Introducing The MONSTER HIGH Retrospective

I'm still doing the Avatar recaps, but as you can see, those are very long and dense. I like recapping, and I need to do something that's quick.

Why did I not do this before Ever After High? Well, because this franchise never needed my help. I can count on one hand how many fanfics I wrote about this one, and I would need about three hands to count the EAH fanfics I wrote, (including one that clocks in at nearly 37k words) because it needed a hell of a lot of help.

So, welcome back to, essentially, my first love in the doll world. This is the Monster High Retrospective.

So, what is (was?) Monster High, or, as your grandmother called them, "The weird goth dolls," (her words, not mine!);




According to the Wiki (which is a good resource!);

• Was in development by Garrett Sander in as early as 2007, three years before the franchise's debut in 2010.
• Is one of the rare franchises Mattel wholly owns, and intended to be a multi-media juggernaut from the beginning in a new age of toy engagement.
• Only has one spin-off, which you know. But there were other High School spinoffs that were trademarked, I remember High Seas High (and later MH had characters that could easily have been a part of those) and Cosmic High (Which I would have loved, especially if it was like a school for space magical girls. Star Darlings is sort of like that, but...it was clearly made to be the antithesis of Monster High and, besides the quality of the dolls and the main story, fell flat.)
• Had a 'core four' lineup that was considerably different than the final product if early trademarks were to be believed.

But would the franchise pay off?

Oh, yeah. 

It was popular with children and adults like myself (Though I only hopped in in 2012), and Mattel was doing a great job appealing to everyone.

Mattel had so many partners when selling these - retailers with exclusive dolls they could freely mark up. We'll get to those when the appropriate webisodes come up.

And those webisodes?

There's a lot of them, far, far more than Ever After High ever accomplished, but many of them are also much shorter, clocking in under two minutes.

 Volume 1 has no continuity, so I'm only going to be looking at those that establish the characters, or introduce new ones, or ones that have really cool moments.

I'll leave you with this; The franchise had multiple theme songs, but this is the only one that matters. Get used to it.