Trolls: Creepy, Cute, or Somewhere in Between?

Whether you thought they were creepy, cute, or somewhere in between, you probably owned at least one troll doll growing up. If you grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, you might have thought troll dolls were unique to your generation, but nope! Trolls have actually been around since the 1950s, though they weren’t in the United States until the 1960s. But where did they come from, and why? We have a Danish man to thank for trolls, and that man is Thomas Dam.

Thomas Dam grew up in Denmark, having worked as a fisherman, bricklayer, and baker. Those occupations didn’t make him much money, and in his free time he would carve little figurines out of wood for his children. His wife eventually persuaded him to try selling his figurines, and he went to a neighboring city and quickly sold all of his carved cuties. From there, customers started requesting projects from him, and after he produced a large Santa Claus-themed window display for a Swedish department store, things really took off. But wait, you say, troll dolls aren’t made out of hand-carved wood! Yes, you’re right.

With the rising demand for his dolls, Dam came up with a more efficient way to produce them using rubber molded from reusable casts. The dolls were stuffed with wood shavings with an outer rubber exterior, glass eyes, and sheepskin hair. But still, rubber wasn’t long-lasting (as you can see in the photograph above of one of the original rubber dolls that has degraded a lot over time despite being kept in its original packaging). So, he soon switched to the PVC-style plastic that troll dolls are still made of today. By 1961 he had opened a factory in Denmark to produce the trolls, and by 1962 they had expanded worldwide.

Trolls quickly grew in popularity around the globe — in 1964 alone, Americans purchased more than one million dolls! But here’s where things got a bit complicated for Dam and his trolls. Being from Denmark, he didn’t really understand US copyright law, which unfortunately left any company open to try to sell their own version of the troll dolls using cheaper materials. Some of the most memorable of those copycats were the Treasure Trolls, which featured rhinestones in their bellies, Russ Berrie’s trolls, including the Halloween-themed one pictured above, and Hasbro’s Battle Trolls, which tried to make trolls more accessible to boys by turning them into warriors.

Though Dam had fixed his copyright of trolls in the ‘60s, because so many different companies had made the dolls in the meantime, his claim was mired in the public domain for decades. It wasn’t until 1994 that his company finally was able to restore their copyright with the passing of the Uruguay Round Amendment Act. The legislation amended US copyright law to bring it into alignment with a treaty called the Berne Convention. Therefore, foreign companies and individuals whose intellectual property had previously been part of the public domain received copyright privileges once again. Dam was back in business! Unfortunately, that was right when troll popularity took another dive.

In 2005, Dam licensed the brand to DiC Entertainment, who tried to re-launch and market trolls under the name Trollz, but it all failed pretty spectacularly. Luckily, things changed in 2013 when Dreamworks acquired the official licensing rights, and soon began work on the Trolls 3D computer-animated movie starring the voices of Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake. The film released in theaters in 2016 and made over $153 million in the US, spawning a new love of trolls for today’s generation of kids. It all comes back around, doesn’t it?

But what about you? Did you own Trolls as a kid? What were your favorites? Let us know in the comments!

Retired nurse Sherry Groom and her husband run a troll museum in Alliance, Ohio called The Troll Hole Museum. The museum holds the Guinness World Record for the largest troll doll collection in the world with over 8,000 unique troll dolls and over 25,000 troll-related items.
Trolls World Tour, the sequel to the 2016 Trolls film, released in April 2020 during the pandemic and due to the limited number of movie theaters being open at the time of release, also debuted on video on demand at the same time. It soon surpassed $200 million in rentals.
In 1998, a fire started in the troll factory in Gjol, Denmark. Large parts of the factory were destroyed, including thousands of troll dolls and the expensive copper moulds which were used to make them.
A platform video game simply titled Trolls, where you’d play a Troll going through the levels rescuing baby trolls, was released in 1993 for Amiga, DOS, and the Commodore 64. Other games were released for the Nintendo called Trolls on Treasure Island and The Trolls in Crazyland, and for the Super Nintendo, called Super Troll Islands.
The Trolls movie featured a lot of music, and the song “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” was nominated for multiple awards, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.

Retired nurse Sherry Groom and her husband run a troll museum in Alliance, Ohio called The Troll Hole Museum. The museum holds the Guinness World Record for the largest troll doll collection in the world with over 8,000 unique troll dolls and over 25,000 troll-related items.
Trolls World Tour, the sequel to the 2016 Trolls film, released in April 2020 during the pandemic and due to the limited number of movie theaters being open at the time of release, also debuted on video on demand at the same time. It soon surpassed $200 million in rentals.
In 1998, a fire started in the troll factory in Gjol, Denmark. Large parts of the factory were destroyed, including thousands of troll dolls and the expensive copper moulds which were used to make them.
A platform video game simply titled Trolls, where you’d play a Troll going through the levels rescuing baby trolls, was released in 1993 for Amiga, DOS, and the Commodore 64. Other games were released for the Nintendo called Trolls on Treasure Island and The Trolls in Crazyland, and for the Super Nintendo, called Super Troll Islands.
The Trolls movie featured a lot of music, and the song “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” was nominated for multiple awards, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and won a Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Visual Media.