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Is anyone interested in preserving the original featurette versions of “The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” (“Honey Tree”, “Blustery Day”, and “Tigger Too”)?
The original half-hour shorts were released on VHS several times in the 1990s and were last put out in 2000. Since then, the only version to currently exist on home media is the 1977 compilation film version (though “The Blustery Day” was included as a bonus feature on the 2006 DVD of “Pooh’s Grand Adventure”; unfortunate for those living outside of the USA). I feel like these versions definitely deserve to be released and restored on DVD (and at least included alongside “The Many Adventures”).
Interestingly, I did hear that “Blustery Day” and “Tigger Too” were recently restored and aired on Disney Junior last year. (Did anybody manage to record those airings by the way?) Also, I found these remastered screenshots of the original title card scenes, as shown on the “A Tigger Tale” bonus feature from the “Tigger Movie” Blu-Ray:
In terms of a fan-made restoration of the short versions, the only elements to really worry about would be two things:
- The original opening and closing credits
- Bruce Reitherman’s original dialogue as Christopher Robin in “The Honey Tree” (for “The Many Adventures”, he was re-dubbed by Jon Walmsley, who originally voiced the character in the “Blustery Day” segment and later in the epilogue of the movie. For some reason, Timothy Turner’s dialogue as the character in the “Tigger Too” segment is left intact.)
Another concerning issue is the widescreen cropping of the compilation film version, when it was released to Blu-Ray in 2013. This is actually something that’s been recently occurring to almost all of the 1960s-70s Disney movies (ex. “Jungle Book”, “Robin Hood”).
Oddly, I did find a few rare open matte clips of the 2013 Blu-Ray master, as seen here, but otherwise, there’s really not much else I can say, except that the cropping really bites.
