February 4 - Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree

Image copyright Disney

On this day, in 1966, Disney released their first production starring a bear of very little brain, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. Based on the first two chapters of Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne's beloved children's book, Honey Tree began a franchise in Disney history that would take on a life of its own, its popularity at times eclipsing everything else in the Disney family. As ubiquitous as the Pooh characters are today, people might not remember that they debuted steeped in controversy, albeit one that Disney brought on itself.

Walt had begun trying to acquire the rights to the Winnie the Pooh stories in 1938. It wasn't until 1961 that he actually got the job accomplished. Initially intending to make a feature film, after the mixed reception that Alice in Wonderland received, he decided to make a featurette and release it with a live action movie. Since most of his focus was on The Jungle Book, he turned the whole project over to Woolie Reitherman asking him to Americanize the characters and punch up the humor.

Woolie took his instructions to heart and decided that the story needed a more down-home folksy resident of the Hundred Acre Wood. That's when Gopher was born. For some strange reason, apparently adding a new character meant one of the old ones had to be left out. And even stranger, Woolie felt that the one that should be left out would be Pooh's best friend (outside of Christopher Robin, of course), Piglet. A move that fans of the books couldn't help but notice and they were not happy about it. Needless to say, Piglet would figure prominently in the second installment two years later, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, and would never be left out again.

Image copyright Disney

Released along with The Ugly Dachshund starring Dean Jones and Susan Pleshette, Honey Tree received mixed to positive reviews. Critics were happy that Disney literally took a page out of the books, a trope that would continue through the series and into the attraction at the Magic Kingdom. E.H. Shepard, the original illustrator of the books, called the new look of the characters a travesty (no surprises there) but A.A. Milne's widow reportedly liked it. Most folks were fairly unanimous in their praise of the songs by the Sherman Brothers.

It would take eleven more years for Walt's plan of a Winnie the Pooh feature to happen. The three shorts that had been released up to that point, Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, were combined together with additional bridging material to create the studio's 22nd animated feature, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. The multitude of shorts, features, television series and video games that have spawned since, just go to show how endearing Milne's tubby little cubby continues to be.