Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore

Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore is a Disney animated featurette from the Winnie the Pooh franchise, based on two chapters from the books Winnie-the-Pooh and  The House at Pooh Corner, originally released theatrically on March 11, 1983, before the 1983 re-issue of The Sword in the Stone. It is the fourth and final of Disney's original theatrical featurettes adapted from the Pooh books by A.A. Milne.

Produced by Rick Reinert's unit and animated by former animators of The Fox and the Hound, Ennis McNulty, Dave Bennett, Nancy Beiman, Irv Anderson, Virgil Ross, Ken O' Brien, Tom Ray & Lars Hult, this was the first Disney animated film since the 1938 Silly Symphonies short Merbabies to be produced by an outside studio. (The company had also previously produced the educational Disney short  Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons in 1981.)

Plot
The story begins with Pooh taking a walk to a wooden bridge over a river where he likes to do nothing in particular. On this particular day, though, he finds a fir cone and ends up dropping it in the river. Noticing that, due to the flow of the river, the cone went under the bridge, Pooh decides to make a racing game out of it. As the game uses sticks instead of cones, he calls the game "Poohsticks".

Sometime later, while Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit and Roo are playing Poohsticks, they see Eeyore floating in the river below. After a somewhat successful attempt to get him to shore, he tells them that he fell in due to being bounced from behind. When Tigger arrives on the scene, he claims that his bounce was actually a cough, but with some outside help from narrator Laurie Main, the animals find out that Tigger had indeed deliberately bounced Eeyore.

As Eeyore seems particularly depressed this day, Pooh follows him and asks what's wrong. Eeyore answers that he's unhappy because it's his birthday, and nobody has taken any notice to celebrate it. Pooh decides to give him a jar of honey, but doesn't get far before he has a hunger attack and ends up eating the honey. Upon realizing this, he decides to ask Owl for help. Owl writes a misspelled greeting on the pot and then flies off to tell Christopher Robin about the birthday. Piglet has planned to give a balloon to Eeyore, until he accidentally causes it to pop.

Piglet is very sad that his gift for Eeyore is spoiled, but he presents it to him anyway, and only a minute later, Pooh brings the empty pot. Eeyore is gladdened, as he can now put the broken balloon into the pot and remove it again. Pooh and his friends then pitch in and plan a surprise party for their friend.

During the party, Tigger arrives and welcomes himself to the festivities. This angers Rabbit, who opines that Tigger should leave because of the way he treated Eeyore before. Roo wants Tigger to stay, and Christopher Robin's solution is for everyone to go to the bridge and play Poohsticks. Eeyore, a first-time player, wins the most games out of everybody, while Tigger does not win at all. Eeyore's secret for winning, as he explains to Tigger afterwards, is to "let [his] stick drop in a twitchy sort of way." Pooh and Piglet decide that "Tigger's all right, really."

Voice cast
For the 2007 version featured on the Friendship Edition of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Disney redubbed some of the voices.
 * Hal Smith as Owl and Winnie the Pooh
 * Paul Winchell as Tigger
 * John Fiedler as Piglet
 * Ralph Wright as Eeyore
 * Will Ryan as Rabbit
 * Julie McWhirter as Kanga
 * Dick Billingsley as Roo
 * Kim Christianson as Christopher Robin
 * Laurie Main as The Narrator
 * Jim Cummings as Winnie the Pooh
 * Paul Winchell as Tigger
 * John Fiedler as Piglet
 * Ralph Wright as Eeyore
 * Hal Smith as Owl
 * Ken Sansom as Rabbit
 * Tress MacNeille as Kanga
 * Trevyn Savage as Christopher Robin
 * Aaron Spann as Roo
 * Laurie Main as the Narrator

Home video
The first VHS release for Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore was Winnie the Pooh and Friends, released on VHS in April 2, 1985, followed by other releases of this film, including the July 11, 2000 Storybook Classics release. It has since been included as a bonus feature on VHS and DVD releases of The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.

Winnie the Pooh Featurettes

 * Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree - (1966)
 * Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day - (1968)
 * Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! - (1974)
 * Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore - (1983)