Celebrating the One Hundred Year Anniversary of Winnie-the-Pooh
Author A. A. Milne published Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926, making this year the titular character’s centennial celebration
First published in 1926, Winnie-the-Pooh has been a childhood staple character for the last 100 years. Author A. A. Milne created Winnie, and his friends, Eeyore, Tigger, Piglet, Rabbit, Roo, and more, based on his son’s plush toys. Milne’s son, Christopher Robin Milne, inspired the character Christopher Robin, a little boy who plays with Pooh and his friends in The Hundred Acre Wood. Milne’s stories followed the boy and his crew of came-to-life stuffed animals as they explored their forest, got into mischief, learned heart warming life lessons, and of course, ate lots of honey.
Much of the original Winnie-the-Pooh story was based on real life. The characters are all based on A. A. Milne’s son and his toys, which are on display at the New York Public Library. The Hundred Acre Wood, where Pooh’s adventures take place, is based on the Five Hundred Acre Wood in East Sussex. Most famously, the name “Winnie” was based on a real life bear. A soldier in WWI named Harry Colebourn bought a black bear cub while living in White River, Ontario. He named her Winnipeg, after his home town, or Winnie for short. He took care of the cub while serving with the Fort Garry House regiment, for which Winnie became an unofficial mascot. When Colebourn’s troop needed to move to France, he left Winnie at the London Zoo where she became a very popular attraction, leading to Colebourn officially donating her after he returned home. Christopher Robin would often visit the London Zoo with his father, loving the black bear so much that he named his own stuffie after her.
In the early 1930s, the rights to Winnie-the-Pooh were purchased from A. A. Milne by Stephen Slesigner. It was Slesigner who first drew Pooh with his iconic red shirt, and he played a big role in making the character a household name. In 1961, Shirley Slesigner Lasswell, Stephen Slesinger’s widow, licensed some of the character rights to Disney, in exchange for royalties. Through six decades, Disney has produced numerous animated television shows and features of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends, making him a staple of their brand. Pooh is one of the roaming character performers seen at the Disney parks, with Disneyland and Disneyworld both having a Winnie-the-Pooh themed attraction where riders gently coast through different scenes in The Hundred Acre Wood. One of Disney’s most recent portrayals of Pooh was in the live action film Christopher Robin (2018), where a grown Christopher Robin returns to The Hundred Acre Wood and rediscovers the whimsy of his childhood friends.
In 2022, the character of Winnie-the-Pooh entered the public domain. While Disney still owns the rights to the trademark and certain iterations of the character, the general public is now free to use the original character designs in any way they’d like leading to creative interpretations of the bear. Most famously, in 2023 a horror movie titled, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, was released. The film follows Pooh and Piglet as they turn violent after Christopher Robin abandons them for college, causing them to go on a murder spree killing anyone who enters into The Hundred Acre Wood. It’s safe to say this interpretation of his character is likely one that A. A. Milne couldn’t have dreamt of when he first published Winnie-the-Pooh 100 years ago.
