Sing a Song With Pooh Bear

I think it's time for a more simple review. Today, I'm reviewing the direct-to-video Winnie the Pooh sing-along video.........

Sing a Song With Pooh Bear, released on February 1999. It was the very last Winnie the Pooh tape to feature the previews of other Pooh, Spot, and Disney Sing-Along Songs videos. The plot centers around Winnie the Pooh, who searches around the Hundred Acre Wood, for what, you may ask? Not for honey, but for his own song. And his friends, including Tigger, Piglet, Owl, Christopher Robin, Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo, and Gopher help him out, or at least offer him advice on this musical adventure.

Let's start with the pros. This video has a solid plot, similar to Sesame Street's A Musical Celebration where a character is off to find something very important and special. The selection of songs was pretty good, with great hits like "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers," "Nothing's Too Good for a Friend," "Pooh's Balloon Song," and "Rumbly in my Tumbly." These songs were all from The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, and Welcome to Pooh Corner. This video also includes brand new songs, like "The Kangaroo Hop," ""Try a Little Something New," "Pooh's Song (My Song)," and "Harvest What You Grow." All terrific tunes for all children of all ages.

Now for the cons. Some things that bothered me were the fact that Peter Cullen and John Fiedler didn't return to voice Eeyore and Piglet, respectively. Instead, they were voiced by Gregg Berger and Steve Schatzberg. And while I have nothing against Gregg Berger, I mean, hes' done a lot of voice work for Garfield and Friends, like Odie and Orson. And Steve Schatzberg previously did Piglet's singing voice for the direct-to-video movie, Pooh's Grand Adventure, and for Gregg Berger, he's no Eeyore. Obviously, Peter and John must've been too busy to be involved with the project. Another small nitpick is the fact that this video doesn't have the New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Theme Song! Come on, I like that theme song! Why wouldn't you put that in?! But, the BIGGEST problem was that, the people behind this didn't have the money to animated a lot of new material for this, in fact, the only portions of this video that were new animation were the songs "The Kangaroo Hop," and "My Song." Everything else is just the voice actors just lip-synching new lines on clips from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. That is pretty lazy! And I know what you're thinking, didn't the Disney Sing-Along Songs series do this too, well, yeah, but that was for a reason! The lip-synching for the characters match perfectly, even on Jiminy Cricket and Ludwig Von Drake. This clearly should've been animated with new material with the animators from The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Again, this is just my opinion, if you disagree, that's totally fine.

So, bottom line, Sing a Song with Pooh Bear is a good sing-along video, it's not great, but it IS good, it helps the children sing-along to their favorite Pooh songs. The only thing that bugs me was that aside from those two songs I've mentioned is that, this video didn't bother to put in new animation. That is just lazy. But oh well, you can't have everything. Watch it if you run across it.