The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh derived from three previously released animated featurettes Disney produced based upon the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne: "Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree" (1966), "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day" (1968), and "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too" (1974). Extra material was used to link the three featurettes together to allow the stories to merge into each other. A fourth, shorter featurette was added to bring the film to a close, originally made during production of "Blustery Day" (based on the presence of Jon Walmsley as Christopher Robin). The sequence was based on the final chapter of
Winnie-the-Pooh the Queen at Buckingham Palace. On 6 January 1930, Stephen Slesinger purchased US and Canadian merchandising, television, recording and other trade rights to the "Winnie-the-Pooh" works from Milne for a $1000 advance and 66% of Slesinger's income, creating the modern licensing industry. By November 1931, Pooh was a $50 million-a-year business. Slesinger marketed Pooh and his friends for more than 30 years, creating the first Pooh doll, record, board game, puzzle, US radio broadcast (NBC), animation, and motion picture film. The first time Pooh and his friends appeared in colour was 1932, when he was drawn by Slesinger in his