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Winnie_the_Pooh
 

Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. He appears in the books Winnie-the-Pooh (published October 14, 1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also wrote two books of children's poetry, When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six, which include several poems about Winnie-the-Pooh. All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. The setting of the stories is based on the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England. The name "Winnie" was inspired by a pet bear of a Canadian soldier, named after his hometown, Winnipeg http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10193.

Some of Pooh Bear's friends include Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Rabbit, Roo, Kanga, Owl, Gopher, Christopher Robin, and many other friends that the gang makes on their journeys.

The Pooh stories were later made into a series of Winnie the Pooh (without hyphens) featurettes by Walt Disney Productions, which became one of the company's most successful franchises.

Origins

The character was named after a stuffed bear owned by Milne's son, Christopher Robin Milne. Most of the other characters are also named after toys belonging to Christopher Milne, the exceptions being Christopher Robin himself, and also Owl and Rabbit who are presumably based on real life animals, judging by their appearance in illustrations. Christopher Milne had named his toy after a real bear called Winnipeg, brought to Britain from Canada and whom Milne and his son often saw at London Zoo, and "Pooh", a swan they had met on a holiday (and who appears in When We Were Very Young).

Winnipeg the bear was discovered at a stop in White River, Ontario, by members of The Fort Garry Horse Canadian regiment of cavalry, en route to the battlefields of France during World War I. The bear was smuggled to Britain as the unofficial regimental mascot. Winnie's first owner was Lt. Harry Colebourn. He was the regiment's veterinarian, responsible for their horses. Winnie's eventual destination was to be the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg, but at the end of the War, the officers of the Fort Garry Horse decided to allow her to remain in the London Zoo, where she was much loved for her playfulness. She was known as a kind bear and never attacked anyone. This is exactly what inspired Milne to write about Pooh Bear.

Christopher Robin's toy bear is now on display at the Donnell Library Center Central Children's Room in New York http://www.nypl.org/branch/central/dlc/dch/.

The forest in which the stories are set is based on the Ashdown Forest in which the Milnes lived. The fictional "Hundred Acre wood" is a named location in the stories. The form of the name appears to follow that of the Five Hundred Acre Wood, which lies just outside of the Ashdown Forest, and includes some of the locations mentioned in the book, such as the Enchanted Place.

Development by Disney

Between 1929 and 1932, A.A. Milne contractually assigned the Pooh merchandising rights for the US and Canada to an American literary agent named Stephen Slesinger. It was only one of many assets Slesinger managed during his lifetime, and not even the biggest—that would probably be the Red Ryder comic strip, which he placed in movies, on radio and other media. Slesinger died in 1953, and his widow inherited the operation.

In 1961, Walt Disney Productions bought film and other rights to the character and made a series of cartoon films about him. (Note that Winnie-the-Pooh's name was hyphenated in the Milne books, but lost its hyphens in the Disney incarnation.) The early cartoons were based on several of the original stories. However this is not true of the more recent films and television series which Disney has made.

Disney's storytelling style and characterisation have little in common with Milne's tales, and were greatly disliked by the Milne family. The appearance of the cartoons derives from Shepard's illustrations but the style of drawing is simplified and the characters are given exaggerated features. Alongside the cartoon versions, merchandise using the Shepard drawings is now marketed under the description "Classic Pooh".

In 1977, Disney released the animated feature The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, introducing a new character named Gopher, which Disney acknowledged by having Gopher proclaim, "I'm not in the book, you know!" This movie features three segments that were originally released separately as featurettes: Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966), Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968), and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974). This feature version featured new bridging material and a new ending, as it had been Walt Disney's original intention to make a feature. In 1983, a fourth featurette, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore, was released.

Pooh has become one of the most lucrative literary franchises in history. Today, Pooh videos, teddy bears, and other merchandise generate $1 billion in annual revenues for Disney—as much as is earned by Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto combined.Fortune The Curse of Pooh Pooh stuffed toys can be found in every imaginable (and some unimaginable) shape and size from Beanie and miniature versions up to human size stuffed varieties. As well as the stylised Disney Pooh there is also a large range of Classic Pooh merchandise depicting the EH Shepard style in toy form.

Many direct-to-video featurettes have been created, as well as the theatrical feature-length films The Tigger Movie, Piglet's Big Movie, and Pooh's Heffalump Movie. The last of the films listed introduced an elephant-like heffalump named Lumpy. The classic characters, plus Lumpy, are expected to appear in the future Disney Channel animated television series, entitled My Friends Tigger & Pooh in 2007. Christopher Robin has been replaced with an as-of-yet-unnamed girl.

Ownership controversy and drastic changes

A. A. Milne left the rights to Pooh, and his other characters, to five beneficiaries: The Garrick Club, Westminster School, The Royal Literary Fund, the A. A. Milne Family and the E. H. Shepard Family. Mrs. Milne sold the film rights to Disney in 1961. Christopher Robin Milne sold his rights to the other copyright holders before his death in 1996.

Sometime around 1998, the Garrick Club sold Disney the rights to all of A. A. Milne's characters until 2026 (when the copyright expires).

In 1991, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, the widow of Milne's literary agent, who inherited rights to Pooh, filed a lawsuit against Disney, claiming that she was being cheated out of merchandising rights to the characters. Although she has collected $66 million, she claimed to be owed over $200 million more. After 13 years, the suit finally ended in March 2004; Disney won.

