Josie & The Pussycats

Josie and the Pussy Cats is a personal favorite of mine, so I snagged the release from Amazon almost as soon as it came out.

Josie was created by Dan DeCarlo back in 1963 for Archie Comics. Josie was essentially a female Archie: red hair, golden heart, peculiar circumstances. Melody was her very best friend right from the start; Pepper was added much later in the series.

Alexander Cabot III often tried to win Josie's heart, and on occasion earned a date. His sister, Alexandra, envied Josie's popularity with boys in general. Josie could get a date with pretty much any boy in town, and one of these boys was an early version of Alan.

Alexandra originally had too much money and too little sense. Her witchcraft powers were added later, and it can be inferred that Cabots attained their vast fortune using the "dark arts."

When Archie Comics leased Josie and friends to Hanna-Barbera in 1969, character designer Iwao Takamoto made some serious revisions.

First, white Pepper was replaced by African Valerie, then Alexandra was changed from a bobbed brunette to a raven ponytail. Alexander was slimmed to a geek physique with absurd fashion sense, while Alan was buffed up to contrast Alex, and focus Alexandra's jealousy.
The witch powers were discarded, and the Cabots were kept on a tight financial leash, otherwise, getting out of scrapes with villains would be too easy.

The cartoon 'cats played fairly well to the Scooby Doo audience. In response, Archie Comics was compelled to revise their characters to conform to Takamoto's updates.

I can only speculate why Alexandra was given arcane powers in the first place. Archie Comics toyed with the character Sabrina the Teenage Witch in 1966. Sabrina would use "good" magic mostly to better herself and her friends, though, being a novice spell caster, her results would be haphazard.

Alexandra's use of magic always was for selfish or hurtful ends, and these would typically create unintended consequences. I'm surmising that Archie comics creators wanted to toy with magical characters, and wanted to explore a good-girl-good-magic and a bad-girl-bad-magic approach at the same time.

Oh, Josie might be annoyed at times with Alexandra's antics, but Alan is clearly devoted only to Josie, so Alexandra poses no romantic threat. Alexandra's persistence, according to the comics, comes from being a Cabot. Her father is a greedy and demanding tycoon, who envisions himself as a titan among men. Therefore, he believes his children should be glorious, impeccable, invincible.

This insanely high standard pushed Alexander to be a crowing coward, and Alexandra to develop her "refuse to lose" attitude. Josie is aware of this, and keeps company with Alexandra in the hope that, away from her father's shadow, Alexandra will normalize.

You're a year off, artytoons. "Josie" actually premiered in 1970, one year after "Scooby" took Saturday morning by storm. In fact, Alexandra, after being mistaken for a creature plant in "A Greenthumb Is Not A Goldfinger," mockingly asks, "Who were you expecting, Scooby Doo?"