Darrell Baker

After a morning when he cannot find any acorns on the forest floor, Piglet jumps into some catastrophic thinking and assumes there will never be acorns again because they are obviously all being stolen by voracious heffalumps. His unwarranted panic results in him becoming an advocate of nature conservation.

It's not a bad message, but the convoluted way Piglet comes to his epiphany and his subsequent fervor and virtue signaling is a bit off-putting -- not to mention it's going to require a show more pie tin different from the one he is shown using.

(Pooh Project: Phase 2! I've managed to catalog all the shorter Pooh books my family owns (see the list here). While I work through few remaining longer Pooh books we own, I'm missing my daily dose of Pooh, so I'm going to start seeking out some of the Pooh books I don't own – yet – from libraries IRL and online. See the reviews here.) show less

An orange creature is put in a position of authority after using demagoguery to whip up fear in the populace against those bad hombres, the jagulars. He backs up the big lie by running a false flag operation. A coup is orchestrated through a deep state operation run by a bitter, long-eared rival.

Tigger's staggering narcissism makes the heel turn quite believable. For another Tigger attempt at tyranny, be sure to check out Tigger Takes Over from the My Very First Winnie the Pooh series. These show more two prophetic books are surely more kindling to stoke the fire of rancor toward Disney burning in hearts of American conservatives today.

This is an adaptation of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh animated cartoon segment "King of the Beasties" (season 1, episode 17, originally aired Jan. 7, 1989, show credits: story by Mark Zaslove; written by Carter Crocker; directed by Karl Geurs, David Block, Terence Harrison, and Bob Zamboni.) After reading the book, I took the opportunity to rewatch the segment on Disney+. The adaptation has expunged Christopher Robin and some meta gags that start the show and played around with the order of events, but it is pretty faithful otherwise.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

If it hasn't already been proposed, I would like to plead the case for the next adage to be promoted to law and ensconced next to Murphy's, Godwin's, and Sturgeon's. Let's call it the Dickens Dictum, and it shall state, "If any show, series, or entertainment franchise is around long enough, it will inevitably do a homage to A Christmas Carol."

In Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo, Rabbit is the bitter old Scrooge who is declaring, "Bah, humbug!" when Easter comes around. In the film, the show more movie's narrator intrudes into the story and acts as the ghost of Easters past, present and future, revealing why Rabbit wants to replace the holiday with a day of chores -- Spring Cleaning Day.

The movie is a little weak and the songs don't really get your toes tapping or stick in your head afterward. The only thing I really remembered and cherished on today's rewatch was Tigger's little joke about onomatopoeia.

Unfortunately, this coloring book adaptation is weaker still, excising the narrator and distilling the Dickens homage down to one brief dream. Springtime with Roo doesn't seem to have gotten the barrage of adaptations and tie-ins that are given to the Pooh movies that get a theatrical release, so we'll have to settle for this and move on.

FOR REFERENCE:

The Disney direct-to-video animated feature, Winnie the Pooh: Springtime with Roo, was directed by Elliot M. Bour and Saul Andrew Blinkoff from a screenplay written by Tom Rogers based on the characters created by A. A. Milne.

(My Pooh Project: I love Winnie the Pooh, and so does my wife. Having a daughter gave us a chance to indoctrinate her into the cult by buying and reading her every Pooh book we came across. How many is that? I’m going to count them this year by reading and reviewing one every day and seeing which month I finally run out. Track my progress here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/23954351-rod-brown?ref=nav_mybooks&she... ) show less

A good adaptation of a great Christmas special. I watched the animated show over and over as a kid, and now I rewatch it with my family pretty much every year.

Diane Wright Landolf has pared the origin story of Santa Claus down to its essential core, trimming out the narrator and the songs but keeping his turn as an outlaw practicing civil disobedience against an autocratic mayor. Darrell Baker art captures the likenesses of the stop-animation figures well, especially sexy Miss Jessica, one show more of my many lifelong animated crushes.

This adaptation will never replace the original, but it does whet my appetite for watching it again this year.

FOR REFERENCE:

Adaptation of the 1970 animated television special from Rankin/Bass Productions written by Romeo Muller and directed by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. The movie was inspired by the 1934 song, "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie. show less