Troll doll
type of plastic doll with furry up-combed hair
A troll doll (Danish: Gjøltrold) is a type of plastic doll with furry up-combed hair depicting a troll, also known as a Dam doll after their creator Danish woodcutter Thomas Dam. The inspiration came from trolls in old Scandinavian folklore. The toys are also known as good luck trolls.
The dolls were first created in 1956 or earlier and were larger and made from a softer, more rubbery material than the smaller versions that became popular in 1959, before becoming one of the United States' biggest toy fads in the early 1960s. They became popular again during the 1970s through the 1990s and were copied by several manufacturers under different names. During the 1990s, several video games and a video show were created based on troll dolls.
In 2005, the Dam company licensed the brand to DIC Entertainment to modernize the brand by creating a cartoon under the name Trollz, but the show only lasted one season. The failed cartoon also led to a lawsuit after a counter-claim lawsuit.
In 2013, the brand was bought by DreamWorks Animation, with an animated feature film called Trolls being released in 2016, followed by two sequels, released in 2020 and 2023.
Toy history
Troll dolls were created by Danish fisherman and woodcutter Thomas Dam.
“Troll doll” enters the record as type of plastic doll with furry up-combed hair. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Troll, doll and type can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4992093. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1956, 1959, 2005 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Troll doll” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.