Courage the Cowardly Dog is gone. What’s New, Scooby-Doo? Vanished.
As of July 31, HBO Max has quietly erased two more pillars of Cartoon Network’s golden age. This continues a ruthless trend. It has turned the streaming service into a digital graveyard for animation.
This isn’t just another licensing shuffle, it’s a full-scale cultural erasure. For millennials and older Gen-Z viewers, these shows weren’t just cartoons; they were shared childhood experiences, comfort watches, and the foundation of an entire era of animation. And now, with no legal way to stream them, we’re left asking: Why does Warner Bros. Discovery keep taking our nostalgia hostage?
The Slow Death of a Legacy
This isn’t new. The purge began in January 2025, when Ed, Edd n Eddy, Teen Titans, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, and Static Shock were all wiped out in a single, merciless sweep. By May, The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force followed. Now, Courage—a show that traumatized and delighted an entire generation—has joined the fallen.
The pattern is clear. HBO Max (or Max, or whatever it’s called this week) has decided that kids’ content isn’t worth keeping. More specifically, our kids’ content isn’t valued. New Cartoon Network originals like Toad and Friends and Silly Sundays still get prime real estate, but the classics? The shows that built the network’s reputation? Those are disposable.
A Generation Left Behind
The anger over this isn’t coming from today’s children and teens. It’s coming from adults who grew up with these shows. Millennials (now 29 to 44) and older Gen-Z viewers (20 to 28) are the ones feeling the sting. And why shouldn’t we?
Think about it. If you were a kid in the ’70s or ’80s, you might’ve been upset. By the 2000s, you couldn’t find The Pink Panther Show or The Addams Family cartoon. But here’s the difference, back then, you at least had DVDs, reruns, or VHS tapes. Today? If a streaming service decides to yank a show, it might as well have never existed.
Worse yet, studios have spent the last decade feeding millennials a steady diet of reboots, revivals, and nostalgia-bait. Powerpuff Girls got a reboot. Samurai Jack got a finale. Teen Titans Go! is still running. Warner Bros. spent years telling us these properties mattered. Only to now treat them like digital clutter.
The Broken Promise of Streaming
Streaming was supposed to be the solution to the “lost media” problem. No more hunting for DVDs, no more waiting for reruns—just instant access to the shows we loved. But instead, we’ve entered an era where media is more ephemeral than ever. If a corporation decides a show isn’t “valuable” enough, it disappears into the void.
And that’s the real betrayal. These companies spent years buying up rights. They consolidated libraries and assured us, “Pay for our service, and you’ll have it all!” But now, when the licensing deals get tough, they’d rather delete history than preserve it.
Do We Have a Right to Be Mad? Absolutely.
If studios want to monopolize distribution, then they have a responsibility to keep distributing. You don’t get to spend decades profiting off nostalgia, only to pull the rug out when it’s no longer convenient.
So yes, we have every right to be furious. It’s not just because we can’t rewatch Courage the Cowardly Dog on a whim. It’s because this is part of a larger pattern. In it, art is treated as disposable the second it’s not immediately profitable.
The worst part? There’s no guarantee these shows will ever come back. And if they do, it’ll likely be as part of some “limited-time nostalgia event” or yet another subscription tier.
For now, all we can do is mourn the loss. We hope that somewhere, in some corporate boardroom, someone realizes that these cartoons weren’t just content.
They were culture. And culture deserves better than this.
The Casualty List
What We’ve Already Lost:
The scale of what’s been removed is staggering. Here’s the full roster of animated casualties that have already disappeared from HBO Max:
January 2025 Removals:
Ed, Edd, n Eddy – Jan 1
Teen Titans – Jan 1
Teen Titans Go! (Seasons 1-7) – Jan 1
The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy – Jan 1
Static Shock – Jan 1
Green Lantern: The Animated Series – Jan 1
The Looney Tunes Show – Jan 1
Squidbillies – Jan 11
April 2025 Removals:
Tom and Jerry – Apr 1
Tom And Jerry Tales – Apr 1
Johnny Quest – Apr 1
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries – Apr 1
The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries – Apr 1
A Pup Named Scooby Doo – Apr 1
May 2025 Removals:
Yogi Bear – May 1
The Flintstones – May 1
The Jetsons – May 1
The Smurfs – May 1
Scooby-Doo And Scrappy-Doo – May 1
Be Cool, Scooby Doo – May 1
Scooby-Doo And Guess Who – May 1
Robot Chicken – May 10
Home Movies – May 27
Aqua Teen Hunger Force (Seasons 1-11) – May 27
Samurai Jack – May 27
The Powerpuff Girls – May 27
June 2025:
Baby Looney Tunes – Jun 1
New Looney Tunes – Jun 1
The New Scooby-Doo Movies – Jun 1
Scooby-Doo, Mystery Incorporated – Jun 1
July 2025:
The Tom And Jerry Show – Jul 1
August 2025:
What’s New Scooby-Doo – Aug 1
Courage The Cowardly Dog – Aug 1
What’s Next on the Chopping Block
August 2025:
Harvey Birdman – Aug 31
Moral Orel – Aug 31
Black Dynamite – Aug 31
September 2025:
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! – Sep 1
The Scooby-Doo Show – Sep 1
Sealab 2021 – Sep 1
The Brak Show – Sep 1
Superjail – Sep 1
October 2025:
Adventure Time – Oct 1
The October removal of Adventure Time might be the most heartbreaking of all. This is because it is a show that redefined what animation could be. It launched a new era of creative storytelling. Yet, it is set to vanish from its corporate home.
