Lots of people got wishing trolls. It was kind of a fad. Who wouldn't want a cute yet creepy hunk of plastic that could grant wishes? You'd be stupid not to have a wishing troll. You could finally beat the stock market or go back in time and beat up John Wilkes Boothe in the parking lot, just as he was entering Forbes Theater to give an intermission no one would forget, certainly not Mrs. Lincoln. I'm not saying troll dolls permit time travel but the packaging didn't say a lot of things about the troll's capabilities. Especially, how to have it grant wishes.
Question: Do you rub the jewel bellybutton and pose your request, in "I wish" form analogous to a Jeopardy question that must be posited as a question? Is this plastic genie clever enough to pick up on context alone that what is said is probably a wish and not a statement? So grant it. The package, if I remember correctly, simply stated that they were wishing trolls. They did not specify how these trolls came by these amazing powers or how I could use them for my own personal gain. Just that a personal gain was possible. The package simply told us they were wishing trolls without proper advice on how to get it. In the movie "Big" all Tom Hanks had to do was feed The Great Zoltar a quarter and wish he was big. Aladdin had to rub a lamp and later ring. How exactly do you make a wishing troll budge?
I have no proof for this but my guess is that the first internet forums, back when using the internet was evidence that you were in college cause who else but them and military-types would bother with the place, were probably people talking about The Simpson's (we're talking about Simpson's during its prime) and how to use a wishing troll? Someone somewhere in the world must have figured this out. Alas, I heard the answer to the question, and only a year later would I found it was bull. An acquaintance in school told me the secret of the wishing troll that he had heard from his brother, and he decided to impart this sage wisdom on me. I thought he did this because he thought I was cool. It turned out that I was mistaken. "It's a little complicated but here's what you do. First you have to do it on Halloween."
"Because Halloween's when you have to do it."
"Then what?"
"You make your wish and then you bury it."
"Bury it? You mean like in the ground."
"Yeah you bury it. Then you come back a year later..."
"...Halloween...next year."
"Yeah."
"What then?"
"You dig it up."
"Dig it up?"
"Yeah you dig it up and you wash it and you'll know your wish was granted because the jewel will be a different color. So if it was red, it'll be blue."
"So I bury the troll doll on Halloween and dig it up the next Halloween."
"Yep."
"And I can wish for anything?"
"Yep."A few days later I did what my school-chum recommended. I buried the wishing troll after making my wish in the prescribed manner. a year later I dug it up in the backyard. It had been in the ground for a year and looked it. After I washed it, I noticed something that greatly annoyed me. The bellybutton jewel was the exact same color it was last year. Nothing was changed. No wish was granted. The kid totally lied to me and worst of all I believed him. I think if this classmate had known that I actually took his advice, followed it and waited a year to discover that it was bull. If I had him that I followed his stupid advicehe would probably have laughed his off as he should. However, in my defense, it made sense at the time that if took a year for a wish to come true and the wish itself needed to be done in a pseudo-elaborate fashion it made perfect sense to me that the makers of wishing trolls wouldn’t advertise that fact. Make a wish and one year later it’ll come true. Not an easy sell. Monkey’s paws, for example are evil in their granting wishes but one thing you can say about is that it’s punctual. With a monkey’s paw or a genie’s lamp there’s no deferring of a wish. No waiting a year. just a couple of seconds. Instant wish. “I wish for this” Done. However a wish, like any product, the faster it’s developed and produced the probability of their being a major mistake is greater. If, for example, a movie is rushed into production, with a script whipped up very hastily, the chances of major plot holes and other idiosyncrasy’s are greater.
Perhaps the same principle can be found with Monkey’s Paws. It’s not that the monkey’s paw, out of pure malice, produce bad wishes. The problem is that monkey’s paw’s produces wishes too quickly. Had it been giving proper time, like a couple of months or years, to properly work the logistics of the wish out, the wishes would probably turn out better. Monkey's paws aren't evil, if my wishing troll logic held up - which it doesn't - it's slightly incompetent due to the hasty nature of its wish fulfilling. However, on that particular Halloween two major things happened. River Phoenix died and I learned the hard way that wishing trolls don't grant wishes.
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