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Despite veteran Jim Cummings' years of impressive, quality voice work which includes voicing Tigger in Disney's The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh TV series, to my sensitive Pooh ears, the cadences of our favorite bouncing tiger were best expressed by its original voice actor Paul Winchell.
Hardly alone in my view, when the seventy-something Winchell was replaced during the process of giving Tigger his very own feature film, Walt Disney's Imagineers reacted by honoring the man in the form of making Winchell the official voice for the theme park's "Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" ride.
To this end, the sound of Tigger took some getting used to after a childhood filled with the sounds of Winchell as Cummings' version seemed hard to place as though it was somewhat Scottish or Irish with an accent floating in here and there. However, as a fan of the character and A.A. Milne's beloved series, it was nice to take in the title that has become as Disney's press release and Nielsen cite, "the best-selling pre-school DVD of all time."
While some character franchises have come and gone, Winnie the Pooh has never waned in its popularity yet as Tigger so amusingly reminds us by bursting into the live action opener set in Christopher Robin's bedroom that interrupts the narration by John Hurt, every story shouldn't just center on the "bear."
Thus, in 2000, audiences were treated to The Tigger Movie which found the boisterous, hyper, well-intentioned but mischievous Tigger bouncing his way through Hundred Acre Wood only to realize when he inadvertently knocks a boulder onto Eeyore's home that nobody wants to bounce with him on his wild adventures.
Offering to help fix the wreck he caused for the perpetually melancholic Eeyore as Rabbit takes the lead with a clever strategy and pulley device, ultimately it's poor Tigger once again who wreaks more havoc, further alienating his friends to the point where young Roo is the only one who decides to journey along with him.
In deciding to track down the other Tiggers in his family tree to try and feel more at home and less like an outsider in Hundred Acre Wood, Tigger sets off on his challenging quest. Of course, he does so not realizing that he's already found his loved ones as the meaning of a real family consists of those who have stood by him no matter how many homes he's crushed in the process.
Overall, it's a heartwarming and gentle tale filled with a typically morally uplifting message from the Pooh series by author A.A. Milne. Although it must be said that for some children spoiled by faster paced animation offered up by Disney and other companies, The Tigger Movie has indeed begun to show its age in its 10th anniversary edition (despite only being 9 years old), nonetheless it's still a sweet work that's a nice old-fashioned animated escape from what's become the norm of sarcastic remarks, crude humor, and video game graphics.
It also features a bonus DisneyFile digital copy of the movie in the two disc set so that fans are able to transfer it to their Windows or Mac based computers and portable devices. Additionally, the 10th Anniversary edition includes two brand new never before released on DVD episodes from TV's The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh ("King of the Beasties" and "Tigger's Houseguest"), as well as a DVD storybook, games and music sing-along features that are kid-friendly and easy to use in this FastPlay equipped set.
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