YMMV / Winnie the Pooh

For tropes related to the 2011 film, go here.

General

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • This psychological journal gives a clinical assessment of the characters, determining them as having a wide variety of psychological disorders. Whilst published in an actual medical journal, it could almost be seen as an Affectionate Parody of the characters' behaviours.
  • One (probably joking) interpretation of Owl from the 2011 movie paints him as the movie's Big Bad, suggesting that he knew perfectly well that he had Eeyore's tail, and that rather than come clean, he made up the rumor of a monster called the Backson in order to cover his tracks. It's still agreed that he's not as nearly malicious as other Disney Villains, though.
    • Owl also has one from the original movie. He takes Piglet's house without a word, despite the fact that he must have known what he was doing, as he was sent earlier to find Piglet.
  • There's a common debate whether Pooh is the stupidest or in fact most mentally balanced character in the Hundred Acre Wood, due to his common matter-of-fact moments of wisdom and being hounded less by neuroses than the others.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Pooh likes eating honey from jars, which tends to be portrayed as a solid bright yellow color and fairly thick and creamy in texture, rather than a semi-translucent, syrupy orange-gold liquid. However, the honey he eats is crystallised "set" or "creamed" honey, where the honey crystals are ground very fine to prevent a grainy texture. This has sometimes not been encountered by readers or viewers before, leading to confusion due to the lack of similarity with "runny" honey. "Runny" honey will itself crystallise over time, but these crystals are much larger than those in "set" honey.
• Angst? What Angst?: Sort of, Tigger does have the occasional bout of depression or disillusion, but usually he's pretty hard to get down.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Everyone knows that Pooh and friends live in the Hundred Acre Wood — except that they don't. "The Hundred Acre Woods" is actually just a small section of a much larger, nameless forest (based on and clearly meant to be Ashdown Forest in Sussex, but in the books just called "the Forest"). The only character who actually lived in the Hundred Acre Wood is Owl; the rest of them live in other parts of the Forest. Though this misconception is probably another result of Adaptation Displacement: in the Disney version, "The Hundred Acre Wood" is the name for the entire Forest.
  • The franchise was only banned on Chinese social media, not the entire country itself. In China, it's still popular with children and is still featured in Shanghai Disneyland.
  • Everyone knows Pooh was based on a plush teddy bear known as Edward Bear owned by Christopher Robin, which is a fact constantly repeated by official sources, including Disney. However, this is only partially true. While Edward Bear did inspire Pooh, his design in the books was not based on Edward, but rather, it was based on a separate teddy bear named Growler that was owned by E. H. Shepard's son. This makes Pooh a Composite Character of the two teddy bears, having the background of Edward Bear and the design of Growler.
• Designated Villain: Rabbit may be a hot-tempered, bossy, and egotistical jerk, but since Pooh eats his honey and Tigger ruins his garden and crashes into him constantly, it's pretty understandable why he's like that and it's hard not to be on his side on these cases.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Kanga has a fanbase due to being the only female of the main cast, despite by far getting the least limelight out of all of them. This especially applies to the Disney version, who is often voiced by beloved actresses like Kath Soucie.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: No, Rabbit, Owl and Gopher are not stuffed animals. They are real animals who happen to exist in the same world as the stuffed animals. Saying they are stuffed animals is guaranteed to anger the Pooh fandom.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Russia: Due to the famously woolseyised translations by Boris Zakhoder, the books soon became the Soviet shorts, which are among the most well-known (while not the most well-loved) of them among Russians today.
  • United States: While simply the books were hugely successful in Britain, the Disney adaptations made Pooh a Cash-Cow Franchise in the States, also to this day, to the point of new books coming out, mainly because of the U.S. love of the franchise. To give you an extra indicator of the franchise's popularity in the U.S., the original plush toys that inspired the books are notably located in the U.S. at the New York Public Library as opposed to their native Britain.
  • France: Winnie the Pooh is the second most popular Disney character (and franchise) after Mickey Mouse (and before Donald Duck). It was especially popular during the 1980s, having its own localized version of Welcome to Pooh Corner (the narrator sequences were changed to suit the French audience) as well as a magazine series.
  • Japan: After the Disney adaptations came to the country, Pooh quickly grew to become incredibly popular and widely adored amongst Japanese audiences, even becoming the most popular character in the country at one point; his Tokyo Disneyland ride has lines spread over two hours and he's gotten locally-made webshorts, merchandise and even his own museum exhibit.
  • Norway: Well-known enough to influence Thorbjørn Egner's works, which are themselves popular in his native country, along with a couple of songs he wrote the lyrics for for his translations becoming popular children's songs in their own right.
• Older Than They Think: Combined with Common Knowledge. Pooh's red shirt is typically assumed by even hardcore fans to be an addition to his design by Disney since his original design was often portrayed to be nude. While Pooh was primarily nude in the books and the red shirt didn’t become a prominent aspect of his design til Disney adapted him to the big screen, Pooh's red shirt actually predates Disney's adaptation by a number of years, as he briefly wore a red buttoned shirt in the first chapter of The House At Pooh Corner, and has donned a red shirt in pre-Disney merchandise as early as 1932.
• Pop Culture Holiday: Fans celebrate "National Winnie the Pooh Day" on January 18, the birthdate of Pooh's creator, A. A. Milne. The holiday is also officially acknowledged by Disney.
• Values Resonance: As many fans have pointed out in more recent times, the way the cast treats Eeyore, who all but has depression, is highly respectful for a series that began in the 1920s. Namely, they always invite him to things or adventures, but never attempt to force him to enjoy himself or have fun, which is exactly how many depressed people report wanting to be treated.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • It's not unusual for those not very familiar with the Pooh series to assume that Rabbit and Piglet are both female. Heck, it's not unusual even for those who are rabid fans of the series to sometimes still find themselves thinking this way, even though they know better. From the Viewer Gender Confusion page: "One is a nagging, Obsessively Organized neurotic with a thing for doilies, while the other is a timid, high-voiced submissive wearing what appears to be a pink one-piece swimsuit. Even Roo's cheeriness makes him come off as more of a tomboy. Since the characters are mostly asexual or pre-pubescent, the Smurfette Principle isn't so glaringly obvious.
  • Lots of viewers are confused by Rabbit's personality and home decor as to whether he's an old lady or a gay man. (Or just British)
  • Also, Owl was depicted as female in the Russian translation by Boris Zakhoder and in the Soviet Vinni Pukh cartoons based on it (because the Russian word for "owl" is feminine), as well as in the original Norwegian translation of the books.
• Viewer Name Confusion: Some people think that Winnie-the-Pooh's full name is Winnie The Pooh, with "Winnie" as a first name and "Pooh" as a last name. Actually, his real name is Edward, and "Winnie-the-Pooh" is a nickname. Sometimes, he gets called "Pooh", but you can never call him just "Winnie" as that's a girl's name.

