Bratz



"The ONLY girls with a passion for fashion."

A line of anime-styled fashion dolls created by ex-Mattel employee Carter Bryant and produced by MGA Entertainment. Released in 2001, the line did the unthinkable and dethroned Barbie from her spot as the #1 doll line among girls. The Bratz line features an ethnic rainbow of different characters to choose from and their chosen jobs tend to focus on more "glamorous" occupations such as singing, acting, and, of course, modeling and fashion design.

The line eventually became popular enough to warrant a bunch of spin-off lines, several animated Direct-To-DVD movies, a short-lived cartoon series, and a live-action movie. The cartoon and most of the animated movies take place in the fictional town of Stilesville and focus on the 4 main girls in the line (Cloe, Sasha, Yasmin, and Jade) and their trials and tribulations of running their own fashion 'zine (appropriately titled Bratz), playing in their own band, getting through the school year at Stiles High, and thwarting the schemes of their rival magazine, Your Thing, run by the middle-aged self-proclaimed "Queen of Fashion", Burdine Maxwell, and her two interns Kirstee and Kaycee (AKA "The Tweevils"). The live-action movie chronicles the girls' adventures in Carry Nation High as they try to destroy the oppressive clique system that the principal's daughter, Meredith, uses to control the students... and win the annual school talent show.

To elaborate, the Bratz Direct-To-DVD line consists of:


 * Mainline
 * Bratz : Starrin & Stylin
 * Bratz Rock Angelz
 * Bratz Genie Magic
 * Bratz Passion 4 Fashion Diamondz
 * Bratz Fashion Pixiez
 * Bratz : The Musical : Girlz Really Rock
 * Bratz Genie Magic 2
 * Bratz Pampered Petz


 * Interactive
 * Livin' It Up!
 * Glitz 'N Glamour


 * Spinoff Babies (And Kidz)
 * Bratz Kidz : Sleepover Adventure
 * Bratz Kidz : Fairy Tales
 * Bratz Babyz : The Movie
 * Bratz Super Babyz
 * Bratz Babyz Save Christmas


 * And of course, the infamous Bratz : The Movie.

The line also had a licenced video game line that was surprisingly intriguing (Using travel and magazine gameplay as it's main focus) and some crappier rushed to coincide with a movie release games. Not to forget the two Bratz Ponyz games (the conception of which is complicated, since it was a spin-off of the spin-off Bratz Babyz line, and no, we have no idea what Babyz are doing with said ponies.)

Due to the somewhat sexual nature of the dolls' designs and clothing, the materialistic nature of the franchise, and the overall poor quality of the cartoon and movies, it is almost universally hated by everyone outside of its target demographic. According to MGA CEO Isaac Larian, only perverts would see anything sexual about the dolls.

In December 2008, Mattel won a copyright lawsuit against MGA that ruled that, since Bryant was still working at Mattel when he created the original dolls, they were Mattel's intellectual property. As a result, MGA was banned from selling all 40 dolls in the line. MGA successfully appealed the ruling in July 2010 and regained ownership. The case was retried at the beginning of 2011 and MGA won -- retaining the rights to the dolls and even getting a cool $88 million from Mattel.

In August, they released updated dolls with wider figures, less make-up, and more modest clothing to celebrate the franchise's 10th anniversary (and so that they can claim they are not the same designs that Mattel claimed ownership of, but that is neither here nor there.)


