"The Humpty Dumpty Circus" was an animated short film created by director and producer J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, the Anglo-American founders of Vitagraph Studios. Believed to be the first film to employ stop-motion technique, it is estimated to have been released in 1897 or 1898. The film depicted a circus with acrobats and animals in motion. According to Smith, they utilized his daughter's set of small circus dolls, which had articulated limbs allowing them to be balanced in position. This toy set was most likely the popular Humpty Dumpty Circus produced by the Schoenhut Piano Company between 1903 and 1930. The film is now lost. Images often thought to be stills from the film may actually be photographs of the popular toy set.