I try to be a good uncle to my 4 year old niece Bella, as
such when she’s into something I check it out, that way I can be the cool uncle
who knows who Flynn Ryder and Diego are. That being said, here’s the latest
thing she’s into, Monster High.
In the 1930’s Universal Studios made a series of movies that
brought a bunch of monsters into the popular limelight. It combined Frankenstein,
Dracula, Werewolf, and others into the same world where they’d fight or
occasionally work together to mess with normal people. After that they’ve
revisited the idea about a billion times with stuff like the Munsters and that
Van Hellsing movie. That’s what Monster High basically is. The relatives of all
the big famous monsters are going to high school together where they can be
themselves without angry mobs coming after them.
The main characters have names like Draculaura, Frankie
Stein, and Howleen Wolf, and the puns go from there. The girls are part of a
fear squad, go to home eek, and play casketball. It’s like a monster version of
the Flintstones. They never end up being too painful, and can even be
relatively clever, which the same can be said for the writing. Monster High is
a series of 5-7 minute web cartoons about the spooky pre-teens as they deal
with pre-teen problems, like throwing parties and friendship. As cheesy as the
whole thing sounds it’s actually pretty harmless, and some of the jokes you can
only get if you were a fan of the source material. The Twilight episode was
pretty funny, since it both made fun of the teen mentality and the
vampire/werewolf concept.
What I find cool too is the design work put into the Monster
High characters. Usually American cartoons give each character one stock
personality trait and a single color scheme and just leave it at that. Here though
the characters each have unique styles, interests and personality flaws. This
is miles above most other cartoons running around out there that are trying to
teach tolerance and acceptance between people who look and act exactly alike.
Okay so it’s probably weird for a 26 year old guy to talk
about a show targeted towards preteen girls, but geekiness is for all ages.
Plus I thought it might be helpful for parents to know what’s out there. And
no, we’re probably not going to be doing a Brony post anytime soon, though here’s
an awesome Dora the Explorer thing. J
-JOE
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