LEGO 'Monster Fighters' appeal to all boys and ghouls

• LEGO "Monster Fighter" sets built to be scary but fun for all ages.
• New Haunted House set, complete with creepy butler and zombie chef, out now in time for Halloween.
• A new team of bionic heroes were created to do battle with Lord Vampyre and other monsters.

Things are getting monstrous in the toy aisle, one scary — but safe — brick at a time.

LEGO has flirted with horror aspects in the past, but the toy company this year went all-in with ghoulish delight with its Monster Fighters theme, featuring vampires, zombies, werewolves and ghosts along with an original team of colorful heroes.

Since the summer, nine Monster Fighters sets have been released, from a Vampyre Hearse and Ghost Train to the Vampyre Castle and the newly released Haunted House, just in time for Halloween with its creepy butler and zombie chef.

The creatures have found their way into pop culture outside of the toy store, too. The free LEGO Monster Fighters Race app lets children use their (or Mom and Dad's) iPad or iPhone to defeat the evil Lord Vampyre with their favorite Monster Fighter. And this past weekend in New Orleans, LEGO fans of all ages came out for an all-night build of a 10-foot model of Lord Vampyre near Jackson Square. (If you missed him, don't fall to pieces — he's being reassembled at LEGOLAND Caifornia for the park's Halloween Brick-or-Treat event.)

Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries have all had horror-type characters with bite for the teen and tween sets, and LEGO knew there'd be a trickle-down effect to its pint-sized audience, according to Matthew Ashton, a LEGO vice president of design.

"Younger kids look up to older kids and want to be part of what they are engaging in," he says. "We have dabbled with a few monster-based products in the past, but we really wanted to dedicate a whole line to this theme so kids could play out multiple adventures with a deeper story."

However, LEGO has found that Monster Fighters and its characters similar to the Universal horror archetypes from back in the day — a mad scientist, a Frankenstein-esque monster, a swamp creature that could have come from the Black Lagoon, etc. — appeal to kids and adults, as well.

Ashton and his team also wanted to add something extra to the line to give it more depth, plus give a greater purpose for battles between monsters who thrive at night and the people tasked to stop them. Lord Vampyre hatches the dastardly plot to create a total eclipse and plunge the world into darkness so he and his fellow monsters can rule over us all.

However, early ideas that had him collecting wing of bat, eye of newt and other ingredients to brew up a magic potion just seemed "too 'witchy' and old-school for the kids," Ashton says.

Enter the moonstones, mystical crystals that can be rounded up by Lord Vampyre but also had glow-in-the-dark components for extra kid fun. They could also be placed under the protection of their respective monster guardian so the Monster Fighters could face off with them — mano-a-monster style — to retrieve the crystals before Lord Vampyre.

Developing the heroes was actually tougher than the bad guys, according to Ashton.

LEGO tested different lineups such as teens armed with makeshift weaponry and a uniformed monster "pest control agency" but none resonated very well with kids.

"What we needed was a team of heroes that looked like they had been fighting monsters for years — a rag-tag team of distinct individuals whom you could associate unique monster-fighting skills with," Ashton says.

So an older team of bowler-hatted leader Dr. Rodney Rathbone, rebel biker Frank Rock, Scottish lumberjack Jack McHammer, weapons expert Ann Lee and hunter Major Quinton Steele was created and given a few scratches, scrapes and battle wounds.

"We went so far as to give them some replacement bionic body parts," Ashton says. "This allowed the kids to imagine that these characters were stronger both physically, with their specially made mechanical limbs, and emotionally, giving the team that extra determination they'd need to defeat the monsters and save the world."

A wide range of characters on both sides gave the LEGO folks a chance to branch out and create new head gear for the swamp creature and wings for the vampire bats that are both scary and super cute, plus improve female minifigure models with Ann Lee, the Zombie Bride and a female vampire.

Monsters have been around forever and infected bedtime stories, comics, TV show, movies and breakfast cereals — Booberry, anyone? — and Ashton says that while not all horror is for kids, being scared can also be really fun if done right.

"An image of a werewolf or a vampire in a kid's head could potentially be quite terrifying," he adds, "but once it has been squeezed through the tongue-in-cheek LEGO filter and lovingly applied to a blocky little figure with a trapezoidal torso, and given some oversized comedy fangs and claws, suddenly something scary becomes something fun."