Tiny Trolls

These are some of the smallest trolls made back during the troll craze of the 1960s. Sometimes vended through gumball machines, these are carded variations, measuring just under 1 inch tall.

 

 

Stuffed Troll Dolls

Two of my favorite trolls are these 11 inch dolls made by Scandia House in 1965. Unique and charming, with friendlier expressions than a lot of vintage trolls, these feature vinyl heads on cuddly stuffed bodies. Relatively hard to find, these two are made even more special by their provenance: they came from the collections of Debra Clark and Pat Peterson, authors of the two classic guides to vintage trolls, the Troll Identification and Price Guide and Collector's Guide to Trolls.

Caveman Trolls

Perhaps because of the concurrent popularity of the Flintstones cartoon, many trolls appeared in the 1960s dressed as cavemen. 

Here are a few from my collection.

 

These 3 inch Uneeda Wishniks model the two most commonly seen caveman fashions: 

the furry loincloth and the animal print wrap.

Here's a very unusual large troll, measuring 8 inches tall
and wearing his original outfit. Made by the 

Bijou Toy Company in 1963,
his name is molded into his foot: "Neanderthal Man."

He's really unique: no other trolls look quite like him!

Vintage Troll Carrying Cases

Most 1960s trolls were small, only about 3 inches tall (not counting their hair). Their size and variety made them ideal for collecting, which in turn necessitated the purchase of a carrying case, and there were many styles available. 

Below are two of my favorites, both made by the Ideal Toy Company. The first is the basic model, while the second is the much rarer deluxe version, complete with a little cave and waterfall inside. Cozy!

 

 

Another style is this carrying case made by Bunallan, cleverly called the Troll Troveling Bag. It's usually found with its cardboard clothes box missing, so this was a particularly happy discovery. It also came with its original owner's trolls, and I've kept them all together.

"Lucky Shnook" Monster Trolls

These odd trolls date to the 1960s, and were made by an unknown Hong Kong manufacturer capitalizing on the troll fad. Their scary heads have led to them being referred to as "monster" or "vampire" trolls, but the mint-in-package examples reveal their true identity: "Lucky Shnooks." Never would have guessed that one...

1960s Trolls & Houses

Toy trolls had a wide range of real estate available during their 1960s craze. Two of my favorite vintage troll abodes are the Stik-Shack, a Polynesian-inspired creation made by Ideal, and the rarely-found Troll Manor, reminiscent of a hobbit-hole, cozy and just a bit twee. 

Below, two lovely Scandia House girls wave from Troll Manor's front yard:

A tropically colored vintage Dam troll hangs out in front of the Stik Shack:

The Stik Shack opens into a beach hut, with wonderful images of jungle and surf visible through the downstairs "windows", and a fantastic "pad" upstairs:

1960s Troll Cave House

Besides the fantastic trolls, manufacturers during the 1960s craze made several wonderful troll abodes, little houses that often doubled as carrying cases. These homes were usually made of printed vinyl over cardboard or, less frequently, a particularly crispy and unfortunately fragile variety of plastic.

This posting showcases the most commonly found of the troll houses, often referred to as "the Troll Cave". While common, it is nonetheless spectacular: the outside looks like an intriguing, inviting cave mouth, while the inside depicts an uncommonly cozy cavern, complete with a carved stone hot tub, a roaring fire, and comfy chairs. The Dam trolls below look very happy living here, and I find myself wishing I could shrink down to their size so I could hang out in the cave, too...

 

Scandia House Troll

1960s Scandia House trolls are known for their "big hair" and color coordination, and this one is no exception. She wears her vintage coatdress that nicely complements her green spiral eyes.

Dam Troll

Although I have no interest in the cheap, China-made trolls of today, the original 1960s trolls made by Dam, Scandia House, and Uneeda captivate me. The early Dam trolls in particular are quite artistic, with an almost sculptural quality, and full of character.

This little 3 inch troll is one of my favorites. An early original Dam troll, it sports a remarkable crop of turquoise mohair in an "Albert Einstein" 'do. Just a fantastic troll!

