Sad news:

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.

Takamoto designed Scooby-Doo, his equally famished and cowardly master Shaggy, and their pals Velma, Daphne and Fred in the late 1960s while working at the Hanna-Barbera animation studio.

[read the rest of the story at Reuters.com

His credits are an amusing little tour of some of the nuttier cartoons of the 70s, I had no idea he also directed the original version of Charlotte’s Web. And, he was a producer for the Addam’s Family. I think those two might just make up for his role in The Partridge Family 2200 AD, which just sounds like it must have been a thing of great evil. (Although my lifelong loathing for the original program might be colouring my perceptions ever so slightly).