The books

• Can't Un-Hear It: Just try reading the books without hearing the characters speak with the voices given to them in the Disney adaptations.
• First Installment Wins: While several official sequels to the original novels were made by different authors over the years, they are nowhere near as popular or widely beloved as the original two books by A. A. Milne are and are largely ignored by most, including Disney.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Christopher Robin Milne grew to hate the books his father wrote, because they were used by his classmates as an excuse to bully him. The author himself wasn't too fond of the books either, due to Magnum Opus Dissonance.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: The common consensus is that the unofficial sequels done by other authors, while still often charming and fun in their own right, don't quite hit the mark and aren't as introspective and witty as the original Milne novels. Many Milne fans also feel the same way about the Disney adaptations.
• Sweetness Aversion: Milne's creations have sometimes been criticized for this.
  Dorothy Parker: It is that word "hummy", my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: In Ernest Shepherd's illustrations, Christopher Robin's rather feminine shoes, long smock-like shirts, and pageboy haircut tend to confuse some children.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Although the tone of the original stories and poems is mostly tongue-in-cheek, many texts and books have been written that analyze and explore the deeper aspects of the stories or use the setting and characters to illustrate complex philosophical ideas. Perhaps most famous are Benjamin Hoff's The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet, which use the characters to explore and explain various Taoistic principles. It works surprisingly well.

