Stop the Presses

"Stop the Presses" is the first segment of the 6th episode of the fifth season of Trolls: TrollsTopia, and the 74th overall episode in the series. It premiered in December 9, 2021.
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Poppy tries to keep one of her biggest secrets from being discovered by TrollsTopia's best news reporter, Laguna Tidepool.
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Branch addresses the reporters at the local printing press and says that by starting a project they will be printing TrollsTopia's first scrapbook newspaper: The Fabloid. Poppy then explains the point of the paper is to bring to light Trolls who have been doing fabulous deeds so that they can be properly acknowledged by others when they are too humble to accept thanks. They get in a banter wherein Poppy and the reporters thank each other for calling each other "humble" while showing signs of being humble until Branch snaps and tells them they are all humble, leading to them to feel humbled by Branch's comment.
Branch starts the press, and no sooner as it started Laguna rushes in to add a new story. Minuet has been giving out cookies while backs are turned while Poppy is reading "Minuet places a cookie in Poppy's hand". Poppy comes up with a really long title for the front page story. Branch tries to tell her she can't do it, but it goes to print with half the title cut off. Tiny Diamond is seen handing out the papers, and Cooper thanks Minuet as she puts a cookie in his hand.
The first issue is a big success thanks to Laguna, and Poppy thanks her. She tells them they should wait for the next story about the TrollsTopia Wishing Well.
At the Wishing Well, Laguna explains its purpose; Trolls toss a cupcake in and make a wish, and sometimes the wish comes true. Laguna proposes that the well may not be magic at all, and that a Troll may be hiding inside who is granting those wishes. She feels that Trolls would need recognition for their work, so she asks for proof of magic. Poppy and Branch point to Synth controlling water, King Peppy being high-5'ed by Lownote who pops out of a wormhole, and Val breaking a guitar as an announcer states "Magic is real", complete with words forming above her. Laguna sees her point but in the case of the well, she is certain a Troll is behind it. When she walks off, Branch and Poppy panic, realizing that Laguna knows the secret of the well.
Branch talks to Poppy in his bunker, stating that it is only a matter of time before Laguna finds out the truth since she's a great reporter. Poppy doesn't want to end the well, as she loves the expression on Troll's faces when their wishes are granted as it fills them with the hope that anything is possible. Branch supports keeping the well, despite it being clear that he is in it for the cupcakes (while claiming otherwise), just as Tiny Diamond drops one in and wishes for a bike. He asks how to stop Laguna, Poppy decides to keep her busy - right after they get Tiny a new bike.
Poppy and Branch tell Laguna to find out if the Chicken Bug came first or the egg. Laguna asks if they really want to resolve a issue that has plagued Troll kind for thousands of Years. The pair beg her and she agrees. After she is gone, Poppy believes no Troll could ever answer that question. Laguna comes back with the answer in 10 minutes, explaining she put it through a number of trials and examinations by examining genetics in 10 minutes, locate a number of scrolls of knowledge that had been locked away for generations, deciphering 3 ancient languages each more complex then the last, then submit her answer to the scientific community Rhythm & Blues and other Trolls for a strict peer review.
She didn't just write all that in 10 minutes - she did a draft of the Wishing Well article, she explains she has yet to find the Troll behind the Well. Poppy explains that the Fabloid has standards and that they need hard facts, the Wishing Well argument has none. With no eyewitnesses, the article cannot run. She admits she would never have brought the issue to her attention without a eye witness and walks away. She pops back in a moment to say she has found an eyewitness to the alarm of Poppy and Branch.
At the Well, Cooper explains his witness account. He came to wish for a new pie because she sat on his old pie. Cooper says when he looked down, he could barely see a Troll inside the well and they were listening to him. Branch catches Cooper out with Cooper's own shadow, Cooper swears its a mysterious Troll that keeps following him. Cooper walks off, Laguna realizes Cooper is an unreliable eyewitness and walks off.
At the Fabloid HQ, the pair walk in thinking Laguna is finally off the case and they find Laguna, being seconds away from admitting they were behind the Well in the process. Laguna has renamed the Fabloid into the "Laguna Gazette", to get around the Fabloid's standards of running a story she decided to publish her own paper. She sends Tiny off with the papers and Tiny gloats about doing this in record times on his new bike. Poppy and Branch rush off to stop him.
During the song montage, the pair grab all the papers, and by the end of the song, they crash into each other, scattering the papers all around. Laguna confronts them for taking her paper. Laguna realizes the only reason they could want to stop her is to stop her from finding out the duo are behind the Well. Laguna decides to write a new story publicly announcing the duo's role in the Well and expose them for who they are - two very sweet Trolls.
