Today's doll is a little one I came across. She's from a 2004 TV series called Trollz.
I'm told this character is Topaz.
She doesn't do anything. This is the worst sort of McDonald's toy: It can't move, because it has no joints, and it is stuck forever in a weird position that limits it's playability.
And on that, I will let you go. I will see you tomorrow, if not sooner, for another doll.
I missed yesterday. Sorry. I was feeling very achy yesterday, and we had a full day. I must have looked like a little old lady, having to have Ken give me his arm so I could get around! I started the day off like that today too. It took me half the day to loosen up and stop having such bad back ache when I was on my feet. I think it's a combination of sleeping on this air mattress that doesn't inflate properly any more, and the cold weather. It has gotten really cold here. We had snow on Halloween! I have noticed in the last few years that when the weather gets cold again, I stiffen up and get terrible back ache.
So, since I'm Another day behind, let me show something I've only seen once, and it gave me a good laugh.
I have never seen a troll with teeth before! This one looks like a Russ troll, from the 90's. He's a plush, with a vinyl head, and about 10 inches tall. But those teeth!
I can find a Russ troll as a wizard in a blue outfit like this, but none have teeth. I found a baseball player with teeth, made by Sof' Trolls. His clothes are part of his body, and the sleeves on this one look like his are too. So I'm going to guess he was made by Sof' Trolls.
I saw him in an antique mall, and I had to send a picture to Emma, who loved trolls as a kid.
I'll see what I can round up for another post today. Gotta get back on track!
And I'll see you tomorrow for a pretty girl.
Today's dolls are eensy.
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| The dog on the box lid was made for me by my sister, from the skin of a mechanical dog that stopped working. Mom would have thrown the dog away, but my sister rescued the outer dog. His name is Sugar Brown Larry. The tag you may have seen before. It came off my childhood Raggedy Ann doll. The pink purse was a toy fo Mom's, and her grandma made the 'yoyo' thing and patchwork pillow cover under that. The box is actually called my 'Monkees box', because I kept my Monkees bubble cards and stuff in that box. |
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| Not quite sure what the indentation in his back was for. It could have been for a pin that allowed him to be worn on your clothes. |
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| This guy better apply some sun screen! |
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| Did you ever have something stored that you got out again and it had turned weird on you? I have no idea why this guy has spots. He has a less traditional troll look. |
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| I saw one like this online, and it had glued in googly eyes. It's possible thsi one did, and maybe the others too. |
I forgot to take a picture of his back, but it made it into the picture below that I took to show my sister and see if she remembered any of this stuff. The silver troll can be seen just above the camel's back. He has a large indentation in his back where there was a pin glued in so he could be worn as a pin.
And that is it for the trolls! Tomorrow we'll see something completely different!
The last couple of days we've been looking at trolls. Both were old, original trolls, but they were really big trolls, not the little dolls everyone is most familiar with. So today we're looking at four of those little trolls.
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| I think she has wool hair too. Her 'necklace' is pearls stitched to her dress. |
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| Yes, my fingernails needed cleaned. I had been digging through a bag of sooty stuff, so they were a bit blackened underneath, even though I had washed my hands.. |
These three all have pretty much the exact same face, but that happens with clone dolls, especially back in the 60's, when sometimes it seems copy cat dolls were made using the actual molds from the dolls they were copying. The Wishnik troll has the same face, but different fingers.
My sister and I had several trolls like these when we were kids. (I still have them.) In fact, we had one with orangy hair just the colour of the one above. Her name is Ginger. There was also a troll with silky black hair, one with more coarse blonde hair, a tiny blonde one that was a pencil topper, and a strange rubber one with his arms molded to his sides, and holes from air bubbles all over him. I don't remember him ever having hair either, although there is a hole in his head for it. He is very unattractive, and his name is Cary Grant. (Irony, I guess.) Then there was my blue haired troll. I loved that troll, but my sister had a friend at school who wanted to trade trolls with me. My sister hounded me until I consented. My sister is six years older than I am, and I was probably about four or five years old at the time. I couldn't take the pressure. So I traded, and now for all eternity I own an ugly troll with white and purple striped, straight acrylic hair, instead of a soft blue cloud rising to the Heavens. I never warmed to that troll. You may have read my post on the blue haired troll my kids got me one year to replace my childhood one.
Tomorrow we'll conclude the troll posts for the week with some interesting little fellows. See you then.
It's troll day again! This little girl is about nine or ten inches tall, plus hair.
There are several versions of the origin story for the troll dolls we all know and (some) love. The tale usually told is that a Denmark native named Thomas Dam, (pronounced 'dahm'.), carved a troll doll out of wood for his daughter, Lajla, because they had no money for gifts. The tale goes on to say that friends and family loved the troll so much, they asked for one of their own, or for their children, and things grew from there. The story later told by Dam's daughter herself, is that she and her father developed the trolls together, and she and her mother stuffed the trolls her father made with sawdust, (Huh?), and the family sold them. That sounds a little like she just wanted in on the creation of the dolls.
