Little People
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This article is about a toy brand. For the condition of dwarfism and the Little People of America organization, see Dwarfism.
Little People is the name of a toy brand, produced since the 1960s, originally by Fisher-Price. Classic Little People figures have no arms or legs, their bodies and head shapes are circular, and they come in black and white skin colors. Little People toys also include dogs. Newer figures are larger and have more detail to their bodies, including defined arms and legs, while retaining an overall cylindrical shape.
History
Fisher-Price produced wooden toy dogs for four decades before deciding to try their new line of toys. The first Little People set included a school bus together with characters. The toy gained instant popularity and other sets soon came out. At first, Little People characters were produced with wood; plastic was used for their vehicles and buildings. In the middle 1970s, Fisher-Price produced the Sesame Street town, with various Sesame Street stores, a bridge with stop lights and Sesame Street characters such as Bert and Ernie. Soon after, the Little People Discovery Airport, a hospital and a school would also be released. Little People characters had by then been also produced with plastic products exclusively.
After Fisher-Price was bought over by Mattel in the 1990s, Little People reappeared on the markets, their figure slightly larger in size from the original Little People characters due to revised toy safety guidelines. These figures are called "chunky" by collectors. Later, the company revised the shape of the figures, making them much more detailed and focusing on various configurations of five characters named Eddie, Sarah Lynn, Maggie, Michael, and Sonya Lee.
Likenesses
Although Fisher-Price never actually reproduced the figure of a real-life celebrity with the Little People line, some have argued that many of the Little People toys, particularly during the 1970s, resembled super-stars of their era, more famously their Black female singer ( like Donna Summer) and a Black male whose face resembled that of famous boxer Earnie Shavers.