 * Ambiguously Gay: The only boy in the new official canon (And on the website) at this point is Eitan, and while Cameron, Dylan and various others have been released as dolls under the Bratz Boyz moniker, Eitan is part of the main ensemble-image on the website with the girls.
 * As Long as It Sounds Foreign: One of the discontinued characters is a Japanese girl named May Lin. Oops!
 * Katia and her father, introduced in Bratz: Genie Magic, is obviously Russian, according to Cloe's latest blog post, she's now Moroccan (This might be a case of Did Not Do the Research since the fashions in Genie Magic had a slight Moroccan influence).
 * Blithe Spirit: No one other than the Bratz in The Movie had even thought about talking to people outside of their cliques, let alone sitting at a different cliques' lunch table, until they came along.
 * Blondes Are Evil: Burdine and the Tweevils
 * Bowdlerize: The recent comeback has the girls dressing in layers and pastels for no apparent reason. This wouldn't be so bad if they were actually well done though. All of the make-up is the same now too.
 * Broken Aesop: The main characters constantly tell the one-shot characters that they should follow their own unique sense of style... right after they give them a makeover or get done gawking at the villains' untrendy Limited Wardrobe.
 * In addition, the villains are supposed to reinforce the message that the viewer should be unique and look like nobody else... and yet the main characters and their boyfriends are all recolors of one another. (Yes, that includes their outfits.)
 * Butt Monkey: Dylan in the cartoons.
 * Casanova Wannabe: Dylan in the cartoon.
 * Colon Cancer: Bratz: The Musical: Girlz Really Rock
 * Dawson Casting: The movie, where Jade, Yasmin and Sasha are played by actresses atleast close to high school age, but Cloe is played by Skyler Shaye, who is twenty one.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: In Bratz Rock Angelz, after Jade gives Burdine a double cheeseburger for lunch, Burdine fires Jade, her children and her grandchildren from the Your Thing magazine for life and tells her that she'll never work in any magazine from that day onwards.
 * Then Jade and the rest of the Bratz fake being employees of Your Thing and then Byron Powell gets the Your Thing crew kicked out of a concert because they're not dressed punk.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Fashion Pixiez movie contains a scene that looks surprisingly like a rave party, with everybody attending high on 'evil pixie magic'.
 * Dueling Shows: With Trollz.
 * Dumb Blonde: The Tweevils
 * Everything's Better with Princesses: The Princess line.
 * Everything's Better with Sparkles
 * Everything's Sparkly with Jewelry
 * Expy: Struts, which is Bratz meets My Little Pony.
 * Someone also did Foxz, who were even creepier than the Strutz and Bratz put together. Even the Furry Fandom thought they looked like cheap hos.
 * The Fashionista: Jade, although the slogan implies the whole line is about this.
 * Fish Out of Water: Katia the genie from Genie Magic.
 * Five-Token Band- There's Cloe the white girl, Sasha the Sassy Black Woman, Asian and Nerdy Jade, and Latina Granola Girl Yasmin. The fifth person is whatever one-shot character is in that episode/movie/set of dolls.
 * Follow the Leader: Started out as a Follow the Leader to Barbie, but soon became more popular.
 * Fun with Acronyms: Let's just hope that this one is unintentional in the case of Bratz Rock Angelz.
 * Girl Posse: Quinn and Avery, Meredith's yes men.
 * Hair of Gold: Cloe
 * Hey, It's That Voice!:
 * Burdine Maxwell's voice sound familiar? Thats because you probably know her as Nina Van Horn or Chica.
 * Cloe is Ty Lee
 * Yasmin is Trixie Tang
 * Jade is Punky Brewster
 * Sasha is Tia Landry and Melanie Davis
 * Kirstee and Kaycee are Penny and Gretchen Weiners, respectively.
 * After Lionsgate took over production, Chloe became Sabrina (in Sabrina's Secret Life) and Baby Lola Bunny, Jade became Rainbow Dash, and Kaycee became Barbie
 * High School
 * Hollywood Nerd: Dexter and the rest of the "Nerd" clique in The Movie.
 * Hormone-Addled Teenager: In The Movie, of the 'obsessed with fashion' flavor first and foremost, with a side-order of boy-crazy.
 * Informed Flaw: In The Movie, Cloe is supposed to be clumsy. But that doesn't stop her from being the best soccer player on the school's team, capable of pulling off moves that only professional players can do. Her clumsiness even gets the girls into the situation where they make up and become friends again and lets her spend time with her crush.
 * In one of the animated movies, Jade is publicly humiliated at school when word got out about her fashion disaster... which was... a pretty cute and unique outfit. despite the fact that there didn't seem to be any thing wrong with it, all of her friends say that it looks terrible. Instead she happily chooses to wear a generic yellow dress identical to the other ones everyone else wore to the dance, and happily declares that she finally got her individual fashion sense back.
