THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER 51
Added 2024-08-17 00:45:25 +0000 UTCAs a sort of last gasp of my childhood I got really into collecting Norfin Trolls. I was nine & still buying GI Joe figures but Garbage Pail Kids, MAD magazine, Monty Python & the Dr. Demento show had cracked open my world & pointed out that everything was worthy of ridicule. Somehow I mustered up the innocence to collect Trolls. Those are the wild haired, mongoloid faced Trolls that everyone knows. Their Danish name was Dam Trolls after their creator Thomas Dam & they were marketed to Americans as Norfin up until the late 80s. Me & my male friends treated them like dolls, making clothes, houses, cars & the like for them. None of us saw this as playing with dolls even though it absolutely was. I even got an old doll house for them to live in. I emphasized the ramshackle feeling of it, making it extra rough but it was still a doll house. Now, doing board games & miniatures & plotting an entry into the world of toys, it’s still a clear case of playing with dolls in worlds of make believe. Playing with these little worlds made simple, simulated, fun, is just part of what we do, it has nothing to do with gender or even age. If you have the attitude I have about lifelong learning, play is just part of learning, you learn about yourself, other people & even the person who made the thing you’re playing with in terms of what’s important for them, what do they emphasize, what do they diminish?