The long original story is that having been a creative and artistically talented child, Thomas Dam often carved wooden figures, sometimes based on the legends and folktales of trolls that had been passed down for generations in Denmark. During World War II Thomas lost his job as a baker when the local flour mill closed down. He shoveled snow in an effort to support his family. In the evenings he would carve by the fire, often carving small figures. His wife encouraged him to try to sell the figures, and he finally took as many as he could carry to nearby Aalborg to try to sell them door to door. He returned home empty handed, as he had managed to sell them all. He went on to sell the figures at fairs and other outlets, and they became so popular that people began commissioning bigger things. Eventually, in 1956, a Swedish department store hired Dam to carve a large Santa for a store display. Once the Santa was in the store, Dam had the idea that something should be able to be seen from the street, and proposed the idea of a window display to the store. They agreed, and Dam carved a profusion of tiny Christmas elves. Using springs from an old mattress, Dam created a moving, bouncing, head rolling display of wooden elves. The problem was, shoppers wanted to buy the elves! Dam struggled to supply the need, and sold out of his entire inventory by Christmas. Even after Christmas, demand continued. Dam created molds and made the figures from rubber, eliminated the springs, and filled the figures with sawdust. (That's where the daughter's story comes in, I guess.) He formed a company he called Dam Things, and in 1959 he had his own factory. In 1961 he switched to PVC instead of rubber, and the troll doll as we know it today was born.
Dam's original trolls, which became known as Dam Trolls, (what I grew up knowing them as), or Dam Dolls, (My friend Lori, for one, knew them under that name.), had glass eyes and sheep wool hair. He called them Good Luck Trolls, saying he wanted them to make people happy. He wanted his trolls to 'make people want to pick them up and give them a hug', thus the traditional troll pose with outstretched arms, ready to hug. This was what Dam referred to as the, "Give me a hug" pose. The trolls were marked with the Dam trademark, and the year on their feet.
Trolls were a craze in the 1960's. In 1961 Good Luck trolls were voted as The Toy of the Year by the U.S. Toy Industry Association. In 1964 one million trolls were sold in the U.S. alone, and that year Good Luck trolls were the mascot of the New York World's Fair. At one point Americans were spending $100,000 a month on trolls. Unfortunately, not all of that money was going to Thomas Dam's company, Dam Things. Although Dam acquired a copyright for his trolls, as with all popular things, there were copies, rip offs, one might say. In 1965 trolls were deemed public domain in the U.S. since Dam's manufacturer here had failed to place a copyright on the products. Dam was so tired of the rip off trolls in the U.S. that in the late 60's he finally stopped selling his trolls in the U.S., and took his business back to Europe, where his copyright was respected.
Eventually trolls lost their popularity, as all popular things do. They never completely went away though. In the early 1980's Dam trolls, under the name 'Norfin' launched a new line of trolls, and things started to heat up again for trolls. Although they never regained the popularity they had in their heyday, trolls enjoyed an enormous resurgence in the late 80's and early to mid 90's. Emma was born in 1991, and trolls were everywhere when she was small. She had a stuffed troll baby doll named Pookie, made by Russ, that she loved, as well as several small trolls. The store across the street from our apartment was an old fashioned pharmacy with a lunch counter, but Emma called it 'the trerl store', ('trerl' being her pronunciation of 'troll' at the time), for it's troll filled toy section. Everywhere you went you could buy trolls wearing shirts with the name of the town on them. Emma had two 'town' trolls, one from the town where we lived, and one bought on vacation. Trolls of all kinds were made by many different companies, with Hasbro even making muscle bound soldier trolls called Battel Force.
Unfortunately, Thomas Dam didn't live to see all of the giant troll resurgence. He died in 1989, but his family kept watch over his copyright. In 2003 the sole copyright to produce trolls in the U.S. was restored to the Dam family. It was challenged by Russ Berrie and Uneeda, who had made millions selling trolls, but the Dam family came out winners.
See you tomorrow!
Today's doll is an oldie but a goodie. He's a troll!
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| I think at some point he must have had a mouse or something get at his vest. |
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| His hair seems to be mohair, his vest and feet are felt, and his one piece yellow body suit is corduroy. |
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| His head and arms are hardish plastic, like most older troll dolls. |
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| He has four leaf clovers on his shoes. |
Trolls have been around as far back as Norse mythology. In early Scandinavian folklore trolls were huge, mean, could perform magic, and hated humans. Later forms of trolls were smaller, more like elves, and lived in the mountains.
We'll see some more trolls this week, and learn how the troll doll became part of popular culture.
