winnie the pooh.!

cute cute

Eating honey all alone

so cute

Winnie-the-Pooh, commonly shortened to Pooh Bear or simply Pooh, and once referred to as Edward Bear, is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children’s verse book When We Were Very Young (1924) and many more in Now We Are Six (1927). 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 that became one of the company's most successful franchises worldwide: see Winnie the Pooh (Disney).
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 only Latin book ever to have been featured on the New York Times Best Seller List.^[

Winnie-the-Pooh AuthorIllustratorCountryLanguagePublisherPublication date

Winnie-the-Pooh (original version from 1926)

A. A. Milne

E. H. Shepard

United Kingdom

English

Methuen & Co. Ltd. (London)

14 October 1926

History


Origin


Original Winnie the Pooh stuffed toys. Clockwise from bottom left: Tigger, Kanga, Edward Bear ("Winnie the Pooh"), Eeyore, and Piglet. Roo was lost long ago; the other characters were made up for the stories.



Milne named the character Winnie-the-Pooh after a teddy 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, as well as the Gopher character, who was added in the Disney version. Christopher Robin's toy bear is now on display at the Main Branch of the New York Public Library in New York.^[2]
Harry Colebourne and Winnie 1914



Christopher Milne had named his toy bear after Winnie, an American black bear which he often saw at London Zoo, and "Pooh", a swan they had met while on holiday. The bear cub was purchased from a hunter for $20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Ontario, Canada, while en route to England during the First World War. He named the bear "Winnie" after his hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba. "Winnie" was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, and gained unofficial recognition as The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot. Colebourne left Winnie at the London Zoo while he and his unit were in France; after the war she was officially donated to the zoo, as she had become a much loved attraction there.^[3] 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."
This explanation would be more believable, of course, if Christopher Robin had not already called him "Pooh" earlier in the story.

Ashdown Forest: the setting for the stories


The Winnie-the-Pooh stories are set in Ashdown Forest, Sussex, England. The forest is a large area of tranquil open heathland on the highest sandy ridges of the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty situated 30 miles (50 km) south of London. In 1925 Milne, a Londoner, bought a country home a mile to the north of the forest at Cotchford Farm, near Hartfield. According to Christopher Milne, while his father continued to live in London "...the four of us—he, his wife, his son and his son's nanny—would pile into a large blue, chauffeur-driven Fiat and travel down every Saturday morning and back again every Monday afternoon. And we would spend a whole glorious month there in the spring and two months in the summer." ^[4] From the front lawn the family had a view across a meadow to a line of alders that fringed the River Medway, beyond which the ground rose through more trees until finally "above them, in the faraway distance, crowning the view, was a bare hilltop. In the centre of this hilltop was a clump of pines." Most of his father's visits to the forest at this time were, he noted, family expeditions on foot "to make yet another attempt to count the pine trees on Gill's Lap or to search for the marsh gentian". Christopher added that, inspired by Ashdown Forest, his father had made it "the setting for two of his books, finishing the second little over three years after his arrival".
Many locations in the stories can be linked to real places in and around the forest. As Christopher Milne wrote in his autobiography: “Pooh’s forest and Ashdown Forest are identical”. For example, the fictional "Hundred Acre Wood" was in reality Five Hundred Acre Wood; Galleon's Leap was inspired by the prominent hilltop of Gill's Lap, while a clump of trees just north of Gill's Lap became Christopher Robin's The Enchanted Place because no-one had ever been able to count whether there were sixty-three or sixty-four trees in the circle.^[5]
The landscapes depicted in E.H. Shepard’s illustrations for the Winnie-the-Pooh books are directly inspired by the distinctive landscape of Ashdown Forest, with its high, open heathlands of heather, gorse, bracken and silver birch punctuated by hilltop clumps of pine trees. In many cases Shepard's illustrations can be matched to actual views, allowing for a degree of artistic licence. Shepard's sketches of pine trees and other forest scenes are on display at the V&A Museum in London.
The game of Poohsticks was originally played by Christopher Milne on a footbridge across a tributary of the River Medway in Posingford Wood, close to Cotchford Farm. It is traditional to play the game there using sticks gathered in nearby woodland. When the footbridge required replacement in recent times the engineer designed a new structure based closely on the drawings by E. H. Shepard of the bridge in the original books, as the bridge did not originally appear as the artist drew it. An information board at the bridge describes how to play the game.

