After the Hundred Acre Wood gets swamped by Valentine's Day cards (mostly from Pooh), Rabbit convinces the other animals to cancel the holiday. But after an anonymous Valentine gift arrives at Pooh's house, a chain reaction quickly begins.
This episode contains examples of the following tropes.
- An Aesop: Holidays aren't about giving as many physical gifts as possible, but they're meant to show people you care about them. Pooh is simply too innocent and forgetful to remember this lesson and thus the holiday is banned by Rabbit, but even when he tries to follow it, it just takes one Valentine for Pooh to cause another uproar in the forest.
- Big "NO!": Twice by Rabbit when the Valentines come trailing out of his closet.
- Brick Joke: Rabbit notes they should follow Eeyore's direction, given he sent no Valentines last year. As it turns out, Eeyore sent the first Valentine that began this year's chain reaction, feeling left out last year.
- Cannot Keep a Secret: When Pooh decides to give Piglet a Valentine, he says he can't tell anyone including himself since he's not good at keeping secrets.
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: Tigger, when being distracted by Piglet, says they've agreed on ice cream sundaes and eggs for breakfast, which is certainly not an appetizing combination. Piglet is obviously just going along with it out of anxiety at the Valentine crisis.
- Disaster Dominoes:
- Eeyore causes the whole mess when he gives Pooh a Valentine, which Pooh gives back to Piglet; Piglet, not wanting to seem ungrateful, gets a Valentine cake to give to Pooh which soon starts a chain reaction that causes everyone to start giving out Valentines again.
- When Piglet gets nervous and can't remember his lines, Owl tries to coach him, but lets go of the rope holding him up while doing so, making him land in the orchestra's tuba. When Owl pulls him out, Piglet swings around and hits the button of a big fan, which starts blowing everything away. Things snowball from there until Tigger, thinking it's time for the big finish, blows up the whole stage.
- Disproportionate Reward: The other animals take note that for every Valentine they give to Pooh, he gives tens to thousands back. They attempt to call Valentine's Day off simply because the Wood is becoming littered with so many gifts and cards.
- Distant Reaction Shot: When Rabbit unwittingly causes his cabinet full of cards to unhitch, the episode cuts to a distant shot from outside his property line to show the explosion of card's erupting from his house.
- Eat the Evidence: When he gets the cake he thinks is a gift from Owl, Tigger eats the whole thing, plate and all, to hide the evidence.
- Entertainingly Wrong: When everyone discusses who broke the promise to not send Valentines, Pooh suggests that it was someone who wasn't present to witness the promise to begin with, believing that it was Christopher Robin who gave him the honeypot valentine. Everyone, including Rabbit, agrees that he didn't know about the promise, so it's likely it came from him. While Pooh was right that it was someone who didn't know about the promise, it was actually Eeyore that sent the Valentine, trying to make up for not participating in last year's Valentine's Day.
- Epic Fail: Pretty much everything about the Valentine's play falls apart, leading Christopher Robin to assume it's a comedy.
- Everyone Join the Party: It's a feature length special, and the only episode where every main character (including Gopher and the then demoted Kanga and Roo) gets a speaking role.
- Foreshadowing: In the opening meeting scene, Rabbit mentions how they should follow Eeyore's example of not sending any Valentine cards, setting up how Eeyore will unwittingly cause the whole Valentine's Day chaos to unfold due to not having participated the year before.
- Girls Have Cooties: Tigger would much rather bounce Kanga than kiss her. When Rabbit demands a kiss for the play, Tigger relents...and kisses him.Tigger: A kiss??? YEEAGHH!! Couldn't I just shake her pouch or something?
- Halfway Plot Switch: While the episode still revolves around Valentine's Day, the focus shifts from before and after the commercial break. The first half revolves around the characters quickly failing to uphold Rabbit's Valentine's Day ban, while the second half shifts focus to production of a Valentine play for Christopher Robin.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Rabbit banning Valentine's Day is harsh, but something had to be done because Pooh kept giving so many that the Wood was flooded with cards that nobody could reasonably store and keep up with. Not even moderation was in the cards (no pun intended) since Pooh is simply a bear of little brain without that kind of self-control, which Rabbit recognizes as the last straw before declaring his ban.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Everybody believes that Christopher Robin was the one who sent the original Valentine honey pot since he wasn't present at the meeting. As noted in Entertainingly Wrong, it was someone who wasn't at the meeting - Eeyore.
