Winnie the Pooh Discovers the Seasons is a 1981 American animated educational short film made by the Walt Disney Educational Media Company. The short was only released exclusively to schools on September 6, 1981. Eventually it aired on television as part of the television special Ludwig’s Think Tank in 1985.
Christopher Robin presents Pooh with an interesting new gift—a calendar. Pooh has never seen one before, and Christopher Robin explains that it's a way of keeping track of the days, weeks, months and seasons. The calendar stops at each season, as we watch Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit and Owl in the Hundred Acre Wood exploring the world around them and noticing the changes. Among them: the water in the pond becomes hard and slick when it gets cold.
This was the first animated Disney short to use Hanna-Barbera-produced sound effects (aside from some of their late 70s live-action films that used a couple for cheesy humor like Herbie Rides Again). Since then, they only used the sound effects for their television specials and shows, while they continued to use their classic Jimmy MacDonald cartoon sound effects until The Great Mouse Detective in 1986 for their theatrical shorts and films. This would also be the first Winnie the Pooh project to be outsourced to an animation studio outside of Walt Disney Animation Studios as the animation in this film is noticeably limited.
While it’s believed to be the first time Owl’s voice actor Hal Smith provides the voice of Winnie the Pooh, he actually first voiced the titular character in an educational slideshow “Back to School with Winnie the Pooh” in 1979 as well as Tigger and Eeyore.
This is the only Winnie the Pooh project where Ray Erlenborn and Ron Feinberg provide the voices of Rabbit and Eeyore.
This short has not made any official home media releases as of 2023, nor has it been added to Disney+. However the short can be found unofficially on video sharing sites such as YouTube from old VHS recordings of its broadcast.
