What are they and how old?

Im guessing here,but 60s Japanese ? For some reason I thought fairy tale characters.

 

I've been trying to identify some of the characters. Strawman? Robin Hood? Little Black Sambo (ugh!)? King Wenceslas? Dwarves? Snow White?

 

Looks to me like they might be characters of some sort of doll theater. The characters would slide in or out on metal rods. (thus the track grooves on the wood bottoms). That's the best guess I could make.

 

BTW.....I'm getting more of a European vibe then Japanese.

 

Try a search for antique/vintage pipe cleaner dolls - puppets - ornaments.

 

You can try "needle felted dolls" but that seems to be a fairly active current hobby and wading through to find the old stuff might be problematic. You might also try keywords such as tomte, nisse, tomtenisse, or tonttu

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It was spirit-of-shiloh who posted some nisse on a Christmas thread two years ago.

 

Hi Gila,
Little Black Sambo was an Indian from India thus the tiger. How it became an American Black (how many tigers are running around America)
greg

 

Gregggsie... wow. Thank you! The mysteries to behold...

 

Anything written/stamped on bottom of the wood stands? I'd like to see bottom of one to get some idea of the purpose of the slot or hole in the base.

 

Swedish? I've seen these come out of Germany and Scandinavia before. The Swedes did a lot of those wooden dolls.

 

On the black dolls: you could try searching "golliwog" (a word brought to mind from another thread).