First publication


Winnie-the-Pooh's début in the Dec. 24, 1925 London Evening News



There are three claimants, depending on the precise question posed. Christopher Robin's teddy bear, Edward, made his character début in a poem in Milne's book of children's verse When We Were Very Young (1924). Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name on 24 December 1925, in a Christmas story commissioned and published by the London newspaper The Evening News. It was illustrated by J. H. Dowd.^[6] The first collection of Pooh stories appeared in the book Winnie-the-Pooh. The Evening News Christmas story reappeared as the first chapter of the book, and at the very beginning it explained that Pooh was in fact Christopher Robin's Edward Bear, who had simply been renamed by the boy. The book was published in October 1926 by the publisher of Milne's earlier children's work, Methuen, in England, and E. P. Dutton in the United States.^[7]

Sequel


An authorised sequel Return to the Hundred Acre Wood was published on 5 October 2009. The author, David Benedictus, has developed, but not changed, Milne's characterisations. The illustrations, by Mark Burgess, are in the style of Shepard.^[8]

Stephen Slesinger


On January 6, 1930, Stephen Slesinger purchased U.S. and Canadian merchandising, television, recording and other trade rights to the "Winnie-the-Pooh" works from Milne for a $1000 advance and 66% of Slesinger's income, creating the modern licensing industry. By November 1931, Pooh was a $50 million-a-year business.^[9] Slesinger marketed Pooh and his friends for more than 30 years, creating the first Pooh doll, record, board game, puzzle, US radio broadcast (NBC), animation, and motion picture film.^[10] In 1961, Disney acquired rights from Slesinger to produce articles of merchandise based on characters from its feature animation

Red Shirt Pooh


The first time Pooh and his friends appeared in colour was 1932, when he was drawn by Slesinger in his now-familiar red shirt and featured on an RCA Victor picture record. Parker Brothers also introduced A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh Game in 1933, again with Pooh in his red shirt. In the 1940s, Agnes Brush created the first plush dolls with Pooh in his red shirt. It is important to note that E.H Shepard had drawn Pooh with a shirt as early as the first Winnie-The-Pooh book, which was subsequently coloured red in later coloured editions.

Disney

Main article: Winnie the Pooh (Disney)

Disney's adaptation of Stephen Slesinger, Inc.'s Winnie-the-Pooh.



After Slesinger's death in 1953, his wife, Shirley Slesinger Lasswell, continued developing the character herself. In 1961, she licensed rights to Walt Disney Productions in exchange for royalties in the first of two agreements between Stephen Slesinger, Inc. and Disney.^[11] The same year, Daphne Milne also licensed certain rights, including motion picture rights, to Disney.
Since 1966, Disney has released numerous animated productions starring Winnie the Pooh and related characters. These have included theatrical featurettes, television series, and direct-to-video films, 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 a Disney Channel animated television series, My Friends Tigger & Pooh, focusing on adventures had by 6-year-old Darby and the Pooh characters, with the occasional appearance from Christopher Robin.^[12] The show began airing on the Disney Channel on May 12, 2007.
The Disney version of Winnie the Pooh was featured in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue, the Kingdom Hearts videogames and the TV series House of Mouse
Pooh also appears at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts as a meet-able and child friendly character.