Troll Weather

In my part of the world, March is the month when winter very slowly and reluctantly gives way to Spring. When I was in elementary school, I stumbled across a story set during this tempestuous season, called Troll Weather. Troll Weather became one of my most beloved books, and I still re-read it every year.

Written by distinguished children's author Elizabeth Coatsworth and delicately illustrated by the equally esteemed Ursula Arndt, it tells the story of a little girl named Selma who lives on the shores of a Norwegian fjord. One day Selma, sent on an errand by her mother, takes a basket of food to the Widow Paulsson, who lives high up in the mountains. The weather turns wild, as frequently happens in March, and the Widow Paulsson tells Selma stories of the trolls, who revel in such storms. Selma becomes a bit obsessed with trolls as the story unfolds, and anxiously asks her older sister, Sigrid, for information. One of my favorite passages describes Selma taking out the family's pine cone trolls who are on display in the space between the inner and outer windows of the kitchen:

"On the sill of one of the windows facing the road stood the pine cone trolls, with their wooden faces and their big wooden hands and feet and their long gray lichen-colored hair. Their kingdom lay between the inner and outer windows and each year it changed. Sometimes they peered from caves among piled-up stones; sometimes they were in a mossy forest of little pine trees. This year Sigrid had stood them on a mountain of cotton-batting snow. Selma ran to fetch their box from the back of the cupboard. First she carefully put away the cotton. Then she paused with the man troll in one hand and the woman in the other, their mouse tails hanging down. She didn't put them in their box at once. The woman troll was smaller than the man and had a cotton handkerchief tied over her coarse gray hair. But otherwise, they looked alike. Their eyes were little and their noses were long and their mouths were crooked. Selma stared at the little trolls and the trolls stared back at Selma. When Sigrid went by, Selma said in a whisper, 'Are they real, Sigrid? Are there real trolls?' 'There they are, right in your hands,' said Sigrid, laughing. 'They are as real as bread and butter.' But that wasn't what Selma meant. Whenever she asked about trolls, Sigrid wouldn't take her seriously. At last, sighing and wondering, she put the pine-cone trolls safely in their box until, in November, the cold and darkness of autumn should bring them back to their narrow kingdom between the windows."

For some reason, this beautifully written passage just captivated me as a child. Like Selma, I became obsessed with the idea of a little family of troll dolls, living in small spaces within our house. Perhaps they could move into the pigeonholes of the roll-top desk, I reasoned, or the little cupboard above the sink that was too high to be of much use. Unfortunately, I had missed the 1960s troll craze by several years, and it wasn't until recently that I began amassing my own troll collection. This month I'll highlight some of my favorites.

I'll start with these two homely specimens, of a similar variety to Selma's pine cone trolls. Made in Scandinavia from native wood, rabbit fur, and pine cones, they offer a tangible link to the story of Troll Weather. What makes them even more special, though, is that they came from the estate of Pat Peterson, who wrote one of the best books on vintage trolls, Collector's Guide to Trolls, published in 1995. They can be seen on page 72, looking a bit fresher than they do now!

Vintage Archer Space Men in Original Box

Yesterday my 1950s Archer Space Men in their original dime store box arrived (see my earlier, very excited post from the day I found them). They're in fantastic, factory mint condition.
Check out the pics:

 Top of the box. The "Archer" logo and spaceman pop up
to make a display.

 End of the box. It holds 2 dozen space men...

 

 ...and here they are! (Also 4 really cool robots.)

Here's a close-up of the space men. Several have lost their helmets, which are floating around loose in the box. Vintage Archer Space Men are frequently found with missing helmets. Design flaws caused ill fits, and the plastic used for the helmets tended to warp, crack, and discolor over time. These poor helmetless guys will likely suffer fatal embolisms when exposed to the vacuum pressure of space...

Dotty Teddy Bears

Just got another bear made by Peng Peng, teddy artist extraordinaire: Domino, this little 4 1/2 inch panda wearing her fab polka-dotted dress. Here she is with her new friend, my 1950s British Merrythought teddy who is also into dotty fashions.
I love the Merrythought's big nose: 

it gives her such a comical look.

