Winnie-the-Pooh

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"Pooh" redirects here. For other uses, see Pooh (disambiguation).

Template:DisneyChar Winnie-the-Pooh, commonly shortened to Pooh and once referred to as Edward Bear, is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. He appears in the books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included several poems about Winnie-the-Pooh in the children’s poetry books When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six. All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard.

The hyphens in the character's name were later dropped when The Walt Disney Company adapted the Pooh stories into a series of Winnie the Pooh featurettes which became one of the company's most successful franchises worldwide.

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 be featured on the New York Times Bestseller List, and is the only book in Latin ever to have been featured therein.

History

Origin

Original Winnie the Pooh stuffed toys. Clockwise from bottom left: Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear ("Winnie the Pooh"), Eeyore, and Piglet.

Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a toy bear owned by his son, Christopher Robin Milne, who was the basis for the character Christopher Robin. His toys also lent their names to most of the other characters, except for Owl and Rabbit, who were probably based on real animals, and the Gopher character, who was added in the Disney version. Christopher Robin's toy bear is now on display at the Donnell Library Center Central Children's Room in New York.[1] Many people have made jokes about Pooh and poo.

Christopher Milne had named his toy after Winnipeg, a bear which he and his father often saw at London Zoo, and "Pooh", a swan they had met while on holiday. The bear, called "Winnie", was known as a gentle bear who never attacked anyone, and she was much loved for her playfulness. This is exactly what inspired Milne to write about Pooh Bear.[2] Pooh the swan appears as a character in its own right in When We Were Very Young.

In the first chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh, Milne offers this explanation of why Winnie-the-Pooh is often called simply "Pooh": "But his arms were so stiff ... they stayed up straight in the air for more than a week, and whenever a fly came and settled on his nose he had to blow it off. And I think - but I am not sure - that that is why he is always called Pooh."

The home of the Milnes, Ashdown Forest in East Sussex, England, was the basis for the setting of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The name of the fictional "Hundred Acre Wood" is reminiscent of the Five Hundred Acre Wood, which lies just outside Ashdown Forest and includes some of the locations mentioned in the book, such as the Enchanted Place.

Publication

Though Charles Scribner, The New York Evening Post, and St. Nicholas Magazine published Milne’s stories with illustrations by several of the more famous American artists of the 1920s, Milne’s original version is better known to have been illustrated by E.H. Shepard. Though Shepard decorated the books published by Methuen and E.P. Dutton, he preferred to be known as a political cartoonist for London’s Punch Magazine.[3]

Disney

File:Christopher robins replacement.jpg
Darby, Tigger, Piglet, and Pooh (left to right), in a screenshot from the My Friends Tigger & Pooh program

Stephen Slesinger acquired US and Canadian merchandising, television, recording and other trade rights to the "Winnie-the-Pooh" from A. A. Milne in the 1930s, and developed "Winnie-the-Pooh" commercializations for more than 20 years. After Slesinger's death in 1953, his wife, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, continued developing the character herself. In 1961, she licensed rights to Disney in exchange for royalties in the first of two agreements between Stephen Slesinger, Inc. and Disney.[4] The same year, Daphne Milne also licensed certain rights, including motion picture rights, to Disney.

Since 1966, Disney has released numerous features starring Winnie the Pooh and related characters. 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.

In December 2005, Disney announced that the Disney Channel animated television series, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, will focus on adventures had by 6-year-old Darby and the Pooh characters, with the occasional appearance from Christopher Robin.[5]

Ownership controversy

Template:Balance-section Pooh videos, teddy bears, and other merchandise generate substantial annual revenues for Disney. The size of Pooh stuffed toys ranges from Beanie and miniature to human-sized. In addition to the stylized Disney Pooh, Disney markets Classic Pooh merchandise which more closely resembles E.H. Shepard’s illustrations. It is estimated that Winnie the Pooh features and merchandise generate as much revenue as Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto combined.[6]

