Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened - A farewell to our favourite monsters.

The other day as I was checking through and clearing out old emails and checking my spam filter, I stumbled upon an email from Moshi Monsters. It struck me as out of the ordinary so I had a closer read and then had a quick google search to check if the news was true. Sadly they are shutting down their main Moshi Monsters webgame as of 13th December 2019.

Whilst their sleep app, Moshi Twilight, will continue as well as app based Moshling Egg Hunt, it will certainly be the end of an era for us to say goodbye to Monstro city and our favourite loveable monsters Katsuma, Poppet, Furi, Luvli, Zommer and Diavlo.

I realise just how silly it sounds to say that I'm feeling sad about it, but Moshi Monsters was SO much more than just an online game to our family. For a long time, our lives revolved around it.

Rewind back to 2010, it was a couple of years after Moshi Monsters came out and it was gaining momentum. I hadn't heard of it initially until J bought a couple of books featuring Moshi Monsters, asked to log onto the game and the rest, as they say is history. He became the worlds biggest Moshi fan.

He was also having the most horrible time at school. Having been diagnosed with ASD, school was becoming a massive struggle for him. The education system just wasn't geared up to cope with children like J. He was incredibly intelligent in terms of his academic ability but when it came to coping socially, he just didn't get the support he needed. He struggled through to part way through year 2 including a change of school which didn't help and as things worsened we made the difficult decision to homeschool him.

This is where Moshi Monsters became a massive part of our lives. It had become J's main topic of interest - his "ASD obsession" I suppose. He loved playing the game, he loved talking about it. He would collect moshling figures as they were released and any other moshi branded items. He would wake up in the early hours of the morning to draw ideas for new moshlings. A great many new ideas for moshlings. He would ask me to send them into Moshi Monsters (which I kept failing to do). We would tailor his homeschool work to be themed around Moshi Monsters - whether it was writing stories or doing "moshi maths" - we would include Moshi Monsters A LOT until J had settled into homeschooling and was ready to move onto other topics.

Eventually, after J had drawn around 100 new moshling design ideas (and nagged me to send them to Moshi HQ), one day I did eventually get around to it. The response from them was delightful. They were so pleased with J's fan mail of moshling designs that they invited us to visit Moshi HQ. The ultimate dream come true for a Moshi Monsters fan!

We started this blog in 2012 by writing a series of backdated posts for 2011 so that we could record our Moshi memories. So as well as the visit to HQ, we wrote about how Moshi Monsters could be good for your health which Mr Moshi had asked us to write for the Mind Candy blog, we also recorded the excitement of J winning the Switchy day contest and when The Daily Growl, Moshi Monsters daily blog, had a piece entitled "Choccie Brocci Brothers". Then we headed to Bluewater to visit the Moshi Bus that Christmas and it was especially great that Mr Moshi remembered J and D from their visit to HQ.  

The excitement continued when Moshi Monsters released a Christmas song, Moshi Twistmas. When they challenged Moshi fans to make a video of them singing along to it, we went all out and spent a weekend filming a video which ended up going viral with over 100,000 views in a short space of time - such was Moshi Monsters popularity in its heyday.

It is also worthy of a mention that whilst we were setting up this very blog and debating which blog name to choose, we settled on "The Beesley Buzz" because we were inspired by the name of the Moshi Monsters blog "The Daily Growl". Just as The Daily Growl was a round-up of the latest news in Monstro city, The Beesley Buzz was a round-up of the latest news for our family.

Another wave of excitement came in March 2012. Whilst heavily pregnant with Miss T, we found out that we had won tickets to attend the Moshi Music Rox launch party. We fashioned our own T-shirts featuring our favourite monsters and rocked up at the party at Hard Rock cafe. We couldn't believe we were there and we enjoyed every second of it. We even bumped into the glamorous Sophie Ellis Bextor who was also heavily pregnant at the time. We got to meet Mr Moshi again and the boys were featured in the following months Moshi Magazine. Moshi Monsters was everywhere with the magazine becoming a best seller in record time.

New moshlings were being released all the time and we became official moshi bloggers announcing the release of the collectible figures.  As moshi bloggers, we also got to attend some cool events like the Sealife centre collaboration with Moshi Monsters, another visit to HQ to preview some of their Christmas merchandise (this time in their new premises) and the Moshi Movie Film Premiere.

All the while enjoying the online game as well as the apps and other gaming platform releases they had. The boys used to both blog a little on their own blogs in those days and would often write about moshi related stuff like D making these Eye pie cakes and J's blog name was actually Joshi Moshi blog!!! We'd also write about moshlings and Moshi Monsters regularly on this blog too, even making silly videos just for fun.

Customer service from Moshi Monsters was always second to none. The care and the importance they placed on their fans was always evident. They had THE best people working for them and the Moshi brand took the world by storm. I suppose with anything that grows so huge and grows so quickly, you can sense that the time will come when the bubble will burst. And gradually as the kids grew older and other interests took hold, our online monsters in Monstro city became a little bit neglected. We would check in on them once in a while and remind ourselves just how awesome the Moshi Monsters game was.

For a whole generation Moshi Monsters was a huge part of their childhoods and so there is no doubt that it will be missed.

Thank you Moshi Monsters for being part of our family and and allowing us to be part of yours.