Mine Your Own Business (Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!)


 * This page is for the Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! episode. For the segment from The Scooby & Scrappy Doo Puppy Hour, see Mine Your Own Business (Scrappy & Yabba-Doo).

Mine Your Own Business is the fourth episode of the first season of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!.

Premise
When the gang get lost in the desert and end up in Gold City, a spooky ghost town, the gang checks into a deserted inn. The owner explains that everybody has been scared off by the Miner Forty-Niner. They wind up in another mystery involving an abandoned mine, a ghostly, moaning miner and oil.

Synopsis
Thanks to Shaggy's bad navigation (as he was holding the map upside down), the gang get lost and wind up in an old west ghost town, Gold City, on a stormy night. They check into a guest ranch whose owner, Big Ben, is delighted to see them; it seems that he's had no guests for quite a spell. When the gang wonder about this, Ben's assistant, Hank, explains that it's on account of the "Miner Forty-Niner", the ghost of an old prospector who haunts the local mine searching for the last vein of gold. He's been scaring all the guests away—and Hank himself intends to light out soon.

With nothing else to do, the gang head into Gold City to look around. Initially, they don't find anything—though in the saloon Shaggy is startled by a player piano and a tree branch—until they regroup at the hotel. There, Scooby is panicked by the appearance of the Miner in a two-way mirror and knocks over a cigar-store Indian, dislodging a map of Gold City with what appears to be a safe combination scribbled in the corner. Opening the hotel safe, they find a secret elevator which takes them down into the mine itself. After Shaggy causes a dynamite mishap (he has mistaken them for candles), they explore, and the Miner appears and disappears behind some doors and chases Scooby and Shaggy in a rail car. Fred also manages to accidentally scare Shaggy and Scooby, thanks to him falling into a room full of baking flour. But the pieces start to fall together when the gang follows a wire that leads them to a room containing a tape recorder, a microphone/loudspeaker set up, and jars of crude oil. With these, they lay a trap for the Miner.

While Shaggy imitates diesel train noises over the loudspeaker, Scooby pilots a rail car with a loudspeaker and flashlight attached, mimicking a freight train barreling through the tunnel. He chases the Miner into and through a shack (destroying the old shack in the process), and the Miner's boots fall off to reveal stilts, and is thus unmasked as Hank. He had discovered that the mine, though exhausted of gold, is sitting on oil reserves; he had decided to try to scare off everyone so he could cheaply buy and exploit the land. But they foiled his plan, and now Hank is in jail. The episode ends with Scooby using the stilts Hank used when impersonating the miner to nab some apples from a tree.

Villains

 * Miner Forty-Niner/Hank

Locations

 * Gold City
 * Gold City Guest Ranch
 * Saloon
 * Inn
 * Gold City Mine

Notes/trivia

 * The episode title is a pun on "Mind your own business".
 * This episode uses different music for the title card. The music is only used again for The New Scooby-Doo Movies premiere.
 * This episode's title would be reused many years later for an episode of Scrappy & Yabba-Doo.
 * Present-day incarnations spell Miner Forty-Niner as Miner 49er.
 * It is revealed that Shaggy can imitate train noises.

Miscellaneous

 * Disguises: Train
 * Scooby Snacks: 2
 * Zoinks: 6
 * Food: Apples

Adaptations

 * In the live-action film, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, the gang are now adults and have achieved celebrity stardom in their hometown, where they have donated the costume to the Coolsonian Criminology Museum. It's later brought to life by Professor Jonathan Jacobo who's out for revenge against the gang. In this incarnation, it's called Miner 49er and can now breathe fire.
 * In the continuity of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, the gang now live in Crystal Cove where the monsters they have revealed to be just costumes have been put on display (including Miner 49er) at Velma's parents' tourist attraction, Crystal Cove Spook Museum. It features many of the early monsters the standard continuity gang had faced, only in this series it was localized to one place.

Animation mistakes and/or technical glitches

 * In the scene where Hank is talking to Mystery Inc. about the Miner, Velma is shown wearing lipstick like Daphne's, next scene Velma is back to her normal no-lipstick appearance.

Inconsistencies/continuity errors and/or goofs/oddities

 * Shaggy enters the combination to the lock, but Fred never read the numbers off like he said. In the end it's just a plot hole to further the story along and get them to the safe since they didn't need it after all.
 * When Fred fell through the floor, he was covered in flour. But after the rail-car chase, Freddy is cleaned off.
 * Hank used stilts to make his legs longer, but nothing was ever said about how he made his arms longer.
 * Hank was the only person who knew about the oil in the mine, so why did he wind up getting arrested? He wasn't exactly doing anything illegal, unless he was charged for trespassing in the abandoned mine.

Home media

 * Scooby-Doo's Original Mysteries VHS released June 4, 2002.
 * Scooby-Doo's Original Mysteries DVD released March 14 2000.
 * Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete 1st and 2nd Seasons DVD set released March 16, 2004.
 * Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: Volume 1 - A Monster Catch DVD released January 27, 2009.
 * Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The Complete Series DVD set released November 9, 2010.

Quotes
"Aw, dag nab it!"

- Hank