The PopCult Toybox

UPDATE: For the latest news on Monster High, and signs of a possible revival, click HERE.

Mattel’s Monster High seems to be missing in action at Toy Fair this year. So far the only mention I’ve seen of it anywhere was in a press release about Mattel’s partnership with Tynker, an educational program that helps teach kids coding. This is no great surprise, as the doll line unwittingly paid tribute to another classic monster movie at retail last year: The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Unless Mattel had Monster High buried in a corner of their enormous booth that nobody’s bothered to cover on the internet yet, the rumors of the past two years are true. Monster High has been cancelled.

It’s been a precipitous fall for Monster High, a brand that, just four years ago, was pulling in almost two billion dollars a year, but it’s also pretty much the norm for the toy business.  Monster High had close to an eight-year run, which is pretty impressive for a toy line.

In 2016, Mattel, in dire financial straits following the loss of the Disney Princesses line to Hasbro, rebooted Monster High and tried to aim it at a younger audience.

Instead of extending the life of the brand, that move seemed to hasten its demise, as collectors rejected the new designs and the already dipping sales never quite recovered. The new designs were really out of touch with what fans wanted.

If any new Monster High toys  make it into stores in 2018, they’re most likely just the last few items that were in the production pipeline. Apparently the division was shut down last year (or earlier) and the design personnel shifted to other projects.

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