The next morning, the paper reveals that Poppy and Branch are the Wishing Well Trolls, they are upset about the world seem less whimsical. As Poppy reads further, Poppy finds out that its actually an apology to the pair as she realizes exposing them would ruin a lot of children's childhood wonder. Laguna ran the article - but only printed a single copy that Poppy now holds in her hand and once she stops reading it out loud she will destroy the copy.
Laguna destroys the paper, explaining she only wants Trolls to be recognized for their good deeds and the paper has now. Her next story is that RnB will have opening a Bed and Breakfast, they ask if she is able to cover it - she is. Poppy calls her the Best reporter and Laguna says that the duo are the best - once again a humble comment starts up, Branch walks away frustrated with their endless compliments to each other.
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;Pop Trolls
*Amanda Leighton as Queen Poppy
*Skylar Astin as Branch
*Kenan Thompson as Tiny Diamond
*David Kaye as King Peppy (non-speaking)
;Rock Trolls
*Lauren Mayhew as Val Thundershock (non-speaking)
;Classical Trolls
*Jeanine Mason as Minuet Sonata
;Funk Trolls
*Ron Funches as Cooper
*Michael-Leon Wooley as Lownote Jones (non-speaking)
*Kat Graham as Rhythm & Blues (non-speaking)
;Techno Trolls
*Anita Kalathara as Laguna Tidepool
*Vladimir Caamaño as Synth
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*"Stop The Presses"
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*The title is a reference to the term "Stop the presses". This term dates back to when newspapers were printed via printing plates, which made newspaper production slow. Since big news were most commonly spread via the newspapers, if a big story came out during the printing process it was a big deal to have to halt production of the newspaper and re-print the papers, as it took a long time to re-set the printing press machinery, ink, etc. as it costs time and money to have to re-print the papers. If the story was big enough, the risk was worth it as more papers would be sold that day.
*The episode is about the intrusion of the media and how far it can go before it has gone too far. It is also about the media having standards, Laguna's search for proof alone had issues with no facts behind the story to even consider it printed. Without facts and eyewitnesses, the account would be false.
*A Wishing Well is a traditional practice of throwing copper coins into a watering well in the hope a wish could come true. Its origins aren't well-known and it has a unclear history, with a number of different theories suggested.
*"What came first, the chicken or the egg" is a logical paradox. The parados is simple: For a chicken to be born, it must be hatched from an egg, but have an egg, you must first have a chicken to lay one.
**Science has answered this one; the egg came before the chicken. In terms of evolution, this is easy to resolve; somewhere in the past, there was two not-so-quite chickens, which laid an egg. Since the chicken was born from the egg, the egg was a "chicken-egg". However, the birds that laid the egg are not chickens, thus the "chicken" did not come before its egg, but rather an ancestor of the chicken came first, then the chicken egg, then the chicken was born.
**While this sounds simple enough, evolution itself is not so black and white as this, the way small tweaks are made in the gene pool means that at no point in time can you pin EXACTLY when a bird was and wasn't a chicken. The end result is indeed a chicken, but the animal it involved from was not, but the slow transition between the two flows smoothly from one generation to another to a point that it's impossible to pick the EXACT moment in individual was born that classified as "the first chicken". This is simply because evolution is not restricted to an individual, but individuals.
**Laguna submitted her work for peer review, however, if Laguna had indeed done this, based on the theory of Evolution the rest of the scientific community would have been able to object to her conclusion and the answer should be identical to the one currently considered. There are a few possibilities. First, the theory of Evolution may not yet have been discovered (there is a issue since Evolution is mentioned in "Branch Bum", plus genetics exist according to this episode and "Daylight Ravings Time"), or that the Troll's world is not heavily governed by Evolution for various reasons (such as magic).
*This is not the first time Trolls has had the "reveal the secret or not" story.
**In "The Giver", Poppy found out Branch does a gift run once a year, Poppy was left deciding to expose him as the Gifter and revealing he actually is a sweetheart or leave it be. She chooses to not expose him.
**In "Marshtato Fairy", Branch found out the Marshtato fairy was fake, and in a bid to stop Marshtato Mary claimed that she was her rival. Branch took humiliation over the idea of destroying children's childhoods, since he lost his own and realized no one should have to suffer such a thing.
*Similar to "R&B in R&D", the duo opening a Bed and Breakfast, also known as a "B&B" is a play on their names.
*"Magic is real" is a joke, but a similar joke was told in Episode when the declaration of "Time Travel is real!". 
*This is the last episode where a Techno Troll title card is used.
Category:Episodes
Category:Trolls: TrollsTopia episodes
Category:Techno Trolls Story Arc Episodes
Category:TT Season 5 episodes
Category:2D animation