Original Little People

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Little People Assembly Instructions

This Old Toy

This Old Toy

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In order to determine whether an original Little People figure is "original", you'll have to examine the figure carefully to determine whether it has been taken apart and then re-assembled....which is easy to determine on wood/plastic and on all-plastic people; on some of the earlier wood/wood people, it can be next to impossible to tell whether they have been modified. Early wood-head/wood-body figures used a serrated screw from the underneath to attach the head to the body (this only is true for "bald" male figures and dogs). The head can be easily "unscrewed" and re-attached to the body with no obvious signs of manipulation.

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On all wood/wood figures with a plastic hat or hair, all wood/plastic figures, and all plastic/plastic figures, the head/hat assembly is secured to the body of the figures via a hollow plastic shaft (called a "tenon shaft") that goes thru the head and protrudes into the hole at the top of the body. This tenon shaft extends thru that hole and is then splayed or "mushroomed" out into the body cavity (it was done using an ultrasonic welding device at the factory). This mushroomed "tip" of the tenon shaft is what holds the hat/head assembly(or head-only in the case of hairless/hatless figures) firmly to the body. In order to remove the hat/head from the body, you must break off this "tip" in order to remove the hat/head and replace it with other components (by the way, all the hair and/or hat pieces will interchange with one another.....you could put a blond ponytail hair piece onto a male body if you wanted to). However, once the tip is broken, then it become very difficult to re-secure the head/hair/hat assembly to a body....for one thing, you have shortened the overall length of the tenon shaft, so it may not be long enough to go into the body cavity and still have enough material left to be mushroomed again. Also, it is rather difficult to get the shaft to splay out again.....not many people have access to an ultrasonic welder! You can use heat to accomplish the same thing (the tip of a soldering iron, for instance), but it is tricky to do and usually results in a big mess and not a very secure connection. You can also use some type of superglue to attach the head/hat/hair unit to the body, so you should also look for signs of any type of glue residue. Also note that figures that have been glued together will no longer have a head that can "spin" on the body....although some figures are normally "tighter" than others in this regard, all Little People figures (except bald all-wood males and all-wood dogs) have heads that can spin to some extent.

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Look up into the body cavity from underneath the figure (you may need a flashlight) and look at the tip of the tenon shaft where it terminates in the body cavity. It should have a rounded edge all around (a fairly uniform "mushroom" effect). Compare it to other figures that you have for comparison. If something looks really different, then you can be pretty sure that someone was messing around in there. If not, congrats! You have a rather unique whoops figure!