 * Insult Backfire: In both Rock Angelz and the live-action movie, the girls get the idea for their group's name from a mean girl calling them "brats." It's much more subtle in Rock Angelz than in Bratz: The Movie.
 * Limited Wardrobe: Burdine and the Tweevils.
 * Live Action Adaptation: Bratz: The Movie, which was nominated for several Razzies (including "Worst Movie"), and was described by one reviewer as "the reason why terrorists hate [America]."
 * Loads and Loads of Characters Forty plus. The comeback outdoes this, adding new characters in almost every line.
 * Love Makes You Crazy: Cloe in Rock Angelz with the ninth duke of lessex.
 * Make Way for the Princess: Both Meredith and the Bratz do this in The Movie.
 * Merchandise-Driven
 * Money, Dear Boy: Jon Voight, why?
 * My Beloved Smother: Cloe has one of these in Rock Angelz, after which we never hear from her again.
 * Negative Continuity: In Rock Angelz Cloe tells us that she met Cameron in second grade, but we see Cloe and Cameron have a skate contest as Babyz in the Babyz movie.
 * No Celebrities Were Harmed: Byron Powell, London Milton, Allonce... don't forget Lo-J.
 * Only One Female Mold: Not only for the dolls, but also in the cartoon. To the point that when one of the male characters disguises himself as a girl, he has exactly the same body shape as the female characters.
 * Only Six Faces: The animators were really lazy with the direct-to-dvd movies and cartoon leading us to see the same person dancing in seven different locations in the same club. Also, Cameron and Dylan show up in the strangest locations in Forever Diamondz.
 * There are currently only two face molds.
 * The Other Darrin: Cinegroupe produced the first direct-to-video movie, Starrin` and Stylin`, and featured a different cast from the TV series (which was produced by Fox and Lionsgate). However, Starrin` and Stylin` didn't list the voice credits.
 * For the TV show's second season, Fox stopped producing the series, so Lionsgate took over, replacing the entire cast.
 * Overly Long Name: Bratz Passion For Fashion Diamondz
 * The Power of Friendship (and fashion!)
 * Pretty in Mink - Some fur coats, as their outfits are often influence by hip hop culture.
 * Recycled in Space - Barbie dolls THAT LOOK LIKE TEN DOLLAR PUERTO RICAN PROSTITUTES!
 * Rich Bitch: Meredith Dimly from The Movie
 * Screwed by the Lawyers: The courts found the toy line was being worked on by Mattel before the creator left the company, so Mattel won a suit to discontinue the line.
 * According to some fans, this is evidence that Barbie is jealous of the Bratz.
 * Speaking to the Fan Dumb accusation--Judge Alex Kozinski, who granted MGA the appeal, seemed to agree that there was some "jealousy" involved in the case, saying, "America thrives on competition; Barbie, the all‐American girl, will too."
 * Media Franchise
 * Spinoff Babies: Lil' Bratz, Bratz Babyz, Bratz Boyz, Bratz Kidz, Bratz Petz...
 * Stripperiffic- The dolls have been accused of being this, with some degree of truth. Due to what might or might not be unfortunate tailoring, there have even been Bratz dolls with pronounced camel toe.
 * MGA seems to be trying to change this with the new dolls, who are much more covered.
 * Take That: Burdine, the Tweevils, and Meredith all have blonde hair, Blue Eyes, and are always shown wearing the color pink. Burdine also reminds Kaycee of "that fashion doll" Kirstee used to hit her with when they were 3. Hmm...
 * Subverted with Cloe, she have blonde hair and blue eyes, but she doesn't wear pink.
 * Both Pretty in Punk ads have the line "Not Pink, Punk!"
 * The Movie: Cleverly named Bratz: The Movie.
 * The Noseless: Whether or not the characters have a nose changes from scene to scene in their cartoons
 * Theme Twin Naming: Kirstee/Kaycee, Orianna/Valentina/Siernna, Nita/Nora
 * Those Two Bad Girls: The Tweevils
 * Totally Radical
 * Unlimited Wardrobe - Hence the tagline.
 * Interesting note about the cartoons: While they do change clothes, they all have a set of different outfits that they rotate in and out of. And they're all essentially recolors of one another. All four girls will usually wear the same style of outfit, ironically...
 * This might have been hilarious in hindsight when you realise most of the new dolls are wearing the same type of outfits.
 * Valley Girl: The Tweevils. Sometimes Cloe.
 * Visual Gag: The first movie was full of this.
 * Wakeup Makeup - The first scene of the movie. Their hair is even perfectly straight too.
 * Xtreme Kool Letterz - Pretty much all the names of the dolls. Examples: Meygan, Roxxi, Breeana. Also, the Twiinz line. I'm serious.
 * Not to mention, Bratz.
 * BRATZ R BAK!
 * You Can Panic Now: Every few years or so, someone starts a panic saying that the dolls are teaching girls to dress like hookers or that beauty is everything in life.