Troll Doll Green

Photograph of troll doll with green hair and a purple shirt on a white background.

Troll dolls were originally created in 1959 by Danish fisherman and woodcutter Thomas Dam. Dam could not afford a Christmas gift for his young daughter Lila and carved the doll from his imagination. They became one of the United States' biggest toy fads in the early 1960s. They became fads again in brief periods from the 1970s through the 1990s and were copied by several manufacturers under different names. During the 1990s several video games and a video show based on troll dolls were created. In 2003 the Dam company restored their United States copyrights, stopping unlicensed production. In 2005 the brand was modernized under the name Trollz, but it failed in the marketplace.