Trolls

Trolls

Synopsis of Toy

The idea behind the supposed good-luck of Troll dolls is this: they’re so ugly that when you look at them you have to laugh, and when you laugh, nothing bad can happen to you. Leave logic like that to the Danes. They’re the ones who have passed troll legends down through the generations, and it was a Danish woodcutter who first carved the first little handheld prototype. It’s just too bad that the dourest of Danes, Mr. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, didn’t have a Troll. Because if he did, none of that awful stuff at the end of the play probably would have happened.

Helena and Martii Kuuskoski of Finland made the earliest commercial Trolls during the 1950’s, which were called Fauni Trolls. But the Trolls we all know and love came a bit later. In 1959, as the story goes, when Thomas Dam didn’t have the funds for his daughter’s birthday present, he carved a little doll for her, based on the legendary trolls that supposedly lived in the Nordic forests. Dam’s daughter dressed her new toy up and showed him off around the village, and it wasn’t long before a local toy storeowner surrendered to the ugly little guy’s charms. Oh, the jolt of that first troll love.

And it had to be love, because it sure wasn’t any skin-deep beauty that we fell for. Trolls were short and typically underdressed, they had pot bellies, huge ears and eyes, no forehead, and long strands of wildly colored, wooly hair that brought new meaning to the hair world phrase “hard to manage.” And that’s saying nothing of the tiny Trolls that came perched on top of pencils, because when you put those guys between your palms and gave them a little Whirly Bird spin, the results were darn near scary. But scary in a cute way, if you know what we mean.

Thanks to Thomas Dam’s woodcarvings, the Danish company called (yes, it's their real name) the Dam Things Establishment started churning out their molded plastic trolls in the late 1950’s. By the mid-60’s, they were selling like crazy. In America, they were a toy favorite to the hippies, and quite on the other end of the conformity spectrum, to the former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. For a year or two there, the Troll was second in sales only to Barbie, who never let anybody laugh at the way she looked, incidentally—be it for good luck or not.

It wasn’t long before Trolls were manufactured by plenty of toy companies besides Dam. Uneeda made the memorable Wishnik line, which included notorious design experiments like curly-hair and rhinestone eyes. Late on, companies like Hasbro, Mattel, Russ Berry, Nyform, Trollkins and Ace Novelty jumped aboard the Troll train. Collectively, they ranged from a few inches to life-sized, and they came in all sorts of get-ups: vampires, bride and groom couples, Rastafarians, cowboys, rock stars, athletes and superheroes. There were Trolls with beards and different colored bodies; there were playsets and carrying cases; and there were clothes sold separately from the dolls—a Halloween costume, for example, if your Troll felt like he didn’t look weird enough on his own. Because of their craftsmanship, the Dam dolls are probably the most sought after today. And if you’re lucky (and you should be, what with all those Trolls you own), you can get your hands on some of Dam’s elusive animal line, which included Troll creatures like elephants, cows, pigs, donkeys, turtles, giraffes, alligators and monkeys.

The Trolls’ popularity waned in the 70’s and 80’s, but they made a nice little comeback in the 90’s, thanks to popularized retro toy collecting. As the saying goes, you can’t keep a good man down. And as the other saying goes, you can’t keep a weird looking, spiky-haired, diminutive good luck charm down, either.

Release History of Toy

1959 - Trolls from Dam Things

Sub Categories of Toys

dolls

Toy and Game Manufacturer

Dam Things, various

Other Toy Links