Monster High
Monster High is an American multimedia-supported fashion doll franchise created by toy designer Garrett Sander and launched by Mattel in 2010. Aimed at children ages 7–16, the franchise features characters inspired by monster movies, sci-fi horror, thriller fiction, cryptids, folklore, myths, fairy tales, and popular culture, centering around the adventures of the teenage children of monsters and other mythical creatures attending a high school of the same name.
Though the fashion dolls are the main focus of the franchise, a 2D-animated web series and 15 animated TV specials/films were released to accompany them, as well as video games, [|a series] of young adult novels written by Lisi Harrison, and other forms of merchandise. The franchise quickly became very popular among children and was extremely successful in terms of earnings for Mattel; it was worth $1 billion in its third year of existence with more than $500 million in sales annually, and was at one point the second best-selling doll brand in North America. Two spin-off toy lines were launched as companions to Monster High: Ever After High in 2013 based on fairy tales and fables, and Enchantimals in 2017 featuring human-animal hybrids. However, sales declined in 2016, prompting Mattel to reboot the franchise with a revamped aesthetic and a new fictional universe. The reboot was a commercial failure, eventually leading to the discontinuation of the franchise in 2018.
Monster High relaunched a second time in 2020 with the release of new dolls representing horror/goth film cults, culminating with the 2021 announcement of an animated TV series and a live-action musical film, both produced by Mattel Television and premiered on Nickelodeon in October 2022.
Premise
In the fictional American town of New Salem, the teenage children of famous monsters attend a high school called Monster High. The school is renowned for allowing all species of monsters to enroll in it: this is in contrast with other schools that exist in the franchise's fantasy world, which are reserved for one type of monster only. The characters' stories were told through the TV series, web series, films, the official website, as well as through diaries included with the dolls. Since the franchise's beginnings in the late 2000s and early 2010s, Monster High has valued diversity among its characters and their visual appearance, personalities, abilities, and cultural backgrounds.Characters
Monster High features a variety of fictional characters, many of them being students at the titular high school. The female characters are called "ghouls", and the male characters are called "mansters". When the franchise was first introduced, the characters were generally the sons and daughters of monsters that have been popularized in fiction; in later years, it expanded to also feature characters inspired by other various types of mythical creatures, such as figures from folklore, mythology, and pop culture.The franchise's official website at the time listed characters in four categories: "original" – the main characters who were introduced the earliest, "ghouls" – the female characters, "mansters" – the male characters, and "Frightmares" – characters who are half-centaur and half-monster. The original characters are:
File:San Diego Comic-Con 2011 - Monster High girls .jpg|thumb|180px|A group of people cosplaying as Monster High characters at San Diego Comic-Con 2011
- Frankie Stein is the daughter of Frankenstein's monster and his bride. She is the central character of the franchise. She has white hair with black streaks and light, mint-green skin. Frankie is a simulacrum, meaning that her body is made of many different parts. She is clumsy, sweet, and always kind to others. She has a crush on Neighthan Rot. In the series, she used to date Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde, but this is different in the diaries, where both characters are in a relationship with Draculaura instead. In the first two incarnations of the franchise, Frankie uses she/her pronouns, while in the 2022 reboot they are non-binary and use they/them pronouns.
- Draculaura is a vampire who is the daughter of Dracula. She is in a relationship with Clawdeen's older brother, Clawd Wolf. She is a vegetarian who faints at the sight of blood. The diaries show that she used to date Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde. She has fangs and typically dresses in pink, black and white.
- Cleo de Nile is the daughter of the mummy pharaoh Ramses de Nile, and is 5842 years old at the start of the series. She is the captain of the "fearleading" squad. Cleo prefers to accessorize with light-gold bandages or mummy wrappings. She is based on Cleopatra, while her older sister, Nefera de Nile, is based on Nefertiti. She is the queen of the social scene and has a boyfriend named Deuce Gorgon, the son of Medusa.