The Disney franchise

• Adaptation Displacement: To an extent, the books are popular, but not nearly as known as the Disney interpretation, the fact Disney Pooh is The Merch almost as much as Mickey Mouse doesn't help. If you ask any random child to draw Pooh, he will be wearing the Disney Red Shirt. In fact, when the first book entered the US public domain in 2022, many people assumed that the Disney Pooh was public domain. Rule of thumb: Book Pooh is nude and brown, and is fair game. Disney Pooh is yellow with a red shirt, and is still copyrighted.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Gopher is not popular with British fans of the franchise, if only because Gopher was never in the original books (hence the quips about him "not being in the book"), but was created by Disney to give the films more appeal to American audiences. As such, he is considered a symbol of the heavy Americanization the franchise underwent when adapted by Disney. Furthermore, as gophers are native only to North and Central America, his inclusion (and the fact that he's one of the few character who's explicitly not a stuffed animal) implies that the location of the Hundred Acre Wood is the US, whereas the original books are clearly set in the UK. As a result, Gopher was excluded from the 2011 animated film and the 2018 live-action film Christopher Robin, as both were specifically designed to be a lot more faithful to the original books and thus more appealing to British audiences.
• Awesome Music:
  • The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh theme song, due to the rock upbeat feel.
  • My Friends Tigger and Pooh's comes in close second.
  • The theme of The Book of Pooh is memorable in its own right.
  • With a few good friends, and a stick or two...
  • The first credits theme for New Adventures warrants a mention.
  • "Shoulder to Shoulder" is a very tender and heartfelt theme about Roo and Lumpy's friendship in Pooh's Heffalump Movie.
  • Jim Cummings (1952) and Andy Sturmer both really kill it for "Underneath the Same Sky" in the My Friends Tigger & Pooh movie Tigger & Pooh and a Musical Too, and Kenny Loggins rocks out quite nicely for his pop version. Tigger's "Bouncin'" and the song "One Big Happy Family" are both real highlights from this one as well.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • A lot of book purists detest Gopher (partly for not being in the original book and partly for his early Replacement Scrappy status for Piglet), but he still has a lot of fans who enjoy his wise-cracking personality and mourn how little screen-time he receives.
  • Like Gopher before him, Lumpy has his fans and his haters. A lot of fans find him endearing and entertaining, while others dislike him for having turned the Heffalumps into cute and cuddly creatures instead of the unknown menaces from the earlier days of the franchise. The more negative sentiment got worse when he became a recurring character in My Friends Tigger & Pooh and lost the two biggest assets he had, 2-D animation and his original voice.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Winnie the Pooh is one of Disney's most popular properties, but it's even bigger in Asian countries, namely Japan and Hong Kong, where merchandise can be found everywhere and the rides based on the franchise are the most popular in those countries' Disney parks. The 2011 film often appears on DVD sales charts in Japan, selling just as many copies as the domestically-produced Kiki's Delivery Service.
• Ho Yay: Eeyore and Tigger share a few moments. ^note (Though, really, it seems to be more that Tigger is so love with himself that remaking Eeyore into his image is more a form of praising and worshipping himself. Note that Eeyore is able to foil this by pointing out that another Tigger's existence would make Tigger no longer unique.)
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Tigger's trademark form of saying goodbye ("TTFN! Ta-Ta For Now!") was originally British slang which became very popular during the Second World War and entered Tigger's vernacular by ad-lib from his voice actor, but nonetheless gets an added layer of humour from the rise of the Internet and the pervasion of text-speak in everyday conversation.
• Movement Mascot: As said above, this version of Pooh was used to mock Chinese president Xi Jinping. Chinese (and non-Chinese) people who are against him and the Chinese government in general, still use Pooh's image as a symbol against them and their unfair laws.
• My Real Daddy:
  • Although the original short films are done by Walt Disney Animation Studios. It can be argued that the true shapers of the franchise under Disney are Walt Disney Television Animation and Disneytoon Studios, who both expanded upon and fleshed out the characters and setting beyond the books and original films. It helps that most of the franchise's output after the films is done by them, whereas Walt Disney Animation Studios wouldn't do another Pooh production after 1983's A Day for Eeyore until Winnie the Pooh (2011), 28 years later.
