<P> The opening song is performed by Mother Goose and an offscreen chorus; most of the others are sung by Bo Peep and / or Tom - Tom . While none of the songs are performed by Laurel and Hardy, the two briefly dance and march in a memorable scene to "March of the Toys". </P> <P> The film was produced by Hal Roach films in 1934 . It was based upon Victor Herbert's 1903 operetta Babes in Toyland . It was originally produced in Sepiatone and later colorized . </P> <P> Critics' reviews were positive . Andre Sennwald of The New York Times called the film "an authentic children's entertainment and quite the merriest of its kind that Hollywood has turned loose on the nation's screens in a long time ." Variety proclaimed it "a film par excellence for children . It's packed with laughs and thrills and is endowed with that glamour of mysticism which marks juvenile literature ." John Mosher wrote in The New Yorker: "It's certainly far more successful than was last year's Alice in Wonderland, and the children will probably be far less bored by it than they generally are by those films designed especially for them". Film Daily called it "delightful musical fantasy" and "dandy entertainment". The Chicago Tribune review read: "It's been many a long day since I've had so much pure (and I MEAN pure!) fun as I had watching this picture". </P> <P> Babes in Toyland, one of many feature films with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, was also popular at the box office . However, many years later in a filmed interview, Hal Roach admitted that on its first release the film lost money . After it appeared in theaters, it was re-released several times with the title constantly changed, to make it seem to audiences that they were going to see a different film . It surfaced as a holiday movie on TV as March of the Wooden Soldiers, where it was rerun annually on some local affiliates for many years . On one local Atlanta station, the film was shown as a Thanksgiving special only a few weeks before the release of its 1961 Disney Technicolor remake, so that those who saw it on television and then saw the Disney film version over the Christmas holiday had the experience of seeing two different versions of the same work, within a few weeks of each other . </P>

March of the wooden soldiers on tom tom piper