- Clawdeen Wolf is the daughter of a werewolf. She is described as outgoing and sweet. She likes fashion. She has a bit of a temper at times when messed with, but can easily control it when coaxed properly. Her wolf ears are pierced in multiple places. In the 2016 reboot of Monster High, she develops mutual feelings for Raythe.
- Lagoona Blue is the daughter of a sea monster. Lagoona is from "Down Under" and speaks with an Australian accent. She can talk with water animals. She is in a relationship with Gillington "Gil" Webber, but his parents disapprove of their relationship due to her sea-monster heritage. In the 2022 reboot she is Honduran and knows little about the outside due to growing up in a sunken castillo.
- Ghoulia Yelps is the bespectacled daughter of a zombie couple from Canada. She is the smartest ghoul at Monster High, her personality is that of a shy and bookish girl with a sense of mischief. Due to being a zombie, she can only speak in moans and groans – a physical limitation that all zombies have. She has a romantic interest in Sloman "Slo Mo" Mortavitch, a tall male zombie on the chess team.
- Abbey Bominable is the Russian-accented daughter of the Yeti. She is a proud and straightforward ghoul who doesn't readily spend words to bring her message more delicately. She's also very strong in terms of both physical abilities and psychokinetic ones and therefore intimidating, but although occasionally useful, she'd rather be known as simply a nice monster to hang out with. She has a romantic interest in Heath Burns, who she claims "makes her laugh".
Conception and development
Merchandise
Dolls
were the first franchise product to be released, with the media and other merchandise following soon after. The first line, which included the original six characters, was released in 2010. Mattel was experimenting with a new business strategy which consisted of launching a new franchise by releasing the toy first—without a "traditional entertainment property first"—and then following up with the media and entertainment. The original packaging boxes were designed by Garrett Sander himself. According to a social media post made by Sander in 2020, the first prototypes of the dolls during its development were made using head molds from another Mattel doll line that was never officially released, bodies from Barbie collector dolls, and with some accessories from My Scene dolls. A good amount of the initial design remained unchanged, but the actual dolls ended up looking drastically different.Over 750 different dolls have been released since its 2010 launch. They vary in size, features, materials used, type of packaging, types of accessories they come with, country of manufacture, etc. Most of them are about tall. Some dolls, particularly the ones which were released a long time ago or in limited quantity, are rare, collectible, and therefore expensive. Most Monster High dolls were marketed to children as toys to play with, but some "collector's edition" dolls, priced higher and aimed at an older audience, were also made.
In 2016, Monster High underwent a reboot, which was likely an attempt to make the brand appeal to a younger age category. The sales were low that year, and the line was eventually quietly discontinued in 2018. In 2020, however, the franchise made its comeback when two new premium-priced collector dolls—dubbed "Skullector" and inspired by characters from the horror movies It and The Shining—were made available for purchase just in time for that year's Halloween. In 2021, a new set of two Skullector dolls inspired by characters from the movie Beetlejuice was launched exclusively through the "Mattel Creations" section of Mattel's website alongside a doll inspired by the film Gremlins 2: The New Batch. In 2022, Mattel presented a new Monster High line called "Haunt Couture" which consisted of five new collector dolls: the five main characters of Frankie Stein, Clawdeen Wolf, Draculaura, Cleo de Nile and Lagoona Blue. They featured details such as rooted eyelashes and were priced at $75, and similarly were only available through the website. On Friday, May 13, 2022, Mattel released a new "Booriginal Creeproductions" line of Monster High dolls which were a tribute to the original 2010 line. It featured four of the main characters dressed in their original outfits and packaged in boxes that took heavy inspiration from the original packaging. They were priced at $25 each and at first available exclusively at Walmart outlets in the United States, and then also worldwide through the "Mattel Creations" section of the Mattel website. They were aimed at older consumers who grew up with the original dolls prior to their 2018 discontinuation. Since then, Mattel has continued to periodically release new Monster High dolls, aimed at consumers and collectors alike.