Tooned In: The Little Troll Prince (1987)

Happy Saturday! We’re continuing on with Tis the Season for Toons, and this 1987 feature, which was one of the specials singled out by myself for its relative obscurity. Was this deserved, or was it a hidden gem?

We start out with opening credits that seem more like end credits, as they’re played against a background of scenes from the special. Switching over to the lineup of the show’s cast, a lineup of celebrities…and Sam from Diff’rent Strokes. But really, Danny Cooksey might be up there with Robbie Rist as far as being saved by voice acting. Lighthearted holiday scenes are interrupted by a thunderclap in Temu Mount Crumpet, then the mood whiplash is undone by more mood whiplash : a quiet log cabin with a dollhouse inside, where a garden gnome-like character is painting ornaments. A mouse looks like he is gesturing for food, and so the gnome tosses him a decoration and for a second I thought he wanted to feed it to him. But no, it just leads to the rodent and other animals helping to decorate.

The gnome then explains how much he loves Christmas, and it begins with the tree. “It’s here!” he exclaims. What? His Mystery Date? The Wells Fargo Wagon? No, it’s the tree indeed, being brought back by the humans who live in the cabin, and they avert the usual tropes in these sorts of cartoons, because here, the humans know the gnome exists. He gets the top tip of the tree for his own when it sticks through a hole in his dollhouse, and he pulls out a book with a cross on it, waving it around as if trying to exorcise demons from the treetop, but then his bird friend takes it to be their tree topper. Our protagonist provides exposition about how gnomes love Christmas, but trolls do not. And before this becomes the most random entry of “trolls” since that B-movie about the town of Nilbog, he adds that he should know because…he was once a troll. So I presume the story will be a flashback of his face turn, kinda like Fisto and Man-E-Faces’ debuts on Masters of the Universe…Filmation sure loved that. This is followed by a definition of “troll” which easily holds up today: creatures who live upside down, where “right is wrong, and good is bad.” Furthermore, to these trolls, Christmas is apparently scarier than Halloween. So that’s who panics when they see holiday decor come out earlier and earlier at Target. And before you find that Bible appearance earlier to be random, trolls are also said to have no word for love, and since God is love…that means TROLLS ARE THE DEVIL! And yes, this special was backed by the Lutheran Church. It is a minor surprise to see a show with religious themes turn up on MeTV Toons.

After all this, we are finally formally introduced: our gnome friend is Boo, the former Crown Prince of the Trolls. And here is his story.

By the way, Boo uses “Yep” in his narration as if he was an army of Jumpin’ Jeff Farmers. We now go back to the past to meet the Troll Royal Family: King Ulvik, a two-headed monster voiced by Jonathan Winters and Vincent Price. His queen is Sirena, played by Cloris Leachman who was obviously cast because of her demonic act of displacing Charlotte Rae on The Facts of Life. They are all commiserating on what a freak their son Boo is, and yet he’s the eldest so he’s next in line for the troll throne, just in time for the AOL Terms of Service to be a thing in a couple years. It’s not going to violate itself numerous times. They wonder if the “Sinister School” should be doing a better job making him evil, leading into our first musical number about how awful said School is. Notable for one troll singing Sid’s in-match promo at WrestleMania8 about doing unto others, etc. etc. They also refer to stretching someone until they turn green…ah, so the Sinister School is actually the Hart Dungeon? Makes all the family feuding make more sense. When Ulvik arrives to see his (their?) sons’ progress, he is horrified to see Boo half-heartedly recite all the Troll Bible passages, and then horrify everyone by daring to say “Thank you.” What follows is more or less Beavis and Butt-head’s imitation of Pantera’s Dad, as Ulvik expresses extreme disappointment and moreso when he notices Boo crying about it.

Next is basically the Peanuts’ Winter Fun scene from hell, during Sinister School recess. Boo’s brothers are with their classmates and they’re essentially planning to have him killed by sending him to “People Land.” No really, the K-word is used twice within this conversation. Yet the Justice League had to keep it clean. Actually, seeing loosened standards here just makes me want a second Super Powers Team season more. Anyway, one of the trolls noticed humans putting wreathed circles on their doors, and they assume this means the War On Christmas, er, War BY Christmas??

Breaking News: I just realized now that I’ve been doing this for almost a year now! As I started around the holidays then. Less than a month away from it being official.

