How the inventor of the troll doll missed out on a fortune

Within the early Sixties, America was invaded by trolls.

Outfitted with goofy grins, beady eyes, and wild tufts of hair, the pudgy little creatures shortly grew to become one of many bestselling toys of the last decade, rivaling even Barbie herself. Some 38k trolls have been bought each day — about one each two seconds — earlier than the fad pale away.

Three many years later, a second troll hysteria broke out.

By the mid-’90s, trolls could possibly be present in each form, dimension, and shade. There have been bejeweled-belly-button trolls, pencil-topper trolls, buff trolls, two-headed trolls, ballerina trolls, priest trolls. For collectors, the toy’s unconventional aesthetic was a promoting level.

“[Trolls] present that the actual world isn’t stuffed with perfection,” one salesman opined in a 1992 interview. “You don’t need to be a film star and a magnificence to be liked. It comes from inside the guts. It’s about somebody who must be liked.”

However one particular person didn’t really feel the love: the person who first designed and manufactured the troll doll in Denmark. 

Whereas the toy raked in an estimated $4.5B in gross sales through the years, its inventor solely collected a sliver of the proceeds.

The story of his creation is a case examine within the cutthroat world of toy gross sales, the place a tiny misstep will be capitalized on by real-life enterprise trolls.

The invention of the troll doll

Born in 1915 within the small village of Gjøel, Denmark, Thomas Dam was an inventive baby.

The son of an impoverished fisherman, he spent his youth whittling wooden and, like most youngsters on the town, telling tall tales about evil trolls that have been mentioned to lurk within the mountains.

Thomas Dam (proper) along with his spouse and daughter within the late Nineteen Fifties (Dam household, by way of Classictroll.com / bySommer ApS)

By the Forties, Dam was married with two youngsters and incomes a modest residing as a baker. When the native flour manufacturing unit shut down on the onset of World Conflict II, he fell on exhausting instances.

Unable to purchase his daughter a present for her birthday, Dam carved her a bit of troll figurine out of wooden.

“He modeled its ugly face after a neighborhood butcher,” his son, Neils, later told The New York Occasions. “My father owed this man cash, and this was his revenge.”

The troll was a success with different youngsters within the city and Dam quickly discovered a method to assist his household by promoting his collectible figurines door to door — first in Gjøl, then within the close by metropolis of Aalborg. His handiwork led to commissions designing common storefront troll shows exterior of Denmark.

Demand grew a lot for his trolls that Dam arrange a workshop in his shed and began producing them full time, with an upgraded course of:

• He stopped carving them individually and made ceramic molds, which he used to create rubber casts.
• He stuffed the rubber our bodies with wooden shavings, used sheepskin for the hair, and dressed the trolls in felt clothes.
• He added strawberry extract to the rubber to present the trolls a particular scent.

Dam spent months rigorously refining the face of his troll, ensuring it had simply the correct amount of liveliness: “I might make one, it wouldn’t be fairly proper, and I might crush it,” he later informed The Omaha World-Herald.

Prime: Dam in his workshop; Backside: Dam at residence with a few of his earliest trolls (Dam household, by way of Classictroll.com / bySommer ApS)

Dam integrated an organization referred to as Dam Issues and formally dubbed his creation Goodluck Trolls.

By 1959, gross sales of Goodluck Trolls topped 10k items monthly in Denmark alone — and Dam expanded once more. With the monetary assist of a enterprise companion, he opened a troll manufacturing unit in Gjøl, switched from rubber to PVC, and set his sights on bigger markets.

The Sixties troll craze

In 1961, Dam started exporting his trolls to the US.

Partly buoyed by a swelling countercultural motion, the bizarre, mystical toys virtually instantly struck a chord with America’s youth.

Considered one of Dam’s first contacts within the US market was Inge Dykins, an enterprising girl who got here throughout a troll on the residence of a Swedish good friend and noticed potential. She imported trolls from Dam — first a take a look at of 90, then 125k extra — and shortly bought them at a revenue.

By 1963, she had bought and bought 1m+ of the trolls and had a workers of 20 salesmen who peddled them at showrooms and toy festivals.

