STONES of PHILLY

Dreamworks’ all-singing, all-dancing trolls are back in a holiday special, which finds Poppy, Branch, and friends on a mission to create a new day of celebration for the Bergens. When the Cater-bus falls into a wormhole,there’s a lovely easter egg to the original Troll toys that these animated characters are based on. Biggie, Branch, and Poppy all turn into little plastic trolls, like the troll toys that were so popular in the 1960s. Also Read- Troll Names

And Guy Diamond turns into a little plastic troll covered in glitter, which is funny because the character of Guy Diamond, who’s naked except for glitter, was created as a tribute to the original troll dolls which often didn’t wear any clothes. As for Cooper, he turns into a giraffe troll toy just like the original set of animal trolls that were the inspiration for the design of his character in the movie! Later in the special, there’s another shout-out to the original troll toys when Poppy and Branch sing a song suggesting a whole range of holidays the Bergens might like to celebrate. 

Among those holidays is Good Luck Troll Day which involves putting a gem in your belly button. This is a little tribute to Thomas Dam, the Danish creator of the original troll dolls, who named his toys Good Luck Trolls, and it’s also a hat-tip to the 1990s toys called Treasure Trolls which had a little jewel in their tummy button which you could make a wish on. When the Caterbus crash-lands in front of King Gristle’s castle, the next thing we see is loads of butterflies fluttering away. Also Read- Demon Names

And those butterflies are the same colours as the Caterpillar that took Poppy and her friends to Bergentown, which is a nice touch because, in real life, caterpillars do transform into butterflies. And, in case you missed that, another Caterpillarexplodes into butterflies during the Troll-A-Bration. By the way, something similar happened in the first Trolls movie when the DJ Stage Bug burst into a mass of butterflies while Poppy was giving out invitations to the Trolls party. 

There’s lots of cool little details on the Caterbus Express. For example, if you look at Cloud Guy, you’ll notice he’s wearing a blue driver cap which has a cloud on it that’s the same shape as he is. And the controls on the bus’s dashboard are similar to the bug defibrillators that Branch used to bring Poppy back to life after she was attacked by spiders in the first movie. The Holiday special also has a few little reminders from the Trolls movie of King Gristle’s first date with Bridget, aka Lady Glitter Sparkles. 

First of all, there’s a pepperoni pizza lying around the throne room. And, like their first date, which they spent at Captain Stark funkles Roller Rink, they also end up skating in Trolls Holiday, though this time, as it’s winter, they go ice rather than roller-skating. Unlike the Troll Tree in the movie, if you look closely at the Troll Tree in the Holiday Special, you can see that it’s shaped like a classic troll’s hair, just like in Poppy’s Holiday presentation to Bridget and Gristle. 

And speaking of hair, the top of Bridget’sthrone in the Bergen castle has a similar shape to the hairstyle she had as Lady Glitter Sparkles. To sell their various holiday ideas to Bridget and Gristle, Poppy and Branch dress up in crazy costumes and perform a song-and-dance routine. This sequence is a hat-tip to Branch’s voice actor Justin Timberlake and his many Saturday Night Live skits playing a guy who sells every thing from vegan food to wrapping paper while singing and dancing in crazy outfits. 

There was actually also a nod to Timberlake’sSNL sketches in the Trolls feature film when Poppy did a song and dance dressed up in a basket costume, wearing white gloves. The only time Biggie’s pet worm, Mr Dinkles,speaks in the feature film is when they discover Creek is alive, and instead of reacting with his usual squeaky-voiced ‘mew’ sound, he says, ‘Oh, snap’, in a deep voice. In that movie, Mr Dinkles was voiced by the film’s director Walt Dohrn, who also voices Cloud Guy, but because Mr Dinkles has a bigger role in the Holiday special, he’s now voiced by prolific voice actor Kevin Michael Richardson. By the way, in the final scene the words ‘Happy holidays to all, and to all, a good night’ are a spin on the last line of the popular poem, ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’, which is also known by its famous first line, ‘Twasthe night before Christmas.’