3770. Winnie the Pooh 100 Years of Happiness

Winnie the Pooh is an American Walt Disney Company franchise, based on animated fictional characters who have been featured as part of the Disney character line-up. The Winnie the Pooh franchise is based on A. A. Milne's books Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Disney's Pooh was originally voiced by Sterling Holloway in the three original Winnie the Pooh featurettes that were later used as segments to 1977's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Hal Smith took over for the 1981 short Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons, and would maintain the role until Jim Cummings began voicing Pooh in The New Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh (1988–1991). Cummings continues to voice Pooh (as well as Tigger) to this day. In 1961, Walt Disney Productions licensed certain film and other rights to the characters, stories and trademarks from Stephen Slesinger, Inc., and The Estate of A. A. Milne and made a series of cartoon films about him. The early cartoons were based on several of the original stories and the distinctive images made popular by Stephen Slesinger, Inc. during the 1930s through 1960s. Alongside the cartoon versions, which Disney adapted from Slesinger, Slesinger's simplified lines and pastel color adaptations of Shepard's classical drawings are 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. The live-action series Welcome to Pooh Corner ran on the Disney Channel from 1983 to 1986. In 1988, Disney launched the animated series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which aired from 1988 to 1991 with a total of 83 episodes. In 2000, Disney released the full-length film The Tigger Movie in which the character of Tigger played the leading role. Due to its success, two more feature-length Pooh movies based on other characters were released to theaters: Piglet's Big Movie in 2003 and Pooh's Heffalump Movie in 2005. In 2001, Playhouse Disney, along with Shadow Projects, produced a puppet TV series for preschoolers, called The Book of Pooh, which aired from 2001 to 2003. In 2007, Playhouse Disney produced another series for preschoolers, called My Friends Tigger and Pooh, which aired from 2007 to 2010. Winnie the Pooh was the next Pooh feature film to be released, on July 15, 2011. Disney has also changed Pooh's world a bit, by changing the characters' clothes and adding many new characters, such as Gopher.