Our favourite is the 1986 version because of its costume, creature and set designs by children’s book author and illustrator, Maurice Sendak, probably best known for Where The Wild Things Are.Īdditional to the familiar theme of animated soldiers, the production also employs the stroke of midnight to kick off the action, and even if you’re not a fan of ballet, each set looks like a scene that’s danced off the pages of a Sendak picture book.Ī very brief bit of narration by Julie Harris makes this version more accessible to the younger fans in the family. Since that time there have been numerous adaptations on the story of toys (again, mostly soldiers) coming to life to defend young Clara from an army of mice on Christmas Eve.ĭancers including Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov have performed the story of the Nutcracker. The nutcracker’s story, written by ETA Hoffman ( The Nutcracker And The Mouse King) in 1816, was adapted into a ballet with a score by Tchaikovsky and first danced in 1892. The story uses a motif we’ll see again, as the toys in the playroom come to life at the stroke of midnight.
(As if simply frying wasn’t enough!)Īn alternate and happier ending features in Fantasia 2000, where the tin soldier defeats the evil, lecherous Jack-in-the-box and he and the ballerina live happily ever after. It’s quite a bleak, romantic ending for small children, and a 1934 Ub Iwerks cartoon short version even has the soldier facing a firing squad before burning in the flames. And the ballerina, made of paper, gets blown to his side and perishes with him, with only her metal spangle remaining. In the original story, the soldier falls from a table and goes on adventures before returning to the playroom where he’s thrown by a young boy into a fire, melting into the shape of a heart. The Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, first published in 1838, has been interpreted many times in films and a ballet and each handles what is a quite poignant ending a little differently. The Steadfast Tin Soldier Fantasia/2000 (1999) It also has the ingenious casting of a real monkey in a mouse suit (who looks remarkably similar to a mouse named Mickey), and an impressive for its time stop-motion animation sequence as the soldiers head out to do battle with the Bogeys.
#80s army toy playsets plus
The few songs may be a bit saccharine, but there’s so much charm, plus Laurel and Hardy, that the film has remained a favourite all these years. And any soldiers who can fight the gnarly bogeymen deserve to be here. Their hopes of raising the mortgage money for Mother Widow Peep are dashed when their boss finds out they’ve made a mistake and instead of making 600 wooden soldiers at one foot tall, they’ve made 100 soldiers at six feet tall.Īlthough these soldiers don’t technically come to life, they do come to the rescue when the Bogeymen attack Toyland and Stannie and Ollie are redeemed. Its greatest draw is in the starring roles of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as Stannie Dum and Ollie Dee, employees of Santa’s workshop. It’s a version of Victor Herbert’s 1903 musical ( Babes In Toyland), well known to Americans, as it airs annually in almost every state either on Thanksgiving or during the Christmas holidays. This is one of the oldest of our film examples. They’re a popular theme, the tin type being the action figures of their era, and perhaps allowing their adventures to be a bit more daring than the average toy. This is only the first among four titles here that feature soldiers as the main animated childhood objects of attention.
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