I bought a Troll for you
The one you wanted was blue
But they only had Yellow
The Troll Dolls are a long-running toyline that had a number of brands made by different companies, involving small humanoid dolls with fluffy long hair that normally sticks up.
The Troll Dolls were originally started in Denmark by Thomas Dam when he made a preceding woodcarving figure for his daughter. He started the Dam Trolls brand with the opening of a factory in 1959, which produced plastic dolls, in turn opening up the Dam Things company. The Troll Dolls were produced as "good luck" charms aimed at young children, and were meant to look like human babies, though they were originally based on the actual trolls from Norse mythology. Children were supposed to rub the dolls' hair and look after them, which would bring them good luck throughout the day.
The Troll Dolls were popular in Europe and later North America throughout the 1960s to 1980s. By the late 1980s and 1990s, attempts were made to extend the Troll Dolls to a more global scale with a number of new brands and related products; however, due to a lack of copyright enforcement many companies were also able to make bootleg brands without getting licenses from Dam Things. This resulted in the overall peak in sales of the Troll Dolls, but in the late 1990s Dam Things managed to sort out the copyright issues.
When the 21st century began, DIC Entertainment tried to bring back the Troll Dolls again with its TV series Trollz, aired in 2005, but there wasn't much of success. Later in 2011, DreamWorks Animation bought the rights to the Troll Dolls to start their own franchise, simply known as Trolls but colloquially referred to as "DreamWorks Trolls". It was set up in 2016 with the movie of the same title, and brought back the popularity of the toyline with Cash-Cow Franchise results.
Throughout time, other media had also referenced the Troll Dolls in some way.
Brands and related franchises:
- Dam Trolls (1959-2011)
- Battle Trolls (1992-1993)
- Russ Trolls (late 1980s-1990s)
- Mighty Max - Hairy Heads (date TBA)
Adaptational media/franchises
- Trollkins (1981)
- The Magic Trolls and the Troll Warriors (1991)
- Magical Super Trolls (1992)
- Stone Protectors (1993)
- Trollz (2005)
- Trolls (aka "DreamWorks Trolls", after its producer) (2016-present)
Other related products
- Trash Can Trolls cards (1992)
The Troll Dolls toyline and its related media provide examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The toyline didn't have any work of fiction of its own, so all the adaptational media made their own storylines and official characters.
- Amazing Technicolor Population/Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: While the Troll dolls already had variously colored hair from the very beginningnote , DreamWorks Trolls was the first related franchise to explicitly use this trope, as it changed the Trolls' skin tones and noses to vary in any color but the original beige. Many other species in the franchise are technicolored too.
- World of Technicolor Hair: The Troll dolls have hair colors in all the colors of the rainbow.
