The character is inspired by a stuffed toy that Milne had bought for his son Christopher Robin in Harrods department store, and a bear they had viewed at London Zoo.

[1] The original English manuscripts are held at Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, Milne's alma mater to whom he had bequeathed the works.

In popular film adaptations, Pooh has been voiced by actors Sterling Holloway, Hal Smith, and Jim Cummings in English, and Yevgeny Leonov in Russian.

[10][11] The bear cub was purchased from a hunter for C$20 by Canadian Lieutenant Harry Colebourn in White River, Ontario, while en route to England during the First World War.

[12] Colebourn, a veterinary officer with the Fort Garry Horse cavalry regiment, named the bear Winnie after his adopted hometown in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

[13][14] Winnie was surreptitiously brought to England with her owner, and gained unofficial recognition as The Fort Garry Horse regimental mascot.

And I think – but I am not sure – that that is why he is always called Pooh.American writer William Safire surmised that the Milnes' invention of the name "Winnie the Pooh" may have also been influenced by the haughty character Pooh-Bah in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado (1885).

Most of his father's visits to the forest at that time were, he noted, family expeditions on foot "to make yet another attempt to count the pine trees on Gill's Lap or to search for the marsh gentian".

For example, the fictional "Hundred Acre Wood" was in reality Five Hundred Acre Wood; Galleon's Leap was inspired by the prominent hilltop of Gill's Lap, while a clump of trees just north of Gill's Lap became Christopher Robin's The Enchanted Place, because no-one had ever been able to count whether there were 63 or 64 trees in the circle.

[21] The game of Poohsticks was originally played by Christopher Robin Milne and his father on the wooden footbridge,[22] across the Millbrook,[23] Posingford Wood, close to Cotchford Farm.

[28] Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name on 24 December 1925, in a Christmas story commissioned and published by the London newspaper Evening News.

He was renamed after an American black bear at London Zoo called Winnie who got her name from the fact that her owner had come from Winnipeg, Canada.

[31] The children's author and literary critic John Rowe Townsend described Winnie-the-Pooh and its sequel The House at Pooh Corner as "the spectacular British success of the 1920s" and praised its light, readable prose.

When he and Piglet are lost in the forest during Rabbit's attempt to "unbounce" Tigger, Pooh finds his way home by following the "call" of the honeypots from his house.

The sequel consists of four short stories by four leading children's authors, Kate Saunders, Brian Sibley, Paul Bright, and Jeanne Willis.

[8] Inspired by the real life of Christopher Robin, it is written by children's writer Jane Riordan in the style of Milne, with illustrations by Mark Burgess emulating the drawings of Shepard.

[42] The first time Pooh and his friends appeared in colour was 1932, when he was drawn by Slesinger in his now-familiar red shirt and featured on an RCA Victor picture record.

Independent filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield capitalized on this shortly thereafter by producing a horror film titled Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey.

In addition, the suit alleged that Disney had failed to pay required royalties on all commercial exploitation of the product name.

[55] After the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, Clare Milne, Christopher Robin Milne's daughter, attempted to terminate any future US copyrights for Stephen Slesinger, Inc.[56] After a series of legal hearings, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the US District Court in California found in favour of Stephen Slesinger, Inc., as did the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

[59][60] Selected Pooh stories read by Maurice Evans released on vinyl LP: In 1951, RCA Records released four stories of Winnie-the-Pooh, narrated by Jimmy Stewart and featuring the voices of Cecil Roy as Pooh, Madeleine Pierce as Piglet, Betty Jane Tyler as Kanga, Merrill Joels as Eeyore, Arnold Stang as Rabbit, Frank Milano as Owl, and Sandy Fussell as Christopher Robin.

[65] In 1960, HMV recorded a dramatised version with songs (music by Harold Fraser-Simson) of two episodes from The House at Pooh Corner (Chapters 2 and 8), starring Ian Carmichael as Pooh, Denise Bryer as Christopher Robin (who also narrated), Hugh Lloyd as Tigger, Penny Morrell as Piglet, and Terry Norris as Eeyore.

They were performed by a cast that included Stephen Fry as Winnie-the-Pooh, Jane Horrocks as Piglet, Geoffrey Palmer as Eeyore, Judi Dench as Kanga, Finty Williams as Roo, Robert Daws as Rabbit, Michael Williams as Owl, Steven Webb as Christopher Robin and Sandi Toksvig as Tigger.

[68] In the Soviet Union, three Winnie-the-Pooh, (transcribed in Russian as Винни-Пух [ru], Vinni Pukh) stories were made into a celebrated trilogy.

[3] Forbes magazine ranked Pooh the most valuable fictional character in 2002, with merchandising products alone generating more than $5.9 billion that year.

In music, Kenny Loggins wrote the song "House at Pooh Corner", which was originally recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

[107] Other politicians have been compared to Winnie-the-Pooh characters alongside Xi, including Barack Obama as Tigger, Carrie Lam, Rodrigo Duterte,[108] and Peng Liyuan as Piglet,[109] and Fernando Chui and Shinzo Abe as Eeyore.

'little bear Winnie') has been censored from video games such as World of Warcraft, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Arena of Valor,[111] and Devotion.

[113] Despite the ban, two Pooh-themed rides still operate in Disneyland Shanghai, and it is also legal to purchase Pooh-bear merchandise and books about Winnie the Pooh in China.

[120] The patches are produced by a private company and demand for them surged greatly after pictures of active duty personal wearing them began circulating.