Selective functionalization of the periphery of commercial polypropyleneamine (POPAM) and polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers has been investigated in preparative scale. The first generation (G1) POPAM dendrimer was for the first time selectively N,N-bis(sulfonylated) with tosyl chloride and the corresponding mono-, di-, tri-, and tetra-N-tosylsulfonamides were isolated and fully characterized. Unexpectedly, similar persulfonylation of G2 POPAM results in splitting of a central C-N bond and only fully and partially sulfonylated halves of the initial dendrimer could be isolated. Higher generations of POPAM are also split during the persulfonylation yielding complex mixtures of persulfonylated dendritic fragments which could hardly be identified. A plausible mechanism of the POPAM decomposition on the basis of the reaction product analysis is proposed. N-Sulfonylation of a peripheral octasulfonamide of G2 POPAM with tosyl chloride also leads to the destruction of the dendrimer, while its N-alkylation with benzyl bromide proved to be not selective yielding a completely alkylated derivative. Unlike POPAM dendrimers, PAMAM dendrimers were shown to be more stable during their sulfonylation and no decomposition of the dendritic backbone was detected. In contrast to the POPAM dendrimers, PAMAM dendrimers were shown to be rather inert with respect to the formation of N-tosylsulfonamides since they could only be N-monosulfonylated at all peripheral amino groups. The combination of MALDI-TOF and ESI-FT-ICR tandem mass spectrometry has been shown to be an effective method for structure assignment and purity check of selectively or fully persulfonylated dendritic oligoamines.