I’m a bit nostalgic. I used to watch this old Laurel and Hardy classic as a kid, every year around holiday as a kid. However, I think it “lost something in the translation” when Turner Enterprises decided to colorize it.
Is this timeless family classic still being aired on WPIX/WB11? Is it available on video?
I’m sorry, that should read, “every year around holiday time as a kid.”
Looks like the original B&W version is in this boxset.
I have the movie on DVD.
I grew up in Queens, and used to watch that movie on WPIX every year on Thanksgiving, right after getting home from the parade. I still feel that Thanksgiving is incomplete if I don’t watch it (my wife, of course, thinks it’s pretty stupid, so I usually have to watch it alone).
Trivial note: Around 1986, I saw a TV retrospective on “March of the Wooden Soldiers,” and it featured interviews with the only two surviving cast members: Tom-Tom and Barnaby. I was astonished that Henry Brandon, who played Barnaby, was both alive AND extremely youthful looking! He laughingly explained that he was only 22 years old when he filmed “March of the Wooden Soldiers!”
And the Internet Movie Database confirms that!
I never realized Barnaby was played by such a young man!
As a lover of old movies, and Laurel and Hardy in particular (I had a March of the Wooden Soldiers poster on my wall for years), I’m going to be a heretic and say that I think that colorizing March of the Wooden Soldiers is just fine. It should look candy colored. It’s a children’s storybook fantasy land.
I grew up on Long Island. We rarely went to the parade, but every Thanksgiving my brothers and I would sit on the couch for March of the Wooden Soldiers.
We still talk about it. It would be fun to give them each the movie this year.
I am not completely against colorizing, esp for a kid’s movie, but sometimes B&W feels more like the real deal.
That is fascinating about Barnaby! I had no idea!
Toyland…Toyland…
“Don’t worry, me and the toymaker are… like that!”
puts 2 fingers together.
“But that was before we were married.”
I think Stan would have shot it in color if he could have afforded it. He sank most of his own money into it, which was why he ended up living in a residential motel in Santa Monica.
Wasn’t Mr. Cratchet, the ol’ crooked man, a great villian? 
Is it still being aired on TV?
According to this, it sure is.