Merchandising revenue dispute


Winnie Pooh with Stingo from Fifi & the Flowertots in Zagreb, Croatia



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.^[13]
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.^[14] Though the Disney corporation was sanctioned by a judge for destroying forty boxes of evidential documents,^[15] 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.^[16] Slesinger appealed the termination, and on September 26, 2007, a three-judge panel upheld the lawsuit dismissal.^[17]
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.^[18] After a series of legal hearings, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the United States District Court for the Central District of California found in favour of Stephen Slesinger, Inc., as did the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On June 26, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, sustaining the ruling and ensuring the defeat of the suit.^[19]
On 19 February 2007 Disney lost a court case in Los Angeles which ruled their "misguided claims" to dispute the licensing agreements with Slesinger, Inc. were unjustified,^[20] but a federal ruling of 28 September 2009, again from Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, determined that the Slesinger family had granted all trademark and copyright rights to Disney, although Disney must pay royalties for all future use of the characters. Both parties have expressed satisfaction with the outcome.^[21][22]

Audio


RCA Victor record from 1932 decorated with Stephen Slesinger, Inc.'s Winnie-the-Pooh.



Selected Pooh stories read by Maurice Evans released on vinyl LP:

• Winnie-the-Pooh (consisting of three tracks: Introducing Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin; Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place; Pooh and Piglet Go Hunting and Nearly Catch a Woozle) 1956
  
• More Winnie-the-Pooh (consisting of three tracks: Eeyore Loses a Tail; Piglet Meets a Heffalump; Eeyore Has a Birthday.)
  

Unabridged recordings read by Peter Dennis of the four Pooh books:

• When We Were Very Young
  
• Winnie-the-Pooh
  
• Now We Are Six
  
• The House at Pooh Corner
  

Television


Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends debuted on NBC Television in 1960.



A version of Winnie The Pooh, in which the animals were played by marionettes, was presented on Oct. 3, 1960, on NBC Television's The Shirley Temple Show.
Five playtime videos (NOTE: These are episodes from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh)

• 2003: Cowboy Pooh
  
• 2003: Detective Tigger
  
• 2004: Pooh Party
  
• Fun 'N Games
  

Magical World of Winnie the Pooh (NOTE: These are episodes from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh)
Full-length features

• 1977: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (trilogy of the Honey Tree, Blustery Day, and Tigger Too!)
  
• 1997: Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin^†
  
• 1999: Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving*^†
  
• 2000: The Tigger Movie
  
• 2002: Winnie the Pooh: A Very Merry Pooh Year*^†
  
• 2003: Piglet's Big Movie
  
• 2004: Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo*^†
  
• 2005: Pooh's Heffalump Movie
  
• 2005: Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie*^†
  
• 2011: "Winnie the Pooh (2011 film)"
  

*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.
Television shows
"Vinni Pukh" and Piglet as they appear in the Russian adaptation.

• Welcome to Pooh Corner (The Disney Channel, 1983–1986)
  
• The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (American Broadcasting Company, 1988–1991)
  
• The Book of Pooh (Disney Channel, 2001–2002)
  
• My Friends Tigger & Pooh (Disney Channel, 2007–present)
  

Holiday TV specials

• 1991: Winnie the Pooh and Christmas Too
  
• 1996: Boo! To You Too! Winnie the Pooh, included in "Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie"
  
• 1998: A Winnie the Pooh Thanksgiving, included in "Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving"
  
• 1998: Winnie the Pooh: A Valentine For You, included in "The Book of Pooh: A Valentine for Eeyore"
  

Soviet adaptation
In the Soviet Union, three Winnie-the-Pooh, or "Vinni Pukh" (Russian language: Винни-Пух) stories were made into a celebrated trilogy^[26] of short films by Soyuzmultfilm (directed by Fedor Khitruk) from 1969 to 1972. Pooh was voiced by Yevgeny Leonov, looking distinctly different from both the yellow-and-red Disney incarnation and Shepard's illustrations. He was brown instead of yellow, as he is known in the US.