Here's Domino doing a little spring cleaning 

(she's overly optimistic: we just got 6 inches of snow yesterday...).

Mattel's Blaze Horse

It's been the month for finding horsies: first two antique wooden rocking horses, then the fab 1950s Harry the Hairless Horse ride-on, and now this: Blaze, the talking, galloping horse made by Mattel in the early 1960s. 

At first glance, Blaze looks like just another variety of the ubiquitous spring horse (the kind most of us children of the 70's remember for their tendency to flip over during exuberant riding and pinch our fingers in their springs), but he's got a few features that take him to a whole new pedigreed level.
First off: no springs! Blaze is mounted instead on an "untippable", according to Mattel, tubular steel frame. Secondly, as you ride Blaze up and down, his legs move independently in a quite realistic horsey gallop. As if this wasn't enough, Blaze also talked, courtesy of Mattel's patented pull-string technology. He said several phrases, including "How about some hay?" He also whinnied and neighed.
Naturally, the price for all this innovation was steep: $48 (that's a lot for a kid's toy now, let alone back in 1961!). Consequently, no one I knew as a child had Blaze, and I'd never seen one in the horseflesh until last week, when I found this one.

Mine no longer talks, as is typical of most Blazes found today, but he gallops great. We haven't tested the "untippable" claim, but if I crash, I'll let you know. I've installed my Blaze next to my dining room table. Guests can now pull up a chair, or a horse, as they prefer.

Blaze was heavily marketed on TV, and his original ad is now considered a classic. Click the link below to watch it, courtesy of  TV Days: it's fantastic:

Mattel's Blaze Commercial

And here's a print ad for Blaze, in which he apparently helps capture an evil fire hydrant:

Harry the Hairless Horse

I found this adorable little rocking pony at the same time I discovered the antique wooden horse in the previous post. I have a very small car (a tiny Chevy Aveo hatchback), and the horses more than filled the back seat. As I drove down the expressway, little horsie faces peered out of each side window. 

It was also the day I found a huge double gumball vending machine on its original stand, and that was propped in the front passenger seat, with a bit sticking out the window. Visibility, needless to say, wasn't great...on the drive home, I kept envisioning a policeman making out the accident report: "driver decapitated by gumball machine and/or rocking horse." Fortunately we made it home safely, and a hernia later were all ensconced in my increasingly crowded living room. 

 

Made in the 1950s by Moulded Plastics Inc. of Maple Plain, Minnesota, this little guy is called Harry the Hairless Horse. Odd name, odd-looking horse! Perhaps he was marketed to allergy sufferers. He measures 30 inches long by 22 high, and his body is fibreglass while his legs and rockers are wood. He's so cute and portly!

Here's a close-up of his label:

And here's an original ad I found for him and some other products,
all proclaimed "Harmless Fun For Young and Old".
Can you imagine getting shot with the "Air Fire Thunder Gun" that
"Shoots Standard Table Tennis Balls"?! Ouch. Perhaps you could make a quick getaway on Harry the Hairless Horse...

Folk Art Rocking Horse

Found another old rocking horse: a small stable is taking shape in my living room! This one is not quite as old as my other one. He's probably from around the 1920s, and is American-made. He measures 37 inches wide by 30 inches tall, has a "galloping" movement, and is quite the colorful pinto pony. I need to replace his mane and tail, but that could take awhile, and I couldn't wait to show him:

Antique American Teddy Bear

Found this guy at a toy show last weekend: an early American teddy bear made around 1908. He's in need of a good cleaning and a little restoration (proper ear reattachment, paw pad patching) but his enchanting expression makes him worth it!

