Troll Dolls
It's from 1959, before you were born.
- Maker
- Thomas Dam / various
- Type
- Collectible dolls
- Debuted
- 1959
- Note
- Started as a Danish woodcutter's gift
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About
As of 2026, it's 67 years old.
Troll dolls were carved into existence in 1959 by Danish woodcutter Thomas Dam, who couldn't afford a Christmas present for his daughter and whittled her a troll instead. Other kids wanted one, and the chubby, wild-haired creatures with the upturned faces became an international craze.
Their signature feature — that vertical shock of brightly colored, eminently strokable hair — made them irresistible to fidget with, and they rode multiple waves of popularity, eventually getting a whole DreamWorks movie franchise decades later.
Goofy, fuzzy-haired, and improbably enduring, troll dolls are the toys a broke Danish dad carved by hand that somehow never stopped coming back.