An commercial for trolls — “America’s finest promoting toy” — within the Chicago Tribune in 1963 (by way of newspapers.com)

Dam granted a Florida firm, Royalty Design, an unique license to fabricate his trolls within the US, eliminating the necessity for imports, and gross sales quickly hit $2m per 12 months (~$16.6m in the present day).

By 1964, gross sales have been booming a lot that Dam Issues reportedly depleted Iceland’s total sheepskin harvest to make the trolls’ hair, inflicting the value of hides to go up a whole greenback.

The troll doll grew to become a covetable good-luck appeal — one that “unseated horseshoes, rabbits’ toes, and 4 leaf clovers.”

Tales abounded concerning the fortune that got here from proudly owning one:

• A outstanding St. Louis lawyer claimed that his troll was accountable for tripling his enterprise.
• A highschool swim workforce in Florida reported successful 10 straight meets after adopting a troll as its mascot.
• Betty Miller, the primary feminine pilot to traverse the Pacific Ocean solo, made the journey with a troll by her facet for luck. Upon her return, she took the toy together with her to the White Home to satisfy President John F. Kennedy.

Betty Miller, the primary girl to traverse the Pacific Ocean solo, together with her troll doll on the White Home in early 1963 (Abbie Rowe / JFK Library)

However behind the scenes, Dam Issues wasn’t as fortunate.

On the top of the craze, swarms of cheaply produced imitators popped up, with names like Fauni Trolls and Fortunate Shnooks. Many of those copycat trolls have been so related in look to Dam’s design that younger troll fans usually didn’t even know what they have been shopping for.

Dam’s firm, nonetheless based mostly in Denmark, had filed for a US design copyright again in 1961. And in 1965, it took action in court in opposition to an organization that it claimed was infringing on its trolls with out correct license.

It fully backfired.

The courtroom discovered that Dam Issues had failed to incorporate a copyright mark on tons of of hundreds of trolls it bought. Moreover, the copyright discover later molded into the left foot of the trolls — “© 1961 190918 Denmark” — was invalid, because it didn’t explicitly title Dam’s firm.

Briefly, Dam and his colleagues, who weren’t well-versed within the intricacies of worldwide commerce, had bungled the safety course of.

Trolls, it was dominated, have been within the public area.

Because of this, dozens of different counterfeit trolls popped up, virtually totally wiping out Dam’s market share. Shortly thereafter, Dam ceased manufacturing within the US and took his enterprise again to Denmark.

Dam’s daughter, Laja, with a few of her father’s creations within the Sixties (Femina Ladies’s Journal)

By the late ’60s, troll mania had tapered off virtually totally.

“Shedding the copyright had a crippling impression on the enterprise,” Dam Issues’ future CEO, Calle Østergaard, mentioned years later. “Thomas grew to become very disillusioned and misplaced a number of religion in his capacity to handle a world model. He was an artist, not a businessman.”

The troll craze, half II: Nineties

In 1982, an American entrepreneur named Steven Stark was touring overseas and noticed a troll doll at an airport in Copenhagen.

Although the marketplace for trolls had been dormant for greater than a decade, Stark noticed potential for a rebirth. So, he contacted Dam and labored out a US distribution settlement below the title Norfin.

His timing was excellent: Lots of the similar individuals who had performed with trolls in the course of the first wave now had youngsters of their very own.

The trolls that reemerged within the early ’90s have been a far cry from their modest ancestors. They got here in limitless styles of hair colours, facial expressions, and outfits. A thriving merchandise business emerged, with troll T-shirts, troll jewellery, troll video games, troll stickers, and troll backpacks.

Information clippings sound the troll alarm bells (varied newspapers, 1992; The Hustle)

The ‘90s troll craze wasn’t restricted to youngsters:

• There have been self-proclaimed “trollaholics” who went on “troll treks” at toy shops, amassed collections of 4k+ trolls, and had enterprise playing cards that learn, “I be troll’n.”
• In buying and selling teams like “Troll Month-to-month Journal,” grownup followers swapped trolls and debated the nuances of hair fibers.
•  A retired psychiatric nurse opened a troll museum, full with 8,130 troll dolls, in Ohio.

