By
Nicole Lampert
Last updated at 10:57 PM on 7th April 2011
Back in 1926, a celebrated playwright named Alan Alexander Milne wrote a story about his son Christopher Robin’s games with his favourite toy bear in the forest outside their East Sussex home.
He was not to know his creation would turn into a cultural behemoth that would become his lasting legacy, overshadow the life of his son, and turn into a huge merchandising business which, nearly 90 years later, is still worth more than £500 million a year.
The bear is, of course, Winnie the Pooh, the honey-obsessed bear ‘of little brain’ who, along with his friends including Tigger, Roo, Piglet, Eeyore and Kanga, is even more popular now than when Milne first penned those stories about his son.
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Winnie has for the last 40-odd years been primarily the property of Disney. While the Milne books were already popular around the world, Disney’s short films featuring the bear in 1964 made him a global phenomenon. Today, you can get everything from Pooh shower caps to toasters; yoghurts to money boxes; iPhone apps to chopsticks.
No wonder Disney boss John Lasseter immediately commissioned a new Pooh film after getting the job as animation chief at the studio.
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Winnie the Pooh, the movie, has been two years in the making and its bosses have gone very much back to basics.
The film-makers spent a week in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex — in the book it is nicknamed the Hundred Acre Wood — where Christopher Robin Milne spent his summers with his parents making up adventures to have with his stuffed toys.