Toto The Dog From "The Wizard Of Oz" Wasn't Always A Dog

There were so many other possibilities that make this make even less sense

Kylin

• Published in Animals
• November 17, 2022

The Wizard Of Oz is an iconic 1939 film that has delighted audiences for over 8 decades. Based on the 1900 children’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by L. Frank Baum, we follow a young woman named Dorothy as she and her dog, Toto, are swept into the magical land of Oz.

There are witches of the Good and Wicked varieties, flying monkeys, and Munchkins. Not to mention murder by falling houses, a Lion without courage, a Scarecrow without a brain, and a Tinman without a heart.

And of course, memorable lines that are still repeated to this day. Most famously (I think at least) is Wicked Witch of the West saying, “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too!”

Literally, iconic. But according to an article shared on Reddit’s Today I Learned community, Toto had a brief period of not being a dog.

This is truly baffling, because, for anyone over the age of 30, Toto is synonymous with a little terrier. I’m sure even younger generations familiar with the books or the movie automatically associate “Toto” with “little dog.”

However, in 1903, shortly after the release of the book, there was a musical adaptation made for Broadway. And Toto was replaced by Imogene, the cow.

Argonaut coming in with the context missing from the original post

Immediately got this song stuck in my head after reading about this.

But that led to an onslaught of very reasonable questions

Seriously, why not a dog costume?

It's thought that they chose to do a cow because it would be easier to fit a human in a cow costume vs a dog costume

Technically, yes. It would be a lot more difficult to fit an actor into a life-size dog costume compared to a life-size cow costume.

But they bring up very valid points

It's really not that big of a stretch tbh

It's a fantasy play

I could see the director being like

An excellent point

A human-sized dog would be the least odd thing in the play.

And if the animal sizes were *really* that big of an issue, there are other obvious options

Like, c'mon.

An attempt was made to excuse the bizarre change in Toto's species

I feel like they're just grasping at straws though.

It's got a certain ring to it

"And your big-ass cow, too!"

All valid questions

How many, indeed?

Makes sense to me

Were you aware of Toto’s on-stage replacement prior to the 1939 film? And really, a cow?

Does that make any sense to any of our readers? If so, please drop a comment below to help clarify what the heck they were thinking.

Because there were really a lot of other perfectly reasonable options they could go with before jumping to “COW.”

Kylin