He was part of yesterday's yard sale haul. He's about 2 1/2" tall, not counting his hair.
He has that classic troll face,doesn't he?
He's a Wishnik troll. Wishnik,by Uneeda, was one of the top brands making trolls when I was a kid in the 60's,along with Thomas Dam.
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| He has the Wishnik lucky horseshoes on his feet. |
Most old trolls are heavy. this guy is fairly light,so I almost thought he might not be old. He has real hair though,(Angora I think.),so he has to be.
Trolls as we know them were the creation of Thomas Dam,of Denmark. In 1959,needing a Christmas gift for his daughter, he carved her a troll. The other kids in town loved the troll. Eventually Dam began selling the trolls through his own company,Dam Things,as Good Luck trolls. The dolls became tremendously popular in Europe, and were introduced to the United States,where they were familiarly known as Dam Dolls, in the early 60's.The original dolls had real wool hair and glass eyes. They became one of the most successful toys of the 1960's.
Unfortunately for Thomas Dam,there was an error in his copyright,and competitors were able to make cheap imitations of his creation. The market was flooded with trolls.My sister and I had several trolls of varying brands and quality.
Although trolls never completely went away,they began to have a big resurgence in the U.S. in the late 1980's. Dam trolls began to be sold here under the Norfin name. The timing on the troll comeback was perfect. Emma was born in 1991, and her early childhood was full of trolls. At the time we lived in the downtown,in an apartment over a lawyer's office. When Emma and I got bored, we could go downstairs and out our door, directly across the street, to what Emma referred to as 'the troll store'. (She pronounced it 'trerrall'.) It was actually a drug store, but they carried a selection of Russ trolls. Emma had several small trolls, and one of her favourite dolls,before she got older and switched to Barbie and Stacie,was a 12" Troll baby named Pookie.
See you tomorrow for another doll I got this weekend.
I had a few of the doll size trolls and a few of the bigger plastic ones that wore cloth clothes.
ReplyDeleteI have some 60's versions of the big troll with clothes. I'll have to show them someday.
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