I mean the characters seemed so similar to one another Anybody else see the similarities?

There were some definite similarities between the two shows and that's not surprising when you consider both shows were produced by the same company, Hanna Barbera. They also had two cast members in common. Casey Kasem who voiced Shaggy on Scooby Doo also voiced Alexander Cabot III on "Josie". And Don Messick the voice of Scooby Doo was also the voice behind Sebastien the cat on "Josie".

The success of Scooby Doo led to many copy cat shows with teens solving mysteries......remember Clue Club? The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan? Goober and the Ghost Chasers? Speed Buggy? Jabberjaw?......etc

Yes they were quite similar and I loved them both. The "Josie" gang even met the Scoobies on one of the 1972-1973 "New Scooby Doo Movies".

...and for one very good reason: Fred Silverman, the chief architect of CBS' Saturday morning schedules from 1963 through 1975. It was he who successsfully tapped the appeal of "Archie" and his comic book gang for TV in the fall of 1968, then green-lighting "SCOOBY-DOO, WHERE ARE YOU!" in 1969. All he had to do, for 1970, was mix the two formats together by taking the second most popular Archie Comics character- Josie [created by Dan DeCarlo and Dick Goldwater, using his model sheets]- build a band around her {like "The Archies"}, employ the same "Let's get outta here!" chase sequences that worked so well on "SCOOBY-DOO"...and that's how "JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS" came to be [Silverman decided that Hanna-Barbera was better suited to produce the animation, as opposed to Filmation, who produced the various "ARCHIE" series]. And when the time came to promote another of CBS' Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning series on "THE NEW SCOOBY-DOO MOVIES" in the fall of 1973, what better way to draw attention to "JOSIE AND THE PUSSYCATS IN OUTER SPACE" (in repeats by then) than bringing her and Scooby's "gangs" together for one episode? The only downside was, where there should have been a "Pussycats" musical number at the end of the story, there wasn't (due to legal reasons, I believe).

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