Dolls

Among all the content that makes up the Monster High brand, one could easily forget what Monster High revolves around: the dolls. All pieces of Monster High fiction are written around and therefore largely dependent on the needs of doll promotion, and while the other merchandise is no small cookie either, none of it leads the franchise like the dolls do.

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Assortment definitions
Dolls are released as part of assortments and, in the case of main line dolls, sub-assortments. Most of the dolls and accessory sets are undeniably part of an assortment—a named assortment—and make searching for, and talking about those dolls a piece of cake. Then there's the remaining ones, divisible in items that belong to a defined but nameless line, and items that seemingly don't belong to any line at all.

When Mattel releases an assortment, usually the items of that assortment have the name printed on the package. Expensive and elaborate lines have a name that is trademarked, whereas the bulk of other lines have an unprotected name. A handful of other lines, however, are thoroughly nameless. The most significant of these are the main line, and its various sublines. Usually, fans create a name themselves for use of reference. The uses these names too, if no official name is available.

Ever since the first two playsets hit stores in Late December 2010, a number of items have been released, that aren't part of any line. Depending on the fan, these items have been grouped with one line or another for thematical reasons, or are considered lineless. The operates with an amount of own interpretation in documenting the various assortments, and individual releases too, and lists items as part of a line based on the following reasoning:

It almost goes without saying: if there's a name on the box, whether on the front or the back, then that's what line the doll or fashion is from, and all dolls and fashions that share that name make up an assortment. Of all the means by which the content of an assortment can be defined, the considers the on-package name the most important and therefore the one that automatically overrules the other two methods.
 * 1.) Is there indication of a name?

All individually sold dolls and fashions that are not exclusive have an assortment number. An assortment number consists of one letter and four digits, and all non-exclusive individually sold dolls and fashions that share an assortment number are part of the same assortment. For instance, all main line dolls are recognizable, as having assortment number N2851.
 * 2.) Is there indication of an assortment number?

There are two drawbacks to relying on assortment numbers to figure out assortments. Firstly, playsets, multipacks, and exclusive dolls do not have an assortment number, only a model number, and thus figuring out which lines they belong to cannot be done through assortment numbers. Also, assortment numbers don't always line up with the way assortments are formed, if one looks at the names on the boxes. Scream Uniform and School Clubs have the same assortment number, T7980, while the Dead Tired assortment consists of assortment numbers V7972 and X4514. These conflict situations are rare though and, as explained above, the believes the on-package names are more prominent and thus deserve precedence in defining assortments.

What remains after the above two methods have been applied are the San Diego Comic-Con International exclusive dolls and the playsets not specified as being from any line. The treats the SDCCI dolls as one line for ease of organization. All playsets are also treated as one line. This includes those marketed as being from a specific assortment for completeness' sake, but without taking them from their appropriate assortments.
 * 3.) What about the rest?

Similar products
There are two product lines that are complementary to the Monster High dolls. These are the Create-A-Monster packs and the Friends plushie line.

Create-A-Monster is a series of doll parts, clothes, and accessories that was launched by the end of 2011. The line is divided in starter packs, add-on packs, and lab packs, each of which carries at least part of all materials needed to put together a certain type of monster. The dolls created such are design-wise the same as the regular dolls and thus can be used for the same kind of play.

When in Early July, 2010 the first dolls were released, so too were the first plushies released. The plushies, appropriately named Friends, essentially are dolls aimed at a younger audience and each item contains a plushie of both a student and their pet. Like the main line dolls have profiles for the characters printed on the back of the box, so have the plushies profiles for the pets printed on the back of the box. The Friends line ended in June 2011.