Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore (1983) Review

 Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So I sat down to watch Super 8 on Blu-ray last night, but I turned it off 30 minutes in because I wasn't enjoying it. So I watched Disney Sing-Along Songs: Disneyland Fun on VHS because I actually got the 1994 VHS release in a collection of tapes that someone I know gave to me two weeks ago along with two other volumes of Disney Sing-Along Songs. But then afterward since I wasn't quite ready to go up to bed yet, I decided to watch Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore on DVD (it's a bonus feature on the DVD for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh) since it's about Eeyore's birthday and my birthday is in two days. So instead of a review of Super 8 directed by JJ Abrams and produced by Spielberg, I'm gonna be talking about the fourth Winnie the Pooh featurette from 1983, Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore. So let's get into it.

It might surprise you to know that despite owning the first three Winnie the Pooh featurettes on VHS, I didn't own Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore. At least not on a Walt Disney Home Video retail VHS release. My grandmother had taped it off the TV along with the 1948 Goofy cartoon, The Big Wash, and a few Chip 'n' Dale cartoons. Though I think one of them was Pluto's Christmas Tree but I don't remember because I haven't watched that tape in about 20 years. So I always watched Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore on that tape. 

One of the things that I liked about this featurette is that the focus is on another character besides Pooh and Tigger. I mean Rabbit played a huge role in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too (1974) and Piglet played a fairly major role in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968) but all three of those were focused on Pooh or Tigger. Whereas Eeyore only has a few lines in the first two featurettes while he's completely absent from Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too. Same with Owl for that matter. 

It's also a departure from the previous three featurettes because aside from Hal Smith, Ralph Wright, Paul Winchell, and John Fiedler the voice cast was changed around for this one. The late Will Ryan replaced Junius Matthews as Rabbit, Hal Smith, who continues to voice Owl, replaced Sterling Holloway as Pooh, and Julie McWhirter Dees replaced Barbara Luddy as Kanga, while both Christopher Robin and Roo have always had different voice actors for each featurette. Oh and the narrator has changed too. Sebastian Cabot was the narrator in the first three featurettes, but he was replaced here by Laurie Main, who narrated Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons in 1981, narrated Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore in 1983, narrated Welcome to Pooh Corner also in 1983 and then returned in 2003 to reprise his role as the narrator for the video game tie-in to Piglet's Big Movie (2003), Piglet's Big Game, which came out for the GameCube, the Game Boy Advance and the PlayStation 2. And because I watched Welcome to Pooh Corner whenever I was in the hospital, the Laurie Main version of the Narrator was as much a part of my childhood as the Sebastian Cabot version was.

One thing that I find weird about this featurette is that it ignores Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too, where Piglet lives with Pooh. At the end of The Blustery Day, Owl takes over Piglet's house and Piglet moves in with Pooh. Owl isn't in Tigger Too but at the beginning, just before Tigger bounces Piglet, you can see that a Piglet sized door was installed in Pooh's house. But in A Day for Eeyore Owl is back in his original treehouse which was blown down and destroyed by the windstorm in The Blustery Day and the Piglet sized door is no longer in evidence in Pooh's house either. And I mean Winnie the Pooh doesn't have any real continuity, beyond, Tigger and Piglet first appear in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day and that's it. Even the full length films have no real continuity between them. So it really doesn't matter, it's just Owl's house being destroyed and him moving into Piglet's place, while Piglet moves into Pooh's is a pretty big plot point in Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. 

Even though Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore is different from the other three featurettes, including the music, and I didn't watch as often as the other three, because I didn't have it at home, I still love it. Because all four featurettes were a big part of my childhood, and I don't have an absolute favourite out of all four of them. Because they're all so good. Winnie the Pooh is comfort food when it comes to movies, be it the full length feature films, the TV shows or the featurettes so I can't choose a favourite.

Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore was released on March 25th, 1983 alongside the 1983 theatrical re-release of Disney's 1963 animated feature, The Sword in the Stone. It's also the first Winnie the Pooh featurette to not have any songs as part of the story. Tigger Too had a reprise of "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers", but this one has no songs in it at all, though a remix of the Winnie the Pooh theme song is played during the opening credits.

It's not on Disney+ but Winnie the Pooh and a Day for Eeyore is included as a bonus feature on the 2002 VHS and DVD releases, the 2007 DVD release, and the 2013 Blu-ray release for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and there are several standalone VHS releases for it as well. But the easiest way to check it out is on the DVD and Blu-ray releases for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh that I mentioned. 

And that my friends is probably going to be it for me for this week. I might do a comic book review tomorrow, but we'll see. And I'm not doing anything over the weekend since it's my birthday on Saturday and I have family coming over and friends will be texting and messaging me all day as well. So if I don't do a comic book review tomorrow have a great weekend and I will see you all next week back here in the Geek Cave. Take care.