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Plot summary
In Toyland, a village of nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters, Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee share a shoe with Mother Peep, Bo-Peep and a crowd of children. Silas Barnaby intends to wed Bo-Peep and to take the shoe through foreclosure. Ollie offers their small savings to stave off the threat, not knowing that Stannie has spent the money on peewees. The pair then ask the Toymaker, their employer, for the mortgage funds. A mix-up over his order of wooden soldiers fills the shop with life-size figures, and the two lose their jobs. To keep Barnaby from the shoe, they turn to a burglary.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Babes in Toyland (1934)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The Victor Herbert estate dictated that neither "Victor Herbert" nor "Babes in Toyland" could appear in the film's 1950 reprint or its advertising, forcing a new title, the removal of Herbert's name from the credits, and cuts to the opening song "Toyland", the "Go to Sleep (Slumber Deep)" number and two Barnaby scenes.
- RKO bought the rights in 1930 to film the operetta partly in two-strip Technicolor with Bebe Daniels (later Irene Dunne) and the comedy team Wheeler and Woolsey, but dropped the plan after the backlash against musicals in autumn 1930.
- Babes in Toyland was the biggest and most expensive Laurel and Hardy film vehicle to that point, and its filming was beset with delays caused by on-set injuries, personal strife in Stan Laurel's private life and sudden illnesses among the cast.
- The village of Toyland was built on sound stages at Hal Roach Studios with its buildings painted in vivid storybook colors, which left Stan Laurel regretting that the film had not been shot in Technicolor.
- The film became a holiday television staple, shown annually by US stations in the 1960s and 1970s, and as of 2025 it still runs on New York's WPIX as March of the Wooden Soldiers in the daytime on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.
- Walt Disney personally approved the appearance of Mickey Mouse in the film, along with its use of the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?".
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