Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too


Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too is a 1974 animated featurette based on the third chapter of Winnie-the-Pooh and the fourth and seventh chapters of The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne. The featurette was directed by John Lounsbery and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution on December 20, 1974 as a double feature with the live-action feature film The Island at the Top of the World. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, but lost to Closed Mondays.
Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too was the third animated featurette in the Winnie the Pooh film series, in which it was later added as a segment to the 1977 film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. A soundtrack album was released simultaneously and featured such songs as "The Honey Tree" and "Birthday, Birthday". The film's title is a play on the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" made famous during the 1840 United States presidential election.
It featured the voices of Sebastian Cabot as the narrator, Sterling Holloway as Winnie the Pooh, Paul Winchell as Tigger, John Fiedler as Piglet, Timothy Turner as Christopher Robin, Dori Whitaker as Roo, Barbara Luddy as Kanga, and Junius Matthews as Rabbit.

Plot

During the fall, Tigger has been bouncing on anyone he comes across for fun, especially Rabbit, when he is gardening, which makes Rabbit angry, so he decides to arrange a meeting with Pooh and Piglet and formulate a plan to prevent Tigger from bouncing: abandon Tigger in the woods, and find him the next day so hopefully Tigger will stop bouncing on his friends unexpectedly. Initially the plan seems to work, but when Rabbit, Pooh, and Piglet are unable to find their way home, Pooh makes a suggestion about following a sandpit in order to find their way out of the forest. In an attempt to prove Pooh wrong, Rabbit wanders away. Pooh and Piglet then fall asleep, but are awakened by Pooh's empty stomach. He explains to Piglet that his twelve honeypots in his cupboard have been calling to his tummy from home and that he couldn't hear them over Rabbit's voice. Pooh and Piglet find their way out of the forest, but are immediately bounced by Tigger. Piglet, realizing that the plan failed, mentions Rabbit's plan, and Tigger goes into the forest to find him. Rabbit walks through the darkest part of the forest by himself, and is scared by numerous noises such as a caterpillar eating a leaf and frogs croaking. Rabbit tries to run away in a panic, only to be tackled by Tigger. Rabbit is humiliated that his plan to lose Tigger had failed. Tigger explains to him that "Tiggers never get lost", and takes Rabbit home.
In the next chapter, wintertime comes and Roo wants to go play. Kanga is unable to be with him so she calls on Tigger to look after Roo as long as he comes back in time for Roo's nap. Tigger gladly accepts. Along the way through the woods, Tigger and Roo see Rabbit skating on the ice. Tigger tries to teach Roo how to ice skate by doing it himself, but unfortunately, he loses his balance and collides with Rabbit while trying to regain it. In moments Tigger slides into a snowbank and Rabbit crashes into his house. Tigger then decides that he does not like ice skating. Later on, while bouncing around the woods with Roo on his back, Tigger accidentally jumps to the top of a very tall tree and is afraid to climb back down. He gets even more scared when Roo grabs his tail and uses it as a swing, making Tigger think he's "rocking the forest".
Meanwhile, Pooh and Piglet are investigating strange animal tracks that are actually Tigger and Roo's. Suddenly, they hear Tigger howling for help and quickly hide. At first, Pooh mistakes Tigger's howl for the sound of a "Jagular"; but after seeing that it is actually Tigger and Roo in the tree, he and Piglet come to their rescue. Shortly afterward, Christopher Robin, Rabbit, and Kanga arrive and the gang uses Christopher's coat as a net for Tigger and Roo to land in once they jump from the tree. Roo successfully jumps down, but Tigger, who is still too frightened to jump, makes up several excuses to not come down. Rabbit then decides that the group will just have to leave Tigger in the tree forever, on which Tigger promises never to bounce again if he ever is released from his predicament. At that moment, the narrator chimes in for help. Tigger begs him to "narrate" him down from the tree, and he tilts the book sideways, allowing Tigger to step onto the text of the page. Tigger starts to feel better that he made it this far but before he can do otherwise, the narrator tilts the book back the other way, causing Tigger to fall into the snow.
Happy, Tigger attempts to bounce but Rabbit stops him reminding Tigger of the promise he made. Devastated, Tigger realizes he could not bounce anymore and slowly walks away and Rabbit feels better that there will be peace, but everyone else does not and felt sad to see Tigger depressed and remind Rabbit of the joy Tigger brought when he was bouncing. Then Rabbit, realizing how selfish he was, shows sympathy for Tigger and takes back the promise they had agreed on; he is then given a friendly tackle by an overly-excited Tigger. Tigger invites everyone to bounce with him and even teaches Rabbit how to do it. For the first time, Rabbit is happy to be bouncing, as is everyone else as Tigger sings his signature song once more before the short closes.

Voice cast

In 1975, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too won the Grammy Award for Best Album for Children. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Film release

The film was released on December 20, 1974 in the United States and December 27, 1974 in the United Kingdom, as a supplement to Disney's live-action feature The Island at the Top of the World. On its release day, more than 20 theaters in the United States had a world premiere on the 2 films. It would later be included as a segment in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, which included the two previous Pooh featurettes, released on March 11, 1977.
Like Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too was also reused in theaters in America. In the summer of 1978, some theaters reused Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too as a double-feature with The Cat from Outer Space.
In Australia, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too had its premiere in one theater near Sydney on August 28, 1976 as a double-feature with the reissue of Fantasia . 2 years later on September 2, 1978, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too was first shown in all of Australia along with The Island at the Top of the World. Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too was reused 28 days later in Australia as a double-feature with reissues of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Mary Poppins. In 1982 and 1983, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too was reissued in Australia and was reused a few times during double-features with reissues of Dumbo and Sleeping Beauty.
In Australia, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too had its world television premiere on Nine Network on January 21, 1980. In the US, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too had its television premiere on December 11, 1982 as a special on CBS and was reused again on August 30, 1983. The film was later used again on November 15, 1987 as a special on ABC and was reused again in 1988. The ABC run of the special also contains 3 random Disney cartoons.

Winnie the Pooh featurettes