In the first live-action theatrical film, video games, and commercials, he was voiced by Scott Innes, and portrayed by Rowan Atkinson when disguised as Mondavarious.

He was created to save the show's ratings which by 1979 had begun to sink to the point of cancellation threats from ABC, who were considering choosing between Scooby-Doo and an unnamed pilot[5][non-primary source needed] from Ruby-Spears Enterprises which Mark Evanier had also written.

[8] Scrappy's creation officially began in 1978, when Scooby-Doo's ratings were sinking to the point of cancellation threats from ABC.

[8][9][10] Duane Poole, a story editor for the first series Scrappy appeared in, recalled it as a lively time, with many new ideas and some new blood being hired with the desperation to revive Scooby-Doo, which had been a cash-cow in its glory days.

[8] He would later change this to "Monkey Muscle" for the similar Donkey Kong Jr. character he would voice for TV's Saturday Supercade.

[8] Afterwards, other well-known cartoon voice artists were considered or suggested: Daws Butler, Paul Winchell, Marilyn Schreffler, Howard Morris, Dick Beals and Marshall Efron.

Though he did not physically appear, and was only mentioned by Shaggy and Scooby offhand and was heavily implied to have been put to sleep for undisclosed reasons.

[13] According to the DVD commentary, choosing the villain of the movie was a problematic part of the production, as the makers did not feel comfortable simply giving the role to an "anonymous monster", and that the ending was in "bits and pieces" and the "confinements forced them to be creative."

The co-founder of Ruby-Spears enterprises said, "Everyone was upset", though was unclear about whether this concerned business reasons (they had started their own company two years earlier) or personal creative reasons (considering that if Scooby had been canceled, then the last slot would have hit their show instead),[24] starting when, in 1979, it looked a pilot of theirs would be renewed over Scooby's.

A lot of people made derogatory comments about it at the studio and you know you don't want to be saddled with something based on, you know, network [...] but I think I liked working with it most of those cartoons.

I suspect this is because I wasn't watching Scooby from the beginning, but rather, I came in and started catching up quite a while (a couple of years) after Scrappy had made his debut.