The other trolls use this fear of humans to lure Boo into dangerous situations, they’re all “You’ll be a hero!” while Boo is all “But my dad will get mad and we’re not supposed to!” then Boo’s mind is all “Daddy Issues” which makes him agree to lead them down the mountain. Doing so in song, of course. A song that gives our third “kill” reference. To get to People Land, there’s a rope bridge, like the one Buzz Buzzard passes off as a toll bridge in Woody Woodpecker’s Bunco Busters, another cartoon I should tackle some day as it was a big favorite when I was younger. Woody SHOULD have gone right to the police, argue with me. There actually is a rope Boo must climb, and he falls into a snowbank which somehow leads the trolls to believe him dead. When this isn’t the case, they continue to follow, dodging animals who are giant by comparison, before finally seeing a person hanging one of those dreaded circles. Boo is goaded into investigating, and he sees a blond Princess Leia in her kitchen…

If it’s during a holiday special, you know that white powder isn’t just confectionary sugar.

She is making gingerbread men, and of course Boo mistakes this for cooking and eating trolls. Despite the live-saving information, the others instead tie him to a tree and leave him for dead as a trio of more humans approach. It is a lumberjack type man and his two children, the father is also voiced by Vincent Price; again, this probably shoots my royalties theory about a 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo Embargo to hell. And one of the kids is a girl who also has a Leia hairdo, and it’s giving me PTSD memories of Young Leia from Obi-Wan. She declares the tree, Boo effigy and all, to be perfect, and now I’m flashing back to The Christmas Raccoons, and indeed here too does a song break out about how much they love the tree. The dad’s Bing Crosby “Boom-boom” scats make me think they’re about to cover Santa Baby. Well, it ends with them agreeing they’re in love with Christmas Day, so go figure. Of note is that they have the Bible type ornament seen earlier. While decorating the tree, the cat-eyed little girls, Kristy and Sonya, discover Boo and figure he can’t be a troll due to a lack of head and of length…

…Ahem, that’s nose and tail length. Boo asks if little girls are people, and Kristy is all, don’t be mansplaining us. The humans want to know more about him, but he wants to know just as much about them, like what that song was. To be fair, I was asking the same thing. They say that it is a Christmas song, leading to The Talk. And indeed, Sonya and Kristy tell the Christmas story, only it’s THE Christmas story. They do the Linus Van Pelt thing, and Boo’s questioning of the meaning of, like, every English word, further leads him to admit he doesn’t know what love is, and he wants them to show him. This discussion turns to whether or not God can love trolls, and we receive the answer…in song. Or more like, a dueling song where the girls insist that God loves everything, even evil trolls, while Boo lists all the bad things trolls do. It includes tying you in thorns, but Christ did forgive something involving that part. At any rate, the song and dance gives Boo a new feeling…

No the feeling of love and the spirit of Christmas makes him feel good. And unlike Skeletor, Boo likes to feel good and he asks to look at the Bible, but the girls give him the ornament version. As he’s being enlightened, the room shakes and Boo warns, “He’s coming!” He sure picked up on that love thing quickly. No actually, he is referring to Malfred, the king’s herald, and Boo leaves to lead him away. Malfred arrives and it is an actually scary monster who freezes him and takes him back to some kind of prison. He is put on trial by the trolls, who claim that Boo did all the things they tried to do to him. Under troll law, wouldn’t that make him in the right? Ah, but like so many other examples, it’s only bad when it’s happening to you. With the added kicker that Boo did all these in support of the humans! They bring him up to recite the Troll Bible passages, but instead, he speaks the Holy Bible verses, and while doing so he loses his troll features. The others call blasphemy and want him hung and stoned, and is all this starting to sound a little familiar? And in fact to hammer the allegory home like it was Superman being killed by Doomsday and returning next movie, Ulvik disowns Boo and just says to do with him as the rest would. A cloud of violence dust erupts as the other trolls gang up on Boo, but he escapes before anything “Passion” can result. As such, that isn’t very self-sacrificial, is it? The trolls give chase even though Ulvik at this point could care less. Meanwhile, Boo laments his place in the universe in song, talking about his corner of the sky, not being a girl not yet a woman, or something like that. The nearby woodland creatures scare the mob off, and Boo is discovered by…well, just look:

Apparently David the Gnome heard what Chip and Dale tried to do over on the Yogi special, and he too wants to escape into Hanna-Barbera Land. He had to trade ‘70s sitcom father voices though; instead of Howard Cunningham, he’s a father of a different sort: Father Mulcahy from M*A*S*H. He and his wife take him in, and there, Boo learns that gnomes apparently watch over people’s farms. Of course he picks Kristy and Sonya’s farm, and David allows it. And that’s it. No climactic battle with the trolls, no more Malfred (really, he had the coolest design and they only use him for like five seconds!), no King and Queen admitting they were wrong, nothing. Just Boo back in the present reiterating the moral of the story. Only conflict is him kicking the mice out of his bed. We close out with the girls’ song about God and evil trolls.

Oh boy. Well, I am not one to talk down anyone’s beliefs, certainly not my own, but there is a reason why Davey and Goliath were spoofed numerous times. This special embodies those same qualities.