Doll-A-Day 2023 #192: Original 1960's Trolls

   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.  

 

 I got the three clothed dolls at a flea market---oh my goodness! TEN YEARS AGO! You may have seen the post where I got them, for a dollar for the whole bag. I stuck them away and they have been in a box all this time. I never did anything with them, including clean them up. So, sorry for the state of them, especially the green haired lady.

  First we'll take a look at the lady in the pjs. At least, I think they're pjs. They're flannel, anyway.

She has the typical troll grin and some very blushy cheeks.

She has natural fiber hair. I suppose it's wool.

Like a lot of trolls, she has that weird lump on the back of her head. I'm not sure if maybe it's where they made some of them hang on something?

As I was taking the pictures I noticed she was wearing a necklace under her PJ top. I took a better look at it...

I think it's the necklace from Barbie's Enchanted Evening!

  Now on to the poor green haired lady. Her face is a mess, as David Bowie used to say.

I'm not sure if the white eyebrows and lips are original, or the work of her previous owner. The same goes for her felt dress and matching hair band.

I think she has wool hair too. Her 'necklace' is pearls stitched to her dress.

  Like the pajama girl, she has no markings.

Next is a blonde girl.

She looks a lot like the pajama girl.

But she actually has markings. She's a Uneeda Wishnik troll.

  

She has soft wool hair, and a felt dress.

  The tips of her blonde hair are black.

 

  The last kid is a ginger.

This one also has the lump on the back of it's head.

No markings either.

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.

Doll-A-Day 2017 #238;Shrunken Saturday:Wishnik Troll

  Today's Shrunken Saturday doll is this little guy.

 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.

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.