Mickey eclipsed by Disney's own Pooh

"MERRY CHRISTMAS, Pooh!" said Christopher Robin. "You've been such a generous bear, such a kind bear, you deserve pots and pots of honey!"

"Oh, thank you!" exclaimed Pooh as he helped himself to a smackerel. "Mmm," he said, licking his lips. "What a very sweet Christmas this is!"

And so the world's favourite cuddly bear heralds the festive season, surrounded by all his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood. There is snow outside, and Pooh is wearing a Santa hat and scarf. It doesn't sound much like A A Milne. But that's because it isn't A A Milne, except by the vaguest of associations. This is Disney Pooh, a revamped version of the original Bear of Very Little Brain as conceived for the multimedia age, and - to judge by his performance in shopping malls across the United States - a monstrously successful marketing exercise.

Ann Braybrook's seasonal book The Sweetest Christmas, "based on the Pooh stories by A A Milne", is just one of a slew of spin-offs flying out of the shops and into toddlers' bedrooms this year. At every turn parents are confronted with Pooh books, Pooh videos, Pooh clothing, Pooh satchels and school bags, Pooh sheets, Pooh toothbrush holