Unless you have spent your life in a cave you'll know that Christopher Robin was the friend of Winnie the Pooh, in the stories by A.A. Milne.
 |
| Pooh with Christopher Robin,age 6, and his father A.A.Milne. |
The real Pooh was a gift from Milne to Christopher Robin when the latter was 1 year old. He was originally named Edward, but Christopher Robin and his father were fond of visiting a bear named Winnipeg at the London zoo. Edward quickly became Winnie.
 |
| The real pooh and Christopher Robin. |
This Christopher Robin doll was made by Madame Alexander.
He measures just about 19" tall.
He has a cloth covered face with a solid face underneath,to give him the look of a Lenci doll.
He has a soft,cuddly body and floppy arms and legs.
His clothes are removable, but his shoes and socks aren't. His shirt closes with Velco in the back,and his shorts have an elastic waist. The shorts are attached to his body with a thread stitch.
His shirt has a Pooh applique'.
He is also wearing a white felt hat which is removable, but attached to his head with a stitch.
The real Christopher Robin enjoyed his celebrity as a child,until he went to boarding school at age 9,and was teased and bullied. He resented the Pooh books for years as an adult, finally coming to terms with his legacy as an older man. Unfortunately he never had much of a relationship with either of his parents past his childhood years. In the last 15 years of his mother's life,(She outlived his father by 15 years.) he only saw her once.
In 1947 A.A. Milne gave the original toys on which Pooh,Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore,and Kanga were based to the books' American publisher. In 1987 they were donated, with Christopher Robin's blessing, to the New York Public Library, with the stipulation that they be kept on public display.
 |
| Today they can be found there,in a bullet proof,environmentally controlled glass case. There were never real versions of Owl or Rabbit.(Or Roo, I'm guessing.) Since the Disney versions of Pooh's tales are American,people have come to believe that Eeyore's name is pronounced as it's spelled: 'eee-orrr'. However,Milne was English. The English use an r to spell words meant to be pronounced with an 'aw' or 'ah' sound,as they would be pronounced by the English. So the r in Eeyore is pronounced 'ah',making the name "Ee-aww", like the sound a donkey makes. |
In 2007 the character of Christopher Robin made only 2 appearances in the computer animated Disney series "My Friends Tigger and Pooh", having been replaced as the human lead by a girl named Darby.That's just not right. A Disney spokesman said the "timeless characters needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide". That actually makes no sense, because the kids watching Pooh now are not the same kids who've been watching all these years. To the kids just discovering Pooh and his friends, it's all new.
Christopher Robin Milne died in 1996, at the age of 75.
Come back tomorrow to see another doll.
