Mona the Vampire

Mona the Vampire
"Show Us Your Fangs" DVD cover
Genre Comedy, Superhero, Fantasy
Created by Sonia Holleyman
Developed by Fancy Cape Productions
Starring Emma Taylor-Isherwood
Justin Bradley
Carrie Finlay
Oliver Grainger
Louis Negin
Sonja Ball
Michael Yarmush
John Stocker
Country of origin Canada
France
No. of seasons 4
No. of episodes 65
Production
Executive producer(s) Micheline Charest
Christian Davin
Ronald A.Weinburg
Peter Moss
David Ferguson
Clement Calvet
Lesley Taylor
Steven Ching
Louis Fournier
Running time 20 minutes (Two 10 minute episodes per show)
Production company(s) Fancy Cape Productions
Canal J/TiJi (season 3-4)
Agogo Media (season 4)
Alphanim
Cinar
Animation Services (season 3)
Distributor DHX Media
Corus Entertainment
Release
Original network YTV
Audio format Dolby Surround
Original release September 13, 1999 – February 10, 2003

Mona the Vampire is a Canadian children's animated television series that was created by Sonia Holleyman. Mona the Vampire is based on a series of 1990s children's books of the same name that was written and illustrated by Sonia Holleyman and later also by Hiawyn Oram.

Premise

The series follows the adventures of Mona Parker, who refers to herself as "Mona the Vampire", as well as her two best friends, Lily Duncan ("Princess Giant") and Charley Bones ("Zapman"), and her pet cat, Fang, as they imagine themselves confronting a new supernatural foe, or solving a supernatural mystery, in every episode, but there are always rational explanations for what they see.

Episodes

Season Episodes Original broadcast
First aired Last aired
1 26 September 13, 1999 March 6, 2000
2 13 November 13, 2000 February 19, 2001
3 13 November 19, 2001 February 25, 2002
4 13 November 18, 2002 February 10, 2003

There are a total of 65 full episodes of Mona the Vampire. Each episode is approximately 20 minutes long, not including the theme song and the credits theme, and each full episode contains two 10-minute episodes. Four seasons of Mona the Vampire were produced. The first season contains 26 full episodes, while seasons 2, 3, and 4 each contains 13 full episodes.

Characters

  • Mona Parker ("Mona the Vampire") - A ten-year-old girl with a vivid imagination and a naive personality who claims to be a vampire superhero. She believes her hometown is overrun with supernatural monsters and she plans to stop them all and save the town on a daily basis. Although Mona's imagination can cause trouble at times, her imagination has more often than not proven to be helpful.
  • Fang - Mona's pet cat and sidekick that she ties fake wings around during missions. Fang is her accomplice in the nether realms of her imagination. He always follows Mona everywhere.
  • Charles "Charlie" Bones ("Zapman") - One of Mona's best friends. He wears glasses, and is an intelligent but sometimes scared boy in real life. His alter ego is Zapman, who wears a green costume and is armed with a Zapp-A-Rama gun and other types of guns (a water pistol in reality). Charlie is bullied by George at school frequently.
  • Lily Duncan ("Princess Giant") - One of Mona's best friends. She has a timid and slightly paranoid personality at times, but she is still helpful to the team.
  • Mr. and Mrs. Parker - Mona's parents. Mrs. Parker is shown to be a stricter parent, while Mr. Parker is more light-hearted and clumsy and has an imagination like Mona, allowing her to continue her fantasy life.
  • Angela Smith - Mona's snobbish rival. Often, Angela boasts about her wealth to her classmates and often enlists George in her schemes to cause problems for Mona. Her parents won the lottery, explaining her richness and her spoiledness. She plays the role of a female bully in the series.
  • George Jamell - A school bully, who mainly bullies Charlie, but also bullies several other characters. He plays the role of a male bully in the series and often is seen talking to and negotiating with Angela as a friend.
  • Madeleine Gotto: Mona's teacher. She is very stern, yet also has a habit of falling in love easily. She is often exasperated by Mona's strange ideas and arguments for supernatural occurrences which are ordinary events.
  • Principal Shawbly: The strict principal of Mona's school, St. Faith's Elementary. He easily grows tired of Mona's behavior and is quick to discipline her.
  • Officer Halcroft: The chief of local police. He's become used to Mona's antics, and is quick to offer a more rational explanation to Mona's stories, which, ironically, Mona finds rather outlandish and unbelievable.
  • Mayor Rosenbaum: The town's mayor.
  • Mrs. Bryerson: Mona's elderly neighbor. She has a poodle named Blitzy.
  • Lawrence: One of Mona's classmates; a minor but recurring character.
  • Reverend Gregory: The local reverend.

Voice cast

The following is a list containing voice actors and the characters they voice:

Production

The first public announcement of the production of the television series was in a news article published in June 9, 1998 by the New York City news agency PR Newswire. Before Mona the Vampire, Cinar and Alphanim, two of the series' main production companies, had partnered in several other television series, including Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Lassie. The leaders of both of these companies predicted that Mona the Vampire would be a great success, and hoped to further the relationship between the two companies with this production.[1]

Book basis

Mona the Vampire is based on a series of books of the same name that were each published in the early to mid 1990s and were written and illustrated by Sonia Holleyman, who was later partnered with Hiawyn Oram in the writing of that same book series. Holleyman's original idea of Mona, as represented in her first three Mona the Vampire books, led more towards a girl with a great imagination who, like many children, likes to experiment with multiple different obsessions. However, after Oram joined Holleyman in the writing of the next six Mona the Vampire books, they decided to modify Mona into a character who is solely obsessed with her vampire superhero persona. These ideas later developed into the modern television series.

Additionally, a series of eight picture books and three activity books based on the television series was published in the United Kingdom by Orchard Books in 2001. This picture book series depicts the characters and scenery in a similar manner to the television series. Each of the picture books are based on specific episodes of the first season of the show.

DVD release

During and after the production of Mona the Vampire, several various DVDs containing episodes of the series were published, especially by Cookie Jar Entertainment. These DVDs sometimes included extra features, such as episode and language selection settings and voiced character descriptions by child voice actors. An example of a popular Mona the Vampire DVD is Mona the Vampire: The Complete First Season, released by Mill Creek Entertainment under a deal with DHX Media, a DVD that, as the name states, contains all the episodes of the first season in numerical order.

Reception

According to Community Newspaper Company, Mona the Vampire, along with Cédric and The New Adventures of Lucky Luke, received a wide audience in Canada as well as in many European countries.[2]

Website

On August 29, 2000, after the production of the first season of the series, Alphanim, Tiji, andCinar created a bilingual Adobe Flash-based website under the domain name monathevampire.com. This website included several children's games and activities that included characters and settings from the series. On August 29, 2016, the domain was deactivated, but archived versions of the site still exist.

See also

References

  1. ↑ June 9, 1998. PR Newswire "MONA THE VAMPIRE(TM) in Production."
  2. ↑ "110 millions de téléspectateurs ont plébiscité 144 programmes français", La Presse Canadienne, April 18, 2005 (written in French)
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