bunch of leftovers.
I did beat the odds getting an extra Sparkly card, however that was somewhat bittersweet as I received duplicates of SP6. As stated earlier, no autographs or sketch cards were found in my box, something I don’t mind as I took that into account when I bought it. It would have been a bonus to get one, but it’s fine that I didn’t.
2003 Inkworks Scooby-Doo Mysteries and Monsters Box Breakdown:
Packs per box: 24
Cards per pack: 7 + 1
Total cards: 193
Cards in set: 72
Singles: 72
Doubles: 65
Triples+: 27
Inserts: 29
- Stickers (1:1): 24 (S1 (3), S2 (3), S3 (4), S4 (3), S5 (3), S6 (3), S7 (2), S8, S9 (2))
- Sparkly Cards (1:7): 4 (SP1, SP2, SP6 (2))
- Box Loader (1/box): 1 (BL2)
- Autographs: 0
- Sketch Cards: 0