In 1991, Stephen Slesinger, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Disney which alleged that Disney had breached their 1983 agreement by again failing to accurately report revenue from Winnie the Pooh sales. Under this agreement, Disney was to retain approximately 98% of gross worldwide revenues while the remaining 2% was to be paid to Slesinger. In addition, the suit alleged that Disney had failed to pay required royalties on all commercial exploitation of the product name.[7] Though the Disney corporation was sanctioned by a judge for destroying millions of pages of evidence,[citation needed] the suit was later terminated by another judge when it was discovered that Slesinger's investigator had rummaged through Disney's garbage in order to retrieve the discarded evidence.[8]

After the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, Clare Milne, Christopher Milne's daughter, attempted to terminate any future U.S. copyrights for Stephen Slesinger, Inc.[9] After a series of legal hearings, the United States District Court found in favor of Stephen Slesinger, Inc., as did the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On Monday, June 26, 2006, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thus sustaining the Appeals Court ruling and ensuring the defeat of the suit.[10]

On February 19, 2007, it was reported Disney lost a court case in Los Angeles which ruled their "misguided claims" to dispute the licensing agreements with Slesinger, Inc. were unjustified.[11]

In doing so, the claims by Slesinger, Inc. can now be tackled without any argument over who owns the rights. Though the ruling was downplayed by a Disney attorney, the outcome of the case should prove a significant blow to Disney's revenue, since Pooh-related merchandise has been reported to bring the Walt Disney Company approximately 1 billion dollars a year.[12]

Adaptations

Radio

Pooh made his radio debut in 1930 in New York. Readings of various Winnie-the-Pooh stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the United Kingdom with narration by Alan Bennett and also have been released as recordings.

Broadway

Pooh debuted on Broadway with Sue Hastings' Marionettes in the 1930s.

Peek-a-poohs

A Peek-a-pooh is a small plastic toy in a removable rubber costume. Costumes might include various land, jungle and sea creatures not to mention holiday themed outfits for Halloween or Christmas. More than ten different series of these have been produced and are available from vending machines for $1.00 in the United States, £1 in the UK, $2.00 in Canada and ¥100 in Japan. There is also a larger form made of plastic. In Australia they are marketed as "Pooh Animal Wear" and cost $2.

Disney media

Featurettes

Full-length features

*These features integrate stories from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and/or holiday specials with new footage.
†These features were Direct-to-video.

File:Pooh corner.jpg
Winnie-the-Pooh, as seen in the opening of Welcome to Pooh Corner

Television shows

Holiday TV specials

Video games

Winnie the Pooh in a Soviet cartoon

Other cartoons

In the Soviet Union, three Winnie-the-Pooh (or Vinni Puh) stories were made into celebrated cartoons by Soyuzmultfilm in which Pooh was voiced by Yevgeny Leonov, looking distinctly different from the yellow and red Disney incarnation - a brown and black almost mountain bear appearance.

