The low-stakes fun of 'Tales of the Wizard of Oz' (1961)

Who says every Oz story has to feel monumental?

A more obscure Baum work.

There have been, let's say, plenty of television, film, and stage adaptations of L. Frank Baum's famed Oz series of children's books. In fact, these adaptations have been crucial to the longevity and popularity of this 126-year-old franchise. A musical stage play based on Baum's first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), was such a success that it directly influenced Baum's sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904). Generations have come to know Baum's characters through the lavish MGM musical The Wizard of Oz (1939). Decades later, author Gregory Maguire introduced a new generation of readers to this world through his novel Wicked (1995), which was later turned into an extremely popular mega-musical and then a duology of blockbuster films.

In short, there's a reason The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has remained consistently in print (and available at bookstores and libraries) for well over a century while Baum's Dot and Tot of Merryland (1901) hasn't. Not that Dot and Tot is without merit. The book is quaintly charming, and it's even illustrated by the same artist, W.W. Denslow, as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It simply didn't inspire a multimedia empire and dozens of bold, revisionist takes the way Baum's previous book did.

Oz adaptations come in all shapes and sizes—some very lighthearted and frivolous, others quite dark and foreboding. There are Oz adaptations for children, other for adults, and some for mixed audiences. There's so much of this material that even the most-dedicated fan will never get through it all. I learned about some of these spinoffs through various DVD releases of The Wizard of Oz. Hidden among the special features, you might find Ted Eshbaugh's 1933 cartoon, Larry Semon's 1925 silent feature, and Chuck Jones' prime time cartoon Off to See the Wizard (1967). More recently, however, I have become aware of a slightly neglected Oz TV series that might appeal to a wider audience if it were better known.