Pooh's Sticky Situation Is Enjoyable For Us

For many years, the Disney version of Winnie the Pooh has been more prominent in the mainstream than the original A. A. Milne / Ernest Shepard version. Nonetheless, Disney does do a good job of reminding us of Pooh’s storybook origins. Most Pooh movies include a sophisticated-sounding narrator interacting with a large book containing all of the Hundred-Acre Wood adventures, and for the past 12 years, Hallmark has released ornaments that commemorate particularly notable book moments.

A Sticky Situation, the seventh ornament in the series, came out in 2004. The ornament is a dark turquoise book with gold ridges between the front and back cover to indicate pages. There aren’t really pages inside, though; it’s a three-dimensional representation of a laughing Pooh stuck inside the Honey Tree, surrounded by his favorite sweet substance. The hinge on the front cover is what makes this ornament so fun; without being able to look inside, it’s simply a flat two and a quarter inch by one and three quarter inch book, three quarters of an inch thick, with a sticker along the binding and on the cover.

The binding reads "2004" and shows a picture of Pooh floundering in Rabbit’s doorway, looking quite troubled. The cover says “Winnie the Pooh” and “A Sticky Situation” and, in an oval between the two phrases, shows Christopher Robin tugging hard on Pooh’s arms, attempting to free him from his prison. If you peek inside, the flip side of the cover shows Pooh soaring into the air, toward the trees. The red text explains, “Pooh’s a bear of little brain and rather grandish tummy. Free at last from Rabbit door he headed for more honey!” While I suspect that the word “Rabbit’s” would have made more sense here, the verse is a cute summation of that story.

This book stands nicely on flat surfaces and also hangs easily. Usually the cover will fly open so that what you see on the tree is Pooh eating, but that’s the most interesting part of the ornament anyway. Pooh is a part of all of the books in this series; some include other characters as well, particularly Piglet. All follow the same basic format. This year’s, A Snack for Pooh, is a throwback to the same story, focusing not on Pooh’s liberation but on his actual tenure as a bear stuck in Rabbit’s door. I find its verse especially cute: “Pooh enjoys his honey snack so much he asks for more, till there’s a little too much Pooh... or much too little door.”

A Sticky Situation comes with a Memory Card, which shows the ornament on the front and has space on the back for the names of the gift giver and recipient and a holiday memory. There are only five lines of an inch and three quarters, but if you use tiny letters, you should be able to capture a memory or two here. As I suggested with the Literary Ace Snoopy ornament, if you have several ornaments like these, perhaps you should pull them from the boxes and put them in an album or keepsake box so you can look at them all at once.

Hallmark has created dozens of ornaments featuring Winnie the Pooh and his friends. Someday, if I hit it rich, I’d love to buy them all. But right now, I’m quite content with this representation of the Pooh book ornaments, and considering where Pooh ends up in this one, it seems extremely appropriate to hang A Sticky Situation on a tree.