It is Christmas and a toy store is in trouble after their holiday parade is disrupted by a sinister snowman.

A blizzard freezes things. The clock tower is haunted and Father Christmas is a grumpy actor.

This is just a regular length holiday special. Scooby Doo and Shaggy are fun and frivolous.

Velma has enough brains to figure out who just the baddie might be.

It was a tad easy to figure out the baddie but his plan was rather cool.

Sure, this is essentially just another run-of-the-mill Scooby-Doo adventure. And yes, it follows that exact recipe to the letter. But hey, that is the charm of the Scooby-Doo adventures and franchise, now isn't it? Sure it is.

I sat down in 2020 to watch the 2012 "Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays" for the first time. And I must say that we were both enjoying it, and I will say that this 2012 animated movie, while being only 22 minutes, was actually one of the more entertaining and wholehearted Scooby-Doo installments for my liking.

The villain in this particular adventure was rather cool - pardon the pun. Well, of course you know the outcome of the haunting from the moment the movie starts. But this particular villain had some nice tricks and effects, and it was definitely one of the more interesting of villains I have seen in the franchise for a long time.

The characters are the ones we all love, so you will feel right at home with the great voice talents of Frank Welker, Mindy Cohn, Grey Griffin and Matthew Lillard.

The animation style and drawing style is that classic Scooby-Doo style that we all have been growing up with, and I think it is a timeless classic actually.

My rating of "Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays" is a seven out of ten stars. This particular Scooby-Doo adventure is well-worth sitting down to watch, despite it being only 22 minutes.

"Scooby-Doo! Haunted Holidays" is a 23-minute animated Christmas holiday special from 2012, so this one has its 5th anniversary this year. It's not only not the first work that director Cook and writer Ryan collaborated on, but not even the first Scooby Doo work. Living snowmen have been a frequent inclusion in all kinds of films, sometimes harmless and likable, at other times downright scary. This one here fits the latter description, even if it is of course as much about the comedy as it is about the mystery just like it's always the case with Scooby and Shaggy. But I struggled with this one here: the Santa inclusion, the Elves, the pretty predictable culprit, the monster's transformations (i.e. the spider/fist shape shifting). None of it really convinced me at all and honestly from the mystery perspective as well as the Christmas spirit perspective it did not reach the level it was going for either. You can also watch it in February when the days are colder and there's maybe even snow outside. It's good they stick to some very old elements from the original Scooby Doo series, but even these feel a bit rushed-in and for the sake of it, such as the solution at the very end, maybe because every time the film tries to be creative in its own right and original, it comes rather short. It's not a failure by any means, but it was from a satisfying watch regardless of if you take the comedy or mystery perspective. Thumbs down from me. Don't watch.