Monster High (2010)

Monster High is fairly new, but taps into the time-honored tradition of making a cartoon to sell toys. The dolls are roughly the size of Bratz dolls, but seem to have a little more class.

The Halloween Special embedded above is an introduction to the characters and their world. Personally, I think the school looks a lot more like a community college than a high-school, but it's been years since I've been in either, so things may have changed.

What I really get out of this, more than anything, is how hard high-school really was for some folk. When I started, we were all freshman at our first day in a new school. As it was a magnet school, we came from all over the district and very few knew each other from middle-school. The problems presented in this cartoon are so alien to me that it's hard to relate. I can understand the need to be accepted and a desire to fit in, but the lengths that are gone to here are outside my ken.

But also, thinking about it, I've been saving my "scary" videos for Sundays, and I don't think there's anything scarier than being put in such a situation. Being the new kid is terrifying and trying to break into established cliques is more horrifying than spending a night in a haunted house. I'm sure that for a lot of people, seeing someone else go through it brings back a lot of painful or frightening memories.

Or it's just a goofy cartoon filled with puns that's trying to sell toys. Hard to say.