Lucky Little People

Here's an odd little item; in 1973 and 1974, Scholastic Publications published a series of sets of finger puppets. These were called Lucky Little People, and consisted of pages of characters that could be punched out together with a simple script for presenting a play.

I became aware of these because the first in the series was a version of Rumplestiltskin, with designs by Edward Gorey. As my partner is an avid Gorey collector, I'd known about that particular item for quite some time. But, since we never ran across any other sets, we wondered if Rumplestiltskin was the only set that had been published; it turns out we were wrong.

I've been unable to track down much information on these fragile pieces, but I now know there were at least five sets. Set #2 is a mystery as I've found no references to it. Set #3 was Famous Americans, set #4 was Hansel and Gretel, and set #5 was The Wizard of Oz. The last two sets were published in 1974.

There is no artist credit on the Oz puppets, which are colorful. A simple script was included with the set, a fairly faithful version of Dorothy's capture and the subsequent defeat of the Wicked Witch of the West.