In 2012, Lego released their own action-adventure take on public domain monsters, called Monster Fighters. An elite squad of colorful characters took on Dracula, Frankenstein, a Wolfman, a Mummy, and even a Gillman. It was the Dark Universe five years before the Dark Universe!

Like many original themes of the era, the Monster Fighters sets had kind of a lot going on, conceptually. The titular team had a whole mishmash of styles, including several dudes with prominent bionic limbs. Their custom vehicles ranged from cool to kind of hideous.

Meanwhile, the monsters each guarded a triangular totem which Dracula wanted to gather at his castle to perform some dark ritual (collect them all!). Triangular totems were a big deal in Lego originals at the time, the same piece having also served as all-purpose MacGuffins in the Atlantis theme a couple years earlier.

Other signature elements of Monster Fighters included a preponderance of Glow-In-The-Dark elements and an emphasis on action features. The theme was also lucky enough to get a large Direct-to-Consumer set back when those were still rare, in the form of a pseudo-modular Haunted House with over 2000 pieces. It features several monsters but zero actual fighters of those monsters, so I think the designers just wanted an excuse to release a haunted house.

Like Pharaoh’s Quest before it, Monster Fighters lasted for only a single wave. Lego wouldn’t dabble in the spooky realm again until it started licensing some spooky properties later in the decade.