Winnie the Pooh

Winnie the Pooh is a Disney character and media franchise based on the book by A.A. Milne and its main character, Winnie-the-Pooh first Voice by Sterling Holloway.

Development by Disney
In 1940, The Walt Disney Company 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 US$1 billion in annual revenues for Disney—as much as is earned by Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto combined. 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 stylized Disney Pooh there is also a large range of Classic Pooh merchandise depicting the E.H. 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 My Friends Tigger & Pooh in 2007. Christopher Robin will be replaced - though not entirely - with a six-year-old girl named Darby.

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, bringing an action to validate her termination notice in United States District Court. The district court found in favor of Stephen Slesinger, Inc. as did the United States 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. 

However, since Disney does not fully own the rights to Pooh characters, there are legal limits on what Disney can do. While Pooh characters can appear in Disney parks, Disney does not offer Pooh-related items or characters in its wedding programs or on the Disney Cruise Line.

Trivia

 * Disney's Winnie the Pooh character was amortized several times by Sears.


 * All Winnie the Pooh media projects are combined at #55 of the "100 Greatest Cartoons of All Time."


 * Pooh makes a cameo appearance in the drug prevention video Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue as Corey's teddy bear.

Other appearances
Winnie the Pooh and friends appear in the Kingdom Hearts world "Hundred Acre Wood", which is accessed differently than other worlds; Sora must read the book in the first game to get there. This world is different insofar as there are no enemies to find. The problem lies in the fact that the book was torn apart, manifesting itself in the Hundred Acre Wood as people and places disappearing. When the book is first obtained, it has only one page, namely a meadow where Winnie the Pooh is first found. Even Mickey Mouse in the Mickey Mouse Revue.