Laurel & Hardy: BABES IN TOYLAND

Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee live in the cheerful Toyland in a house-sized shoe with the kindhearted old Mother Peep, whose daughter is the charming Bo Peep. The wealthy but despicable Silas Barnaby wants to marry Bo Peep, but she is already engaged to the sweet Tom-Tom, and Barnaby pressures Mother Peep with a mortgage. Ollie boastfully promises Mother Peep that he will obtain money from his boss, the Toymaker, but on that very same day Stannie and Ollie lose their jobs because, instead of making 600 toy soldiers one foot tall for Santa Claus, they build 100 soldiers six feet tall. The bumbling attempts by Stannie and Ollie to steal Barnaby’s promissory note lead to their banishment into Bogeyland, the land of the black men…

BABES IN TOYLAND (also known as March of the Wooden Soldiers) is an adaptation of the 1903 operetta Babes in Toyland by Victor Herbert, which has been adapted several more times for film and television. The wooden soldiers were made of lead and about 30 cm tall. Special effects director Roy Seawright created effects using stop-motion techniques. Many of the figures in Toyland come from well-known poems, nursery rhymes, and stories from the English-speaking world.