The most famous of all Laurel and Hardy’s short films, the premise of “The Music Box” is as simple as it is ingenious: two foolish delivery men — played by Stan and Ollie, of course — attempt to take a piano up an enormous stoop to a house on top of a hill. On the way, they encounter numerous obstacles — a rude resident who refuses to let them pass, a police officer who wants to arrest them after an altercation with a woman pushing a pram on yet another fruitless attempt to haul the delivery up the narrow steps — but none are quite as daunting as the pair’s own massive stupidity and utter lack of spatial awareness. The brilliance of the duo’s performance is highlighted in a late gag involving the two characters accidentally swapping hats, which winds up being far funnier than it perhaps deserves to be.

Released at the dawn of their long association with Hal Roach Studios, “The Music Box” represents Laurel and Hardy at the height of their comedic powers, offering perfectly crafted slapstick that is still hilarious 90 years later. It was honored shortly after release with an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film according to Cinema Axis, and was included in the National Film Registry in 1997.

Ask any fan their favorite Laurel and Hardy feature and, if they don’t say “Way Out West,” they are almost certain to say “Sons of the Desert,” a wildly entertaining farce that, in recognition of its containing all the best Laurel and Hardy tropes, Time Out describes approvingly as the most “typical” film of the Boys’ career.

The movie sees Stan and Ollie as two members of the “Sons of the Desert” fraternity, a lodge reminiscent of the Freemasons (though Homeland to Hollywood cites the Shriners as a closer source of inspiration). Having unwisely taken an oath to attend the lodge’s convention in Chicago — without informing their spouses — the pair then undertake a campaign of deceit in an attempt to make it to the event without their wives’ knowledge. Featuring a cameo by fellow Hal Roach Studios stalwart Charley Chase as a fellow convention-goer, “Sons of the Desert” is packed with tight dialogue — Stan runs rampant with memorable malapropisms throughout — and great visual gags.

As an indication of the love that the movie enjoys among fans, it is worth noting that its title has since been adopted as the name of the International Laurel and Hardy Society, which is “devoted to keeping the lives and works of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy before the public,” according to its official website.

One of the most memorable of Laurel and Hardy’s early shorts, “Brats” is based around a simple plot — “Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy remained at home to take care of the children … Their wives had gone out for target practice,” reads the original title card — executed through a hilarious visual gag: that Laurel and Hardy double up to portray their own children, whose boisterousness and talent for drumming up chaos mirrors that of the duo themselves. Per the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, the effect is achieved through the use of double sets: one at a regular scale for the fathers, and another using oversize furniture to achieve the sense of diminished size for Laurel and Hardy Jr.

But this central device isn’t all that “Brats” has to offer. What separates the great Laurel and Hardy movies from their inferior ones is demonstrated in the opening scene of “Brats,” a dialogue-free two minutes showing the final stages of a game of checkers between the two adults that gets its laughs entirely through characterization; the “mini” Laurel and Hardy have yet to be introduced. When they are, the subtly more infantile versions of trademark Laurel and Hardy reactions — Stan’s typical crying becoming closer to full-blown bawling, Ollie’s usual anger veering closer to tantrum territory — are alone worth giving “Brats” 20 minutes of your time.

“Do you realize that after I’m gone that you’d just go on living by yourself? People would stare at you and wonder what you are? And I wouldn’t be here to tell them?” So goes Oliver Hardy’s reasoning that if he, heartbroken and pining after a woman who has rejected him for something else, should jump in the river and end it all, that Stan Laurel better take the plunge with him, a rare meta moment in the Laurel and Hardy oeuvre acknowledging that they, like us, can’t imagine the duo ever-existing apart.

As in their other great movies, it is the pair’s loyalty to one another that drives the story just as much as the friction between them generates the best gags. Instead of jumping in the river, Ollie is instead convinced to join the Foreign Legion, “to forget” the woman he’s pining for — and of course, Stan comes right along with him.

While the critics of Laurel and Hardy Central are right in claiming that the gags are a little thinner on the ground than some of their earlier features, the movie is certainly one of the duo’s most action-packed and drama-filled, with jailbreaks, firing squads, and plane crashes all appearing in just over an hour of run time. Crucially though, “The Flying Deuces” is also one of their biggest-hearted comedies, and remains highly watchable.

Unlike Laurel and Hardy features released during World War II — which typically feature Nazis and the ongoing war effort as plot devices with little wit or ingenuity — “Block-Heads” begins in wartime with an eye on setting up an exquisite joke that couldn’t work any other way. The movie begins with Stan and Ollie in the trenches of World War I, with the two separating as Stan is ordered to guard the trench while Ollie and his unit head “over the top.” Proving himself to be a perfect soldier, Stan continues to guard the trench unquestioningly, as 1917 becomes 1918, and, unknown to Stan, the war ends. In fact, Stan keeps guarding his trench for a full 20 years until he is finally rediscovered and relieved of his duties.

The absurd premise is amusing in itself — and of course, audiences could imagine the character of Stan doing such a thing — but the beauty of the gag is that it sets up the pair’s inevitable reunion. Ollie, believing that Stan has lost a leg, goes through pains to care for his old friend, and the result is a slow-building but hilarious set piece involving the two talking with fond, never-before-seen courtesy even as Stan cannot help but generate slapstick moments at Ollie’s expense, all while the audience waits for Ollie’s final realization that Stan has his leg after all, and the duo’s slow descent into their old tit-for-tat interplay — a subtle but rewarding joke for their fans.

In a 5-star review for the Guardian written in 2015, the film critic Peter Bradshaw calls the film a “gem,” while at Laurel and Hardy Central John V. Brennan describes “Block-Heads” as “the last completely great movie [Laurel and Hardy] would ever make.”

Based on the 1903 stage musical by Victor Herbert, “Babes in Toyland” — also widely known as “March of the Wooden Soldiers” — is one of the more unusual movies in the Laurel and Hardy filmography, but arguably their most enduring. As described by Britannica, the Hal Roach-produced feature is a fantasy set in a fictional “Toyland” populated by characters such as Little Bo Peep and Mother Goose, with Laurel and Hardy — recognizable in their mannerisms and interplay while dressed in twee attire — taking the roles of “Stan Dum” and “Ollie Dee.”

But rather than a vehicle for Stan and Ollie’s comedy alone, “Babes in Toyland” is an extravaganza, with lavish sets, regular extended music numbers, and a cast of characters enjoyable on their own terms, with Laurel and Hardy just one of the movie’s many successful elements.

As film scholar Barry Snyder explains (via Media Factory), “Babes in Toyland” wasn’t an immediate smash on its release in 1934, but instead had an unexpected afterlife as a classic holiday movie after repeat airings in the 1960s. An all-round enjoyably family film, its retro appeal remains undiminished and looks likely to continue attracting audiences even today.