Playdate with Winnie the Pooh

I'm a diehard Winnie the Pooh fan, and it was high time that Disney Jr made their own Pooh Bear show. Yes, they played reruns of My Friends Tigger and Pooh for a while, much to my amazement, but they never made a Pooh Bear show of their own before this came along. During my heyday in the 2000s and early 2010s, I've came across various plush toys and action figures of Pooh and friends as babies and a few other products featuring baby Pooh and company, and I have a few of those toys myself. There was a logo on some of their boxes and tags that said, "Pooh Babies," and for those longest time, I thought that was the name of a TV series starring the Pooh characters as babies, but there's actually no show by that name. I'm guessing that's the name of the merchandise line they're in. This is the closest thing to it that there is.

Listen, I understand other reviewers' complaints about how much this diverges from the ostensible source material. However, filtered through the lens of how much Winnie the Pooh content Disney has produced over the years, as well as the title's home on Disney Junior, I would argue it's perfectly in line with the Disney Winnie the Pooh brand (even if not the Milne Pooh brand).

I appreciate the digestible 3-minute episodes and I think the decision (with this and the sister show Me & Winnie the Pooh) to teach kids resilience is an excellent one. As a former filmmaker with little experience in animation, I do find the animation quite charming as well. And as far as my kid is concerned, she loves every second of it. I'm also comforted that the worse aspects of the characters' personalities are both toned down and actually celebrated by their friends. Oh, and the music is pretty decent too!

All in all, I highly recommend this for any parent of a tiny human whose first word was Pooh (and not the diaper kind), and obviously for said tiny human as well.

My 3 year old loves it. The music is tolerable and the animation is actually impressively rendered with lots of textures and a nice stop motion aesthetic.

The episodes are short (2 minutes) so my only qualm is on Disney plus it is not strung together as one longer program but as many individual episodes. The theme song / credit interludes get tedious.

I was astonished to find so many angry reviews from *ahem* adults complaining about a toddler snow. It "Ruined" Pooh Bear!? Pu-lease. Not every program will be tailored to you and I'm sure there will be more Pooh Bear in the future that fits the "classic" vibe you seem to be pining for. To see so many of these aggressive reviews from adults on a show aimed at kids...pathetic.

Disney should stop salvaging their franchises and making them new to appeal to little kids. By redesigning characters and removing the original charm of these originals. They have ruined Winnie the Pooh for me and everyone else. So embarrassing and disgusting. It sickens me when studios recycle and make things worse for this new 2020 generation. Literally put your kids to watch the cartoons that made them the stars they are now. Not some stupid shorts about baby Pooh and baby tigger baby piglet playing with toys for 2 minutes. Could even bore a toddler who is a Pooh fan or whichever. Just stay away from this disgrace.

It seems ALL of the negative reviews are comparing this to older Pooh projects. You can't. This is something different. This is directed at toddlers, and for that this is as good as it gets. Lessons are great. The art is unique. The voice actors are actual kids, which always connect with kids more than adults pretending to be kids.

My only (yes, only) complaint is that the episodes are far too short. Not sure what their reasoning there is, but if these were even 5 minutes it would be better! But full 11 minutes would be great. If this was longer I'd give it 10/10 for sure! But where it stands, 8/10 will have to stay.