- Madness Mantra: "I AM CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUPID...."
- Mama Bear: During the chaos of the imploding play, Kanga takes a moment to scoop up her son Roo when he begins getting blown away by the fans.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: While Christopher Robin's absence from the meeting isn't that surprising, Eeyore's absence is less so. His absence from the meeting inadvertently causes the whole Valentine's Day crisis to boil over since he sends a Valentine to Pooh, which starts everything again.
- No Hugging, No Kissing: As The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is primarily meant for young audiences, the idea of kissing someone romantically is alien to the cast. Tigger is horrified at the thought of kissing Kanga for a play.
- Not Me This Time: Double-Subverted. When Rabbit blames Pooh for starting up another wave of Valentines, Pooh confesses that while everything else was his fault, he wasn't the one who sent the original honeypot Valentine that started it all.Rabbit: Pooh, why did you do it?Pooh: But I didn't, Rabbit. Someone else broke it first and I... just broke it... some more.
- Oh, Crap!: Owl has a subdued one when he realizes that he let go of the rope holding Piglet up while he was trying to coach him on what to say.Owl: "I am Cupid, bringer of—" (sees the rope fully fly out of his reach) ...Oh my.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Pooh tries to discover who sent his Valentine by posing as a mailbox. While it seems to work for everyone else, Kanga and Roo see through it, though play along out of sympathy. Pooh admits that his disguise isn't working.
- Performance Anxiety: Poor Piglet can't remember his lines "I am Cupid, bringer of love" when the play is on and it's his cue, only stammering "I" over and over. Owl trying to coach and nudge him into saying his lines properly leads to the Disaster Dominoes listed above.
- Poor Communication Kills: Eeyore sends a Valentine's gift to Pooh, but does not label who it's from. This leads to several other return Valentines to other animals, who all follow suit until they deduce that Christopher Robin likely made the first gift, leading to their disastrous Valentines play.
- Prima Donna Director: Rabbit takes the role of directing the Valentine's play, with his usual pompous tantrums at the other animals' inability to perform, and the stage credits written to consist nearly entirely of his name.
- Say My Name: Rabbit angrily yells out Pooh's name after the second Valentines avalanche from his closet.
- The Show Must Go On: Pooh and Kanga attempt desperately to act out the play, despite everything (literally) blowing apart around them.Pooh: Kanga, (chuckles) I give you these... (the wind blows off the blooms of his bouquet) ...Oh bother.Kanga: Oh, isn't that sweet! Thank you, dear. (takes the flower stems anyways)Pooh: (As the wind starts blowing the bench they're on off the stage) I must not have read the script closely, because I don't remember this part...
- The Smurfette Principle: Kanga gets a larger role than usual, largely because being the only female animal necessitates her for the Valentine's play.
- Spotting the Thread: In the episode's epilogue, Piglet notices the inconsistency that Christopher Robin gave Pooh a second Valentine after the play after the one he already gave him that morning. Pooh notes it's odd and suggests he forgot, which he quickly admits would be unusual for Christopher Robin given he's the voice of reason who does a lot of remembering for him. Eeyore arrives on cue to prove their suspicions are correct.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Courtesy of Tigger running the play's "special defects".
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: No one in the Hundred Acre Wood is sending Valentines. Especially not if you directly ask them about it.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The group comes to believe Christopher Robin is this as he wasn't present at the meeting banning the holiday. It's actually Eeyore who wasn't present at the meeting and started everything by giving out a Valentine.
- Valentine's Day Episode: The episode is set on Valentine's Day.
- Why Didn't I Think of That?: When Piglet comes up with the idea to make a play based on a Valentines card for Christopher Robin so that it'd be big enough to come from all of them at once, Rabbit thinks it's a wonderful idea, and then wonders why he didn't think of it himself.
