The maid cleans the fireplace in the morning and finds that the soldier has melted into a little tin heart, along with the ballerina's spangle, which is now burned as black as coal.

The tin soldier attacks the king, and as a result is put on trial and sentenced to death via firing squad.

[citation needed] George Pal's war-themed 1941 Puppetoon, "Rhythm in the Ranks", is likely a loose adaptation of Andersen's story, with a toy soldier getting discharged after falling in love with an ice-skating ballerina.

Paul Grimault (with Jacques Prévert) did a 1947 colour French cartoon Le Petit Soldat that portrayed the title character as a toy acrobat who is called to war and returns injured but determined to rescue his ballerina.

Marcia Brown's 1953 picture book illustrating M. R. James's translation of the story was awarded a Caldecott Honor.

Shawn Phillips's 1964 song "Little Tin Soldier" is also based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale and was covered by Donovan in 1965.

In 1986, Atkinson Film-Arts made an animated adaptation featuring the voices of Rick Jones, Terrence Scammell, and Robert Bockstael, with narration by Christopher Plummer.

It featured the voices of George Newbern as the Tin Soldier, Megan Mullally as the Ballerina, Tim Curry as the Jack-in-the-box and Paul Williams as a frog named Frogbauten.

[6] In 1995, Jon Voight directed and appeared in The Tin Soldier, a Showtime family film loosely based on Andersen's story.

In 1996, Vivian Little and Kathleen Mills adapted Anderson's story into a full-length ballet for the Dance Fremont studio in Seattle.

Dance Fremont centers the story around a young deaf boy who receives the toys for Christmas, and uses Signed Exact English for all dialogue.

In Stieg Larsson's 2006 thriller The Girl Who Played with Fire, the fiercely independent protagonist Lisbeth Salander compares the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, who had stayed loyal to her despite her repeated blatant rejection of him, with Andersen's steadfast tin soldier (implicitly comparing herself with Andersen's ballerina).

[10] Daft Punk's music video for the song "Instant Crush" is said to have been inspired by "The Steadfast Tin Soldier".