In the wake of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, Clare Milne, daughter of Christopher Robin, attempted to terminate the rights of Stephen Slesinger, Inc. with The Walt Disney Company, with whom she had contracted to assign the rights, she brought an action to validate her termination notice in federal district court. The district court found in favour of Stephen Slesinger, Inc., and as did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On Monday, June 26, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thus sustaining the Appeals Court ruling. [http://edition.cnn.com/2006/LAW/06/26/scotus.pooh.ap/index.html

In December 2005, Disney announced that Pooh's friend and owner Christopher Robin would be replaced by a 6-year-old "tomboyish" red-haired girl for the future Disney Channel animated television series, My Friends Tigger & Poohhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4512770.stm.

In countries where copyright terms are no longer than required by the Berne Convention, the copyrights to the Pooh stories will expire at the end of 2006. (Ernest Shepard's illustrations will remain under copyright for longer, however.)

Other works

The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff use Milne's characters in an effort to explain the Eastern Philosophy/Religion of Taoism in a more accessible way. Pooh has also been featured in four notable satires: Pooh and the Philosophers by J. T. Williams, Was the Winnie-the-Pooh a good Muslim?, and Frederick Crews' The Pooh Perplex and Postmodern Pooh, which both poke fun at literary theory.

"The Hums of Pooh" (verses from the original books supposed to have been composed and sung by Pooh) were set to music by Harold Fraser-Simson, who also set some verses from Milne's books of children's poetry (When We Were Very young, and Now We Are Six).

The "sport" of Poohsticks, in which competitors drop sticks into a stream from a bridge and then wait to see whose stick will cross the finish line first, began as a game played by Pooh and his friends in the stories, but has crossed over into the real world. A World Championship Poohsticks race takes place in Oxfordshire each year.

The Pooh stories have been translated into many languages, notably including Alexander Lenard's Latin translation, Winnie ille Pu, which was first published in 1958, and in 1960, became the first foreign-language book to feature on the New York Times Bestseller List.

In the Soviet Union, three Winnie the Pooh stories were made into celebrated cartoons by Soyuzmultfilm. Quotes and songs from the films are still a staple of Russian society, and, together with the characters, are often parodied, while loved.

Radio

Readings of various Winnie-the-Pooh stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 by Alan Bennett and also released as recordings.

Disney adaptations

Featurettes

Full-length features

* - Means that the feature integrates stories from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and/or the holiday specials with new footage
V - Means that it was a Direct-to-video release

Television show

Holiday TV Specials

Video games

Trivia

  • Pooh also is the number one Disney Character in the Philippines for 2005 with Disney Princess at number two followed by The Incredibles, Buzz Lightyear and Mickey Mouse. This is in terms of the merchandise sold for the year. (Honey Barn Marketing Corp.)

  • The sign over Pooh's door says "Mr. Sanders". The name is not Pooh's name at all, but is a set-up for a joke: Pooh "lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders."

  • Pooh's official birthdate is August 21 1921, the day Christopher Robin got him on his first birthday.

  • The toys that inspired the stories are on public show in the New York Public Library on W53rd St.http://www.nypl.org/branch/central/dlc/dch/pooh/. Many people in Britain feel strongly that this crucial part of Britain's cultural heritage should be repatriated. There are strong comparisons between the toys and the Elgin Marbles and the matter was raised in Parliament as recently as 1998http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/53778.stm.

  • A bronze statue of "Winnipeg the Bear" appears at the Assiniboine Zoo in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The statue depicts the bear cub hand in hand with Lt. Harry Colebourn.

  • In December 2000, a Canadian medical journal jokingly "diagnosed" characters in the books and films with various mental illnesses. e.g. Winnie the Pooh shows signs of obsessive compulsive disorder, Tigger shows signs of ADHD etc. http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/163/12/1557.

  • Pooh's obsession with honey is based upon a completely false premise about bear behavior. While bears are major predators of beehives to the great consternation of beekeepers, they are seeking the brood (larvae and pupae) of the bees.

  • On April 11, 2006, Winnie the Pooh was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6834 Hollywood Boulevardhttp://www.hollywoodchamber.net/icons/upcoming_ceremonies.asp.

  • Jack Kerouac's novel On The Road asks "don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?"http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Road

  • Singer Kenny Loggins wrote a song entitled "Return To Pooh Corner" (1969) based on the story of Christopher Robin and Winnie The Pooh. In 1994 he recorded a children's album bearing the same name.

  • In June 2006, Turkish public broadcaster TRT was reported to have removed the Winnie-the-Pooh cartoons from television because the cartoon features a pig, Piglet. Other cartoons featuring pigs were reported to have been removed from television as well.http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19503274-1702,00.html The story turned out to be a hoax.

  • In the Kingdom Hearts series, the main character Sora somewhat serves as a replacement for Christopher Robin whenever he visits Pooh's world, the 100 Acre Wood. Sora helps Pooh and his friends with their problems.

See also

References

External links

Disney franchises | British children's literature | Characters in written fiction | Fictional bears | Kingdom Hearts characters | Hollywood Walk of Fame | Winnie-the-Pooh characters | Fictional overeaters | Articles containing fair use images

Віні-Пух | Peter Plys | Pu der Bär | Winnie-la-Pu | Winnie l'ourson | Winnie-the-Pooh | פו הדוב | Winnie ille Pu | Mikė pūkuotukas | Micimackó | Winnie de Poeh | クマのプーさん | Ole Brumm | Kubuś Puchatek | Винни-Пух | Winnie the Pooh | Nalle Puh | Nalle Puh | 小熊维尼历险记

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Winnie-the-Pooh".

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