Scooby-Doo takes Homer's crown

but Scooby-Doo has just taken The Simpsons' record for the most episodes of an animated series.

15:28 25 October 2004

The Simpsons may well go on to become the longest running series on American TV history, but Scooby-Doo has just taken its record for the most episodes of an animated series.

The 350th episode dedicated to the crime-foiling antics of the world's most famous Great Dane, set to be aired at Christmas, has seen the series awarded the Guinness World Record for the most episodes of a cartoon comedy series.

The first episode of Scooby, Shaggy and the gang was aired in 1969 - and since then children in more than 160 countries have watched the cartoon dog stop evil-doers in their tracks.

The record was previously held by The Simpsons on 335 episodes.

"It's a great honour to have taken Homer's crown," said Richard Kilgarriff of Boomerang TV.

At first the programme was set to be called Mysteries Five or even Who's Scared, but executives at Hanna-Barbera were worried that the show could become too scary for children so renamed it Scooby-Doo and gave the dog a starring role.

In 1979 feisty nephew Scrappy-Doo joined Shaggy, Velma, Fred, Daphne and Scoobert in the Mystery Machine van.

After Scooby and Homer the next most made cartoon comedy is Tom and Jerry (209 episodes), followed by The Flintstones (166) and Mickey Mouse (120).

However, do not count The Simpsons out yet, creator Matt Groening has said that he would like there to eventually be 365 episodes of his series - one for every day of the year.