  • In regards to voice actors, Jim Cummings, who took over as Pooh and Tigger from Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell respectively, is the voice of those characters, with fans not keen on anyone else voicing them. He is so associated with the role that he is the only actor to reprise his characters in Winnie the Pooh (2011) and Christopher Robin, all while the other characters got new actors (Tigger was planned to be voiced by Chris O'Dowd in the latter, but Disney ultimately decided to have Cummings reprise his role instead, due to backlash from audiences too accustomed with Cummings as Tigger).
  • In cases of both, while characterisation is often a divisive standpoint between novel and Disney enthusiasts, the Disney works often take credit for developing characters who were mere bit players in the novels. This is especially true for Roo, who is often remembered for his bigger role and Nikita Hopkins' performance in the Disneytoons works, while Ken Samsom's more neurotic and sensitive portrayal as Rabbit is so iconic that even the unofficial sequel novels seem to be struggling not to base their portrayal off of it.
• Older Than They Think: Christopher Robin's British accent in the 2011 film received backlash, but this is far from the first time he's had one. In fact, The Other Wiki claims that only three out of sixteen voice actors (Bruce Reitherman from Honey Tree, and Tim Hoskins and Edan Gross from New Adventures and Christmas Too) and his actor in the live action The Book of Pooh (Paul Tiesler) for him have used an American accent, the rest using received pronunciation.
• Periphery Demographic: This is probably one of the few for which most people will unashamedly admit to being a member. Let's face it, most of Disney's Pooh releases are squarely aimed at preschool or early grade-school audiences, but if you ask most fans, they'll probably unashamedly admit to liking Pooh. And there are certainly merchandise releases out there for adults related to this series. Christopher Robin is notably even largely aimed towards this demographic.
• Popular with Furries: Kanga has gained a large following in the furry fandom in recent years. Especially from furries who grew up with the Disneytoon Studios' Winnie The Pooh movies made during the early 2000s. Helps that Kath Soucie gave her a very soothing voice. Her son Roo also gained a similar following due to his cute and energetic nature, and his bigger role and character arc in said movies.
• Protagonist Title Fallacy:
  • Pooh's Heffalump Movie revolves largely around Roo, with Pooh largely a bit player in the rest of the cast's side plot.
  • Ironically Roo suffers this himself in his own limelight film. Only the start of Springtime for Roo centres around him, the rest is Yet Another Christmas Carol for Rabbit.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Gopher was originally intended to be used in place of Piglet in the adaptations to give more American appeal. Fans of the novels were against it and thus Piglet was adapted into "A Blustery Day" onwards, arguably allowing Gopher to be a fan favourite in his own right.
  • Ironically enough, there are several fans who view Lumpy as this for Gopher. Others view him as this for the (decidedly less cute) Heffalumps that were occasionally seen in The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
• Sacred Cow: Considering the huge Periphery Demographic and the massive success of this franchise, it's safe to argue that it does have this status among all of Disney's franchises.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: More than a few fans want Kanga to get more attention at long last, being the one character of the main group (and even some of the ancillary cast) that almost never gets A Day in the Limelight and was never quite developed a defining foible like the others.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Rabbit may be an unreasonable grumpy jerk who's always bossy and controlling, but he just wants peace and quiet and Tigger just obnoxiously destroying his garden and bouncing on him greeting him and Pooh eating his honey make him quite sympathetic.
• The Woobie: Nearly every blasted character has at least one moment as this. Piglet was essentially conceived for this role, however.

The comic strip

• Crosses the Line Twice: In some strips, Pooh takes act of being an asshole to new levels, especially when he's being a douchebag to Eeyore.
• The Woobie: Eeyore, this time being more open about his thoughts and having to deal with Jerkass Pooh.

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