Frankenpooh Is Frankly Fantastic

Halloween has come and gone, and this year I never got to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, which is one of those specials I really ought to invest in on DVD. Though nothing can quite match that hilarious, distressing, spiritually challenging classic, I had to get my Halloween fix somehow, so I popped in Frankenpooh, a collection of three Winnie-the-Pooh shorts packaged particularly with the most spookable holiday of all in mind.

The Monster Frankenpooh finds Piglet (John Fiedler) attempting to tell a tale to an audience that includes the disrespectful Tigger (Paul Winchell), who has a history on The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh of abducting the innocuous stories of others and molding them to his own devious purposes. One of my all-time favorite episodes involves him sabotaging Piglet's bland "poohetry" reading with improvised verse that takes his nervous friend on a terrifying adventure, and that's similar to what happens here.

Of course, Pooh-style scary is not actually very scary at all. The monster Tigger concocts is merely a giant-sized Pooh (Jim Cummings) who roams through the Hundred-Acre Wood in search of honey while the other residents, garbed in Victorian clothing, band together to confront Dr. Von Piglet about all the trouble he has caused. As a writer, I get an extra kick out of these storytelling episodes and admire Tigger's improvisational creativity, though if I were Piglet I might well be a bit peeved with him...

Things That Go Piglet in the Night begins with the gang of friends all swinging together on a giant swing dangling from a limb on an accommodating tree. One of the things I love about this show is its artful animation, and this episode offers a spectacular sunset and equally stunning sunrise. In between, three separate adventures ensue, eventually coming together.

When everyone else heads home for the night, Eeyore sticks around to do some swinging, since he didn't get a turn before, and a curious Tigger heads out to investigate the resulting noise, postulating, "Either the moon has termites, or it's one of them spookables!" Relieved to find that it's neither, he gives up a good night's sleep to personally coach Eeyore on the fine art of swinging. Meanwhile, the shadowy spectacle of the flying donkey spooks the others from their beds, and a pillow-case-wearing Piglet has several encounters with Pooh, Rabbit (Ken Ransom), Owl (Hal Smith) and Gopher (Michael Gough) in which each thinks the other party is a ghost. Delightful chaos ensues.

The confusion continues with Pooh Moon, in which Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Rabbit and Gopher decide to go on a camping trip, an exercise I'm frankly a bit surprised Piglet agreed to, what with all that pesky darkety-dark and the close proximity to any number of bone-chilling beasts. Tigger seems to invent a new monster in every mildly scary Pooh episode there is, and in this case, he gets his friends all worked up about the Grab Me Gotcha, especially Rabbit, though he claims not to believe in such nonsense.

This episode is reminiscent of Little Bear because Pooh, accompanied by Piglet, takes a tumble and, looking up to see no moon in the sky where it was a moment before, comes to the conclusion that he and Piglet have landed on the "honey moon," and that they now will have the opportunity to collect moon honey. They set off across the strange landscape, coming across a variety of creepy moon creatures. Meanwhile, the others awake to find Pooh and Piglet missing and go off in search of the Grab Me Gotcha in order to retrieve them, getting filthy and scared witless in the process. One of my favorite aspects of this episode, along with Pooh's imaginative wanderings, is the sleeping bags. Gopher's doesn't really stand out, but Tigger has a big orange stripedy bag, while Pooh's is orange and red, Piglet's is pink with thin stripes and Rabbit's looks exactly like a carrot. I also love the fact that they take actual ears of corn with them to pop over the campfire.

All three of these episodes are fine examples of the craftsmanship that consistently marked The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Though none specifically reference Halloween, all are suitably spooky, especially with the suspenseful music that kicks in every now and then. My only complaint is that only three episodes were included, since many installments in this series involved creepy happenings, often playing up the contrast between Piglet and Tigger. One that comes to mind immediately involves Christopher Robin taking his friends on a rare field trip outside the forest to a movie theater, where they see a monster movie and subsequently try to film their own, and there are several along those lines.

The video is only half an hour long; would it have hurt to include a couple extra cartoons? I'm still waiting for the day when each of the seasons is released on DVD, but so many episodes have been scattered around piecemeal, three at a time, like this that I doubt that will ever happen, which is a shame, since this is one of the best shows ever to grace a hallowed Saturday morning time slot. Apparently a few people agree with me, since its first season won a Daytime Emmy. At Halloween or any other time, Frankenpooh delivers just a hint of a shiver for young children and for all us Piglets who never grew out of our night-time jitters.