My thoughts on the reboot of Frankie Stein
Why I like the new rebooted version of Frankie Stein of Monster High.
I'm a thirty-five-year-old woman who collects monster dolls and all things Halloween so naturally I couldn't resist Monster High for very long.
First a brief history:
Monster High was a doll line and 2D animated web series stared in 2010, somewhat in the vein of Gravedale High or Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School. Actually it's a lot like Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School only with slightly older versions of the characters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f8wHr7D5Ck
The premise deals with the daughters of the classic monsters with characters like Draculaura (daughter of Dracula), Clawdeen (daughter of the Wolfman) and Frankie Stein (Daughter of Frankenstein).
The animated series even dealt with cultural and social diversity. Cleo De Nile (daughter of The Mummy) was originally portrayed as a prentenous and wealthy royal from North Africa, Clawdeen was an African American werewolf (Possibly biracial). Draculaura was a vegetarian vampire from Romania. Lagoona (daughter of the Creature from the Black Lagoon) was Australian. Frankie Stein was initially meant to be the wide eyed new girl that you relate to while Ghoulia (a zombie) served as Cleo's best friend, moral compass (as the character needed a lot of guidance on social cues and compassion) and was the intellectual of the group even though very few people knew what she was saying because she "Speaks zombie." They even eventually introduced a wheelchair bound merman character.
The only problem is outside of Draculaura being a vegetarian the three core characters of Draculaura, Clawdeen, and Frankie Stein had virtually interchangable personalities. But the animated series was cute (at the start) and tackled issues like racism- Monsters and human, or salt water sea creature vs. fresh water creature. There was even a very sweet episode where Ghoulia was depressed because she couldn't get tickets to a convention so Cleo secretly bought them for her but didn't want to ruin her mean, self-absorbed, and snobby reputation. She liked being the brat. It was kind of cute.
The show started to decline as corporate greed reared it's ugly head. Plots became more and more vapid and shallow and became tools for promoting new outfits, doll variants and accessories. As the character Cleo softened (apparently sales on her doll weren't that good while she was a brat) new villains were brought in that were essentially... furries. Cat girls. I, and many other older fans of the concept, stopped watching.
Fast forward to 2016.
The dolls were modified to have tighter joints (no complaint about that), and given softer, child-like features. My biggest complaint here are Dracula's lips. her fangs look more like shine against the lips now rather than vampire fangs. Also the eyes are larger, more Precious Moments / semi-Anime-esque. Perhaps even a little too big for the face. The bodies seem a little less frail, less thin, and the joints are tighter, so that's an improvement. They also changed the hair styles a bit which I actually don't mind. I was never too keen on the original style they gave Frankie and feel the new dolls kind of improve it. Though I read that the fan reaction wasn't quite what they hoped (Gee, wonder why...) and they have decided to roll back some of these changes, including the changes to the hair styles.
The fan reaction was such that many of the official Youtube videos got their comments disabled.
Even the basic premise had changed a bit.
In September 2016 the franchise' fiction continuity was officially rebooted with the CG direct to video animated movie Welcome to Monster High. This was to coincide with the changes made to the dolls.
The original web cartoon's first episode had Frankie Stein's first day of school (at sixteen days old) and the school's principal was the Headless Mistress.
In the reboot however, the character of the nerd-zombie Ghoulia was dropped all together (much to the dismay of many fans who liked her), Cleo was made kinder from the very start and clearly lonely (See, this is why she needed Ghoulia...) Clawdeen's mother is an artist and Clawdeen, herself, has dreams of being a fashion designer (I smell a spot for shameless accessory / doll clothes plugging!). And Draculaura's plot was transformed to mimic that of Mavis in Hotel Transylvania.
Dracula is over protective of his little girl and Draculaura is, needless to say, lonely and an idealist who doesn't like the idea of hiding away from the world. Draculaura meets Frankie Stein and essentially adopts her (even though she has her own family...). They then take in Clawdeen and her family / wolf pack. It's heavily indicated that Dracula has a thing for Clawdeen's mother.
Instead of building a hotel Dracula opens Monster High. And there is also no sign of the Headless Mistress. Now Dracula runs the school (which is now a boarding school. The old version was more like an American public school) and Dracula serves as Headmaster and teaches a class on Humans and cat memes (No, really...) And Clawdeen's mother teaches art.
Now here's the change I actually like. There's been a drastic change to Frankie Stein's personality. Since Ghoulia was removed they needed a new "nerd" of the group so Frankie was made the science and technology Geek. And... She's kind of adorable. She has some new electricity themed powers like the playable version of Frankenstein's Monster from Superhero Squad online. And though Frankie already joked about her father being "Fraaaaaaankenstein" with arms out stretched, she, herself, is portrayed as intelligent and with black and white streaked hair much like Lily Munster (though she's actually a vampire modeled after Countess Zaleska, Dracula's daughter) and perhaps a bit like the Bride of Frankenstein but her hair is straight and down like Sally as opposed to up in a beehive, which has become the norm for Bride of Frankenstein parodies even though that's not really what her hair was like...
According to Monster High Wikia Frankie Stein was created by Dr. Frankenstein for his creation. So... Does this mean she has two fathers? It would be fun to see this addressed. Granted I also long for an intelligent male Frankenstein Monster, whose well spoken and has no flat or bald head... Pop culture is too used to imitating the zeitgeist version created by the Universal monster movies.
Oh, well. At least she's now portrayed as very intelligent and into science. I like this change to her character. She's adorable as the nerd of the group. It's just a shame they had to expunge Ghoulia to do it.
They also seem to have replaced the web 2D animated series with what look like stop motion animation shorts with puppets made to look like the actual dolls.
Observe...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VpB5pTNsQ0
Anyway, as I am a junkie for monster dolls and figures I just craved and bought myself the Frankie Stein San Diego Comic Con Exclusive doll dressed as a Ghostbuster. Unfortunately she's wearing the uniform of Holtzmann from the 2016 Ghostbusters movie. If you ask me she would have been cuter dressed as Egon from the Original Ghostbusters but I guess some of the younger fans wouldn't get the reference and they were trying to plug the 2016 "all girl" movie.
On the bright side she comes with a little Slimer. Now this would make for a fun crossover movie though. How do you reconcile a little Frankenstein Monster wanting to be a Ghostbuster? Aren't some of her friends Ghosts? It would be an interesting premise to explore but sadly the fictional universe these characters come from ...doesn't run that "deep."
http://scontent.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/s480x480/e35/13260935_1820824324807974_1452172901_n.jpg?ig_cache_key=MTI1ODg2ODE0OTYyNzQ2OTYzNg%3D%3D.2