Monster in My Pocket

Monster in My Pocket was a media franchise developed by Morrison Entertainment Group, headed by Joe Morrison and John Weems, two former senior executives at Mattel.

The focus is on monsters and legendary creatures from religion, mythology, literary fantasy, science fiction, cryptids and other anomalous phenomena. Monster in My Pocket produced trading cards, comic books, books, toys, a board game, an NES video game by Konami and an animated TV special, along with music, clothing, kites, stickers and various other items.

The line proved controversial for various reasons. Many changes were implemented that took it away from its original mythmaking focus, though it re-emerged with the original idea intact in 2006 in the UK but with less then desired results.

A rumor surfaced on the Internet that a new Monsters in My Pocket toy franchise was to be released in Late Spring 2012 as part of a retro attempt to revive the series and perhaps to contend with the similar series Gormiti, but no such reboot ever materialized

Not to be confused with Pokémon, aka Pocket Monsters; this confusion is exactly why Pokémon is called Pokémon in the west (and later everywhere else) to begin with.

Tropes used in Monster in My Pocket include:

• Armless Biped: A few of the monsters are armless and bipedal or have creepy features that really make one wonder what our ancestors were thinking.
• Artificial Human: The Monster and Golem count
• Boss Rush: The final stage in the NES game forces you to fight the previous bosses again before fighting Warlock.
• Bowdlerise: Subverted as the title of Pocket Monsters is sometimes accused of being the product of bowdlerization due to the original Japanese title of Pokémon translating to Pocket Monsters. In reality, the localized title of the hot video game franchise was a portmanteau to dodge legal issues with this existing toy line.
• Blue and Orange Morality: As with the original myths, most creatures do not follow human rules or ideas.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: Not exactly, but each monster had one of six colors from series 1 to 3 it could be, the final series had them multicolor.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Vampires, Bloody Bones, and even The Beast are not always seen as bad in this series.
• Incredible Shrinking Monster: the whole premise behind the comics, animated series, video game, and even the 2nd relaunch of the toys in 2006.
• Lilliputians: The whole Monster Mountain area in the comic books and animated series.
• Macro Zone: In the NES game, both the Vampire and the Monster are stuck in a giant-sized world. The player goes across a kitchen, hallway, bedroom, city street, and a sewer system.
• Mouse World: In the UK Comics Werewolf & Witch share a house made of giant (normal to you and me) playing cards while Warlock uses a kitchen ladle (for him that's like a huge cauldron) to brew his potions.
• Must Buy Them All!: They started as random collectible figures that came in packs of 6, 12, and the rare 24. In order to own a full set you had to buy them all and trade with friends..sometimes you traded with total strangers and sometimes you had multiple copies. For a very limited time in 1997 - 1998 there was a mail-in trader forum on the internet hosted by Yahoo.com where you could do a 1 for 1 with a 3$ money order trade but that was disbanded in 1998 when series 4, one focused on big bugs, came out.
• Olympus Mons: Some of the monsters are representatives of godly figures after all.
• Our Monsters Are Different: As they are based on mythical and legendary figures, this speaks for it's self.
• Retsupurae: Monster in my Pocket Lets Play with his friend Tyler - "You're such a petty douche-bag".
• Similarly Named Works: Famous Cash Cow Franchise gaming series Pokémon is called Pocket Monsters in Japan but the name was changed to avoid legal issues with this franchise.
• Stock Monster Symbolism: Vampires are aristocratic and Werewolves are brutes, etc etc.
• Truth in Television: The monsters ranged from cryptids and mythological figures (gods included!) to urban legends and modern mythos. In fact it caused an upset group of citizens from THREE different countries to demand censorship of the company America had Matoon, Illinois for the Mad Gasser, Brittan had Yorkshire, London for Jack the Ripper, India had practically the whole country for Genesh and at least one country to boycott them, Australia for the Bunyips.
• Victory Fakeout: Warlock pulls a spectacular one in the NES game, even providing the page's quotes.
• What Could Have Been: There were several things about this series that could have been great, with a whole list of things that show so much promise.
  • There were also 3 play-sets - Monster Mountain, Haunted House, and Monster Pack. The Mountain and fold-out Mighty Max style Pack made it to retail stores but the Haunted House was either never produced or only had a short run.
  • The comic book actually had a nice start and could have made it to at least 12 issues before being killed off. Marvel's revision of the comic didn't help matters.
  • There were at least 20 unreleased figures including 4 only available by purchasing certain products like the NES video game, going to certain restaurants, sending in 5$ for a grab-bag offer, and even going to local Raido & TV offers to obtain them.
  • The animated movie was suppose to launch a 15 episode television series to boost the sales of the toys but after Executive Meddling by Universal Studios who claimed the rights to certain 'monsters' (despite being open source legends, content, and from open source books and stories) the deal with the animation studio (who later went on to create Mighty Max instead) fell through.
  • There was also an attempt by a 3rd party company in 2004 to buy the rights from Morrison Group after the failed revival attempt was made with a re-release of Series 1; the series and manufacture a whole new series of the figures including the unreleased creatures and some based on cryptids like the Flat Woods Monster, Grey aliens, Mongolian Death Worm, and the Giant Octopus.
  • Although a 2006 relaunch occurred, it ended up never finishing as expected with a full recreation of all the Series 1 - 4 of the Monster figures, instead only launching a mix of the first two.
  • An attempted animation series from Australia called The Quest was made in an attempt to reboot the series with new material but after only 1 episode it got the boot.