It appears as though all the Wizard of Oz books are part of public domain. You wouldn't have to pay royalities to MGM IF the characters/figures are based on the BOOKS - not the film. You would have to pay, however, if you copied any of the characters/images of the film.

I thought this was interesting, as we LOVE to talk copyright on here....


http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk-oz-next-franchise.html?nc

Exactly the same with Cinderella...as long as the Disney version images are not copied. The link I included states the story may have originated in 1st century B.C. the most popular version was written in in 1697 where references to the pumpkin carriage, fairy godmother and glass sliver first appeared.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella

And then you can make a cake with *silver* slippers, as they should be! They were changed to ruby slippers for the movie, because the movie was all about the new Technicolor technology, and silver slippers would have looked essentially the same in color and black and white.

funny, I've never actually read either of those books. Need to find them and read them. I haven't read "Alice in Wonderland" either. Kind of odd to me since I was such a huge reader as a child and still am.