Winnie The Pooh Research Paper

Winnie-the-Pooh is a tale that spans across generations of childhoods and adulthoods. The gentle appeal of a soft, simple bear and his group of eclectic friends has captured the hearts of millions. However, in the search to make Pooh more marketable, drastic changes have been made to the original text in order to appeal to a wider audience. In my research, I will explore how the commercialization of Winnie-the-Pooh affected the original text, both in its meaning and sentimental value. Winnie the Pooh has not always been the stylized, bright yellow bear that we now see plastered on countless spin-off books, movies, mugs, and shower curtains. On the contrary, the history behind the first publication of Winnie-the-Pooh is one of sweet and simple

Dutton, the American publisher, sold 150,000 copies in the first year. The writer-illustrator team went on to create a book of poems titled Now We Are Six in 1927 and The House at Pooh Corner in 1928. These works made up the classic Winnie-the-Pooh collection. The tide began to shift in 1930 when Stephen Slesinger, a literary agent, purchased the US and Canadian rights to Winnie-The-Pooh, thus creating the modern licensing industry. He paid Milne a mere $1000 advance and got 66% of the Pooh earnings. The newly acquired television, merchandising, and trade rights allowed Slesinger to take Pooh off the page and into the physical world. He proceeded to turn Pooh into a $50 million dollar-a-year entity by 1931 through the licensing of themed plushes, record players, movies, and board games. Slesinger brought Pooh into the world of color, and even gave him his now-iconic red shirt, which never existed in the original text. The biggest shift occurred soon after Slesinger’s death in 1961, when his wife, Shirley, licensed Winnie-the-Pooh over to Disney. This began the “Disneyfication” of Pooh and the emergence of the modern bear that we are currently familiar

These books feature dumbed-down plots and bright colors in order to cast a wide net and attract as many readers as possible. Pooh’s Halloween Pumpkin is a cardboard book that is cut in the shape of a pumpkin. The binding is at the top of the book so the reader can flip the book open and read top to bottom. The eyes of the pumpkin on the cover are covered in sparkles to catch the attention of potential buyers, and there is a bright orange rope handle coming from the top of the book that mimics a trick-or-treat bag. Upon opening the book, the reader is met with an opening line that assumes a familiarity with Winnie-the-Pooh: “It was a crisp autumn day in the Wood”. The original characters are reduced down to their stereotypes, often appearing only to say a one-liner and then leaving. For example, Owl, a classically academic character, sees the massive pumpkin and says “An ample orange pumpkin like this would make a fine paperweight”. Unlike in the original Pooh books, the characters play no role in the plot development, they are simply there to remind us what their character traits are. Pooh’s Secret Garden falls into a similar pattern. The book centers on Pooh trying to plant a garden in order to attract bees and thus have a source of honey. Tigger appears solely to jump up and exclaim that he found a good spot for the garden. The book also features small flaps on