People have a tendency to classify all "cute" early American teddies as made by Ideal, and that's exactly how the seller labelled this one, but this bear has 2 very distinctive traits that help identify it: a wooly coat, as opposed to mohair, and chopped cork stuffing as opposed to wood shavings, straw, or excelsior. These features are seen in only two manufacturers that I'm aware of: Hahn & Amberg and the Miller Manufacturing Company, who made what they referred to as a "Hygienic Bear".  They are both much rarer than Ideals, so it's good to be aware when you're "on the hunt." At first, I thought this one was a Hahn, which was the firm primarily known for the use of cork stuffing,  but after comparing him to my other, confirmed Hahn & Amberg and finding a bit more info. on Miller, I'm reclassifying him as the latter.

Dick Tracy Tin Litho Car & Cap Gun

Character toys are an extremely popular subset of toy collecting. Competition for such toys is fierce, as many of them have cross-category appeal, for example, to collectors of comics or radio show premiums.

The famous cartoon detective Dick Tracy featured in a great tin-litho character toy made by the Marx Company in the late 1940s and early 1950s: the Dick Tracy Squad Car. It was offered in several sizes and varying degrees of deluxe-ness, from a simple palm-sized friction car to this 11 inch model with a wailing siren, working spotlight, and "gun sparks" created by a concealed flint. Mine is missing its spotlight and has a lot of play wear, but the lithography of Dick and his sidekicks is still bright and colorful.

I love the design of this toy. The characters are visible from all angles in the windows: head-on in the windshield, in profile on both sides of the car, and from the rear in the back window.

 

  

I found the Squad Car just a few years ago at an antique shop; my other Dick Tracy item has a much more interesting  provenance. I was home from college one summer, helping my mom with some gardening. All of a sudden there was a "clunk" as my shovel hit something metallic in the earth. I was an anthropology/museums major, with a special interest in archaelogy, and I began excitedly yelling, "hey, we found something! Could be a treasure!" And indeed it was: my mother unearthed this Dick Tracy cap gun, made by Hubley in the late 1940s, and said: "huh. I wondered where that went to. I missed it one day little Robbie and I played cops and robbers in the yard." So...this toy was buried in my grandmother's garden for several decades. It now resides in a place of honor in my toy collection (I didn't give it back to my mom. Finders keepers, you know...).

Big Box Full O' Archer Space Men

*THUD* That's the sound of me fainting to the floor after finding one of the toys of my dreams: not only are they my much obsessed over 1950s Archer Space Men (so named because they were made by Archer Plastics), they are 1950s Archer Space Men IN THEIR ORIGINAL DIMESTORE BOX! Wheeeeee!

Just a big box of joy, that's what this is...

Trade-In Barbie with Original Box

Here's something wonderful I just got (technically, though, she's a Christmas present, because she's been on layaway since then...)

By the mid 1960s, the Barbie doll, which had formerly been the height of couture, was now looking matronly and dated in her tailored "Jackie O" ensembles and pillbox hats. The Mod era had begun, and Barbie evolved along with it. In 1967, Mattel Toys offered a remarkable promotion: by sending in $1.50 and your old Barbie, you could get the new version, complete with "bendable legs", a  patented "twist n' turn waist", and "real eyelashes". Little girls unsentimentally dispatched their original Barbies in droves, and what they received is pictured below: the "NEW Barbie", with her original box. Mine is in minty, unplayed with condition: it appears her box took the worst of the wear over the past 40 years.

 

The new more poseable Barbie offers increased 
photo opportunities 

for the robots:

Vintage Norfin Troll

I love vintage toy trolls, but am partial to the earliest ones dating from the 1960s. This large 9 inch troll is a bit more recent (1977) but she represents a big moment in troll evolution: the creation of the Norfin model by Dam, the originator of the vinyl toy troll. Norfins were a huge departure stylistically from the first toy trolls, with cuter, more child-like faces and less rigidly posed, sometimes even jointed, bodies. Norfins are still being manufactured today, but they are now made in China of cheap plastic with brash, synthetic hair. This early Norfin was made in Denmark by the Dam Company of high quality European vinyl with a gorgeous mohair wig. She's still wearing her original felt tunic and hair bow, and is in practically unplayed with condition. Even though Norfins aren't quite my style, this was a special one, and a steal at only $6 from a toy show vendor last week.