Trollz (partially found feature-length versions of DIC animated TV series; 2005)

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Trollz DVDs.png

The covers to "Best Friends for Life" and "Magic of the Five", the only nationally released feature-length releases of the series.

Status: Partially Found

Trollz was a short-lived animated television series produced by DIC Entertainment based on the Good Luck Trolls by Danish woodcutter Thomas Dam, which featured five magical trolls.

The series was formatted into nine-story arcs, each making up three episodes. While the episodic versions can be easily found anywhere, the feature-length versions, which were produced exclusively for DVD and contained extra wrap-around footage that the episodic versions did not feature, are very difficult to come across.

Background

On July 28, 2004, DIC announced a North American home video deal with Warner Home Video for the then-upcoming series[1], which was later expanded to a worldwide deal the following year, with the exception of the UK, France and Portugal.[2] The DVD releases of the show in the country would have the episodes reformatted into nine 70-minute films, with extra material added to connect the three episodes together.

The first two films - "Best Friends for Life" and "Magic of the Five", which made up the arcs of Episodes 1-3 ("Best Friends for Life", "Five Spells Trouble" and "First Day of School") and Episodes 4-6 (Onyx's Gem", "Topaz Posessed", and "The Big Test") were released on September 6, 2005, in North America, and later expanded internationally. A promo featured in the bonus features for both releases confirmed that the next two releases would be called "Hair Over Heels" and "You Glow Girls", which would make up the arcs of Episodes 7-9 ("Troll Fast, Troll Serious", "The Great Race", and "Into the Woods") and 10-12 ("The Dating Game", "Mirror Mirror", and "Ruby's Rules of Partying"), respectively, and would see a release in Spring 2006, however, the date came and went, with no such release occurring, with no confirmation coming from either Warner Home Video or DIC Entertainment for the cancellation, although it is likely to do with not just the poor sales of the DVDs, but the entire Trollz franchise as a whole globally, which would be one of the keys for their lawsuit with the DAM Company (the owners of the original Good Luck Trolls) in October 2007, who eventually counter-sued DIC.[3][4]

Following Warner Home Video's failure to release the other movies, NCircle Entertainment secured the North American home video rights to the property and reissued "Best Friends for Life" and "The Magic of the Five" on August 14, 2007.[5] In December, the cancelled "Hair Over Heels" DVD finally saw the light of day, with NCircle announcing they would release "You Glow Girls" and the unannounced "A-Hair A-Faire" (consisting of Episodes 13-15 - "Forever Amber", "Not-So-Good Old Days" and "Simply Simon") in June 2008, but they were delayed to an unknown date in 2009, before being cancelled outright. A TV.com forum member contacted NCircle in July 2008, with a representative of the company replying that the DVDs were delayed due to poor sales of the previous DVDs.[6]

The only time the feature-length versions were ever seen again was on Netflix within an unknown time frame, with all nine films being viewable, although they were eventually taken off. As mentioned above, all twenty-seven episodes can easily be found on streaming platforms and such, but these are just the original episodic versions.

Films

# Episode Title Status Notes
1 Best Friends for Life Found On DVD
2 Magic of the Five Found On DVD
3 Hair Over Heels Found On DVD
4 You Glow Girls Partially Found Dutch dub, missing in English
5 A-Hair-A-Faire Lost
6 Spellbound Lost
7 Boys Spell Trouble Lost
8 Fuzzy Logic Lost
9 Surfin' BFFL Lost

References