In 1991, troll dolls have been named the Toy of the Yr by the Toy Business Affiliation, and have been the second most-promoted toy on TV after the Tremendous Soaker.

Gross sales among the many prime three producers swelled to $700m per 12 months ($1.3B in the present day).

Sherry Groom poses in entrance of part of her assortment on the Troll Gap Museum in Alliance, Ohio (Troll Gap Museum Fb web page)

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However as soon as once more, Dam’s firm didn’t reap the majority of the rewards.

Counterfeits from greater than 15 corporations flooded the market. Among the many extra outstanding copycats was Russell Berrie.

In the course of the ’60s, Berrie had bought trolls as a consultant of Dam Issues’ official US licensee, Royalty Design. However after Royalty went bankrupt, he began to use Dam Issues’ authentic molds to fabricate trolls below his personal “Russ Trolls” model title. He despatched quite a few Dam Issues merchandise to China to be replicated and made a fortune promoting them.

On the peak of the troll wave in 1992, Berrie bought $150m value of trolls, up from $200k simply 4 years earlier

Berrie was dubbed “King of Trolls” by the press. His wedding ceremony, which was covered by Newsweek on the time, featured a cake topped by bride and groom trolls. The get together favors? Extra trolls.

One other agency, Ace Novelty, bought tens of millions of Treasure Trolls with rhinestone stomach buttons and inked greater than 50 licensing offers.

“Let me put it this manner,” an govt on the firm told a newspaper on the time: “$20m can be thought-about glorious for the primary 12 months of a toy. Our 1992 projection is $125m domestically.”

A wide range of Russ Trolls from the Nineties (eBay)

Thomas Dam, the creator of troll dolls, wasn’t round to see any of this: He died from most cancers in 1989, simply earlier than the second troll rush.

His successors did their finest to carve out a bit of the market. However by 1994, troll gross sales had already sharply declined. Worse but, a fireplace at Dam’s Gjøl manufacturing unit destroyed priceless authentic molds and worn out a big chunk of stock.

For a number of years, Dam Issues teetered near chapter. Then, the corporate lastly caught a break.

The newly enacted Uruguay Round Agreements Act permitted the restoration of copyrights on overseas works that had gone into the general public area because of US compliance points.

In 1996, after a decades-long combat, Dam Issues lastly had its US copyright reinstated. It proceeded to file infringement suits, forcing unlicensed trolls to withdraw from the market.

Armed with a copyright, the corporate then sought to make up for misplaced time.

The troll retires in Hollywood

Early makes an attempt to monetize trolls within the 2000s failed miserably.

An organization referred to as DiC purchased a license from Dam Issues and launched Trollz — a line of “modernized” trolls in “midriff-revealing shorts and tops.” The enterprise was a $10m flop and contributed to DiC going out of enterprise.  

In 2012, Dam’s creation lastly struck it massive, inking a movement image take care of DreamWorks.

“Trolls,” starring Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick, was launched in 2016 and grossed $346m worldwide. Deadline placed the overall worth of the movie’s merchandise, licensing, and ancillary troll merchandise at $700m.

On the coattails of this success, Dam Issues sold the IP of its Trolls model to DreamWorks Animation for an undisclosed sum, retaining solely the correct to proceed producing trolls in Denmark.

Thomas Dam in his later years (Dam household, by way of Classictroll.com / bySommer ApS) 

For Thomas Dam’s heirs, it was a storybook ending to a tumultuous, 60-year journey.

What began as a labor of affection in a Danish baker’s potato shed grew to become a world phenomenon value billions of {dollars}. It sparked toy wars, greed, and litigation.

However trolls additionally introduced pleasure to tens of millions of individuals world wide. And for some aficionados, that pleasure will transcend life itself.

“I’m going to play with my trolls endlessly,” a younger collector with 22 trolls told a newspaper reporter in 1992. “And after I die, they’ll die. Then they’ll develop into troll angels and I can play with them in heaven.”