References in other media

  • Pooh is a frequent villain in International Moron Patrol, where he is depicted as being pure evil and having a deep, booming voice.
  • In The Hums of Pooh, Harold Fraser-Simson set to music several of Milne’s poems and the verses sung by Pooh in the original books.
  • Pooh, along with many other famous Disney characters, including Goofy, was featured in a double-length feature of the famous TV show "Roseanne" in 1996, in which the Conners raise enough money to buy a "Walt Disney World" vacation.
  • In the "sport" of Poohsticks, competitors drop sticks into a stream from a bridge and then wait to see whose stick will cross the finish line first. Though it began as a game played by Pooh and his friends in the stories, it has crossed over into the real world: a World Championship Poohsticks race takes place in Oxfordshire each year.
  • 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.[13]
  • Possibly the strangest incarnation of Winnie the Pooh is in Peter David's Star Trek: The Next Generation novel Q-Squared. The child-Q Trelane brings some Winnie the Pooh characters (Pooh, Owl and Rabbit) to life to entertain a group of primary school children in one of the Enterprise's classrooms. Pandemonium results, with Rabbit and Owl(under Trelane's guidance) harmlessly physically attacking several security guards who are attempting to control the situation. Pooh says his trademark phrase "Oh, bother." when he appears and is the only one of the three who does not "attack" the guards, as "The bear, for no discernable reason, was performing mild calisthenics and muttering to himself."
  • An episode of the British SciFi/Comedy Red Dwarf saw several of historys most famous figures reincarnated as robots made of wax. Two vast opposing armies are formed, with historys most celebrated figures on the good side, and the most revelled on the bad. The bad side happens to take one of the good side prisoner; none other than Winnie the Pooh. Although we don't actually see it (the character 'Lister' views from a window), the honey loving bear is led out and tied to a stake (and refuses the blindfold), before being shot by a firing squad. Lister is left in shock, stating "That is something no one should ever have to see!"
  • A Bathing Ape recently made a plush toy of Winnie the Pooh with their popular Bape camo.
  • In Rocky II, Rocky Jr. can be seen wrapped into a Winnie the Pooh blanket when Rocky Balboa and Adrian first see him.
  • In one skit on Saturday Night Live, there is a game show, and one question is, "What is the name of Winnie the Pooh's feline friend?" When the contestant answers, a censor sign goes up. The host, played by Bernie Mac, is then seen attacking the contestant, who is saying, "I said Tigger, with a T!"
  • On Red Eye, a sketch on the Palestinian Tomorrow's Pioneers children show provides fake 'sneak peeks' at the replacement characters for Farfour, a plagiarised version of Mickey Mouse. One of these is 'Winnie the Jew', a bearded kippah-wearing Winnie described as 'an evil character who steals honey from poor Palestinian children.'[14]
  • Jethro Tull's song Up The 'Pool includes the line "The politicians there who've come to take the air - while posing for the daily press - will look around and blame the mess on Edward Bear."
  • In the Polish translation, by Irena Tuwim, Pooh was called Kubuś Puchatek (Jacob the Pooh), because using a woman's name for a male bear would have been too controversial.
  • A number of philosophical books have been written about Winnie the Pooh - Postmodern Pooh and The Pooh Perplex by Frederick Crews rewrite stories from Pooh's world in abtruse academic jargon (from a number of sources including postmodernism, psychoanalysis and so on) for the purpose of satire [2]. Pooh and the Philosophers by John T. Williams uses Winnie the Pooh as a backdrop to illustrate the works of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, Plato and Nietzsche [3].

Facts and figures

The Disney incarnation of Winnie the Pooh, as a stuffed toy
  • Pooh's official birthdate is August 21 1921, the day Christopher Robin received him as a present on his first birthday.
  • The sign over the door to Pooh's house says "Mr Sanders." This is because it is mentioned in the original book that Pooh lived under the name of "Sanders" (that meant that he had the name on a sign above his door, and he lived underneath it).
  • Pooh's obsession with honey is based on a misconception about bear behavior. While bears are major predators of beehives, they are seeking the brood (larva and pupa).[15]
  • On April 11, 2006, Winnie the Pooh was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard.[16]
  • It is revealed near the end of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh that Pooh is one year younger than Christopher Robin, which is obviously because he is "born" on Christopher's first birthday.

See also

References

  1. ^ "The Adventures of the Real Winnie-the-Pooh. The New York Public Library.
  2. ^ "Winnie". Historica Minutes.
  3. ^ Benson, Tim. Westminster School, The Royal Literary Fund, and the A. A. Milne Family.
  4. ^ "The Curse of Pooh." Fortune.
  5. ^ "New-look Pooh 'has girl friend'." BBC News.
  6. ^ "The Curse of Pooh" Fortune.
  7. ^ "The Pooh Files" The Albion Monitor.
  8. ^ "Judge dismisses Winnie the Pooh lawsuit" The Disney Corner.
  9. ^ "Winnie the Pooh goes to court" USA Today
  10. ^ "Justices Refuse Winnie the Pooh Case." ABC News.[dead link]
  11. ^ [1] ca.news.yahoo.com[dead link]
  12. ^ Nelson, Valerie J. (2007-07-21). "Shirley Slesinger Lasswell; fought over Pooh royalties". The Los Angeles Times. Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-08-07.
  13. ^ "Pathology in the Hundred Acre Wood: a neurodevelopmental perspective on A.A. Milne." The Canadian Medical Association Journal. December 12, 2000. V163: 12.
  14. ^ Possible replacements for Farfour "The Terror Mouse"
  15. ^ [The American Bear Association. http://www.americanbear.org/Kids'%20questions.htm]
  16. ^ "Winnie the Pooh Celebrated 80th Anniversary with Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame."

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