81 billion dollars is the lifetime revenue of the Winnie the Pooh franchise.

Of that, 99.4% comes from merchandise, which has sold over 80 billion dollars worth since 1924, while movies have made 460 million and DVD/Blu Ray sales have been just over 50 million.

Winnie the Pooh, despite being a fairly simple character, it is the fourth highest grossing franchise of all time and if inflation was factored, it’d likely surpass Pokemon and Hello Kitty, putting Winnie the Pooh at either number one or second behind Mickey Mouse.

So what made Winnie the Pooh so popular?

The first thing to look at would be timing, where Winnie the Pooh came out in 1924.

The Teddy Bear came out in 1902.

Teddy Bears were inspired off Theodore Roosevelt’s hunting trip to Mississippi, where a group of hunters chased a bear with dogs, clubbed it and tied it down. Roosevelt refused to shoot it, which caused early political satire comics to make the story go viral for 1902 standards.

The comic used showed a small bear, which angered Theodore Roosevelt, but a man named Morris Mitchtom liked the design and made a toy based on it, called a Teddy Bear.

The stuffed bear went from being sold in a candy store, to becoming the most popular toy in the world at the time and an early example of the manufacturing age entering kids products.

That teddy bear ended up sold to A.A. Milne, who bought the bear for his son, Christopher Robin Milne.

A.A. Milne saw how much his son loved it and thought a book about a stuffed bear would be popular, enter Winnie the Pooh.

The reason Winnie the Pooh took off was it did what teddy bear’s didn’t do, which was have both a personality and a story behind it.

A modern comparison would be the Cars franchise by Pixar.

Cars has made 22 billion dollars, putting it as the second highest earning Pixar franchise, just losing to Toy Story slightly.

The movies themselves aren’t that popular, being some of the lowest performing Pixar films, critically and financially, but in merchandise, they’ve sold 19.1 billion in sales.

The reason for the success was for decades, toy cars being sold to kids were mainly unbranded products, with no personality to them.

Cars, while not being as loved as Up or Incredibles, it managed to work with younger children and by 2025, it should be the highest grossing Pixar franchise and in the top five for Disney as a whole.

Winnie the Pooh had the same effect, where it took a fairly generic toy that anyone can make, gave it a personality and it sold.

The second factor for Winnie the Pooh was Disney and the 1961 buyout.

Disney purchased all rights to Winnie the Pooh in 1961, being one of the last buyouts Walt Disney oversaw.

This was a Disney, half a century before owning franchises such as Star Wars, Marvel and the Simpsons, so the company put more attention into Winnie the Pooh.

For early Disney, the focus was Mickey, whatever film they had that year, princess characters and Winnie the Pooh, which became a core focus in the 60s/70s, pushing merchandise, rides and animated work on younger children.

Those two things were the reason Winnie the Pooh became an initial success and had an industry backbone, which kept it relevant for now almost 100 years.

Winnie the Pooh has stayed relevant with Disney, but now will be one of the first big lessons on the power of copyright.

Winnie the Pooh went into the public domain recently, after Disney used Winnie as a lobbying tool in the 70s to extend US copyright policy for 19 years.

That ended and today, other companies are beginning to make Winnie the Pooh products, shows and even a horror movie.

Will they be successful though?

My gut feeling, no.

Winnie the Pooh as a character is now in the public domain, but everything Disney built for it isn’t.

The red shirt design was Disney and has 40+ years until companies can make Winnie toys with a red shirt.

The songs are Disney’s and no one can use them.

All the extended stories and lines people know belong to Disney, which means new companies using Winnie will have to take risk and try to create new stories.

So final thoughts?

Winnie the Pooh is probably the biggest example for the kids toy space that taking a generic product and giving it a character will lead to increased sales.

The character continues to have sales and be it with or without Disney, Winnie the Pooh will be around in another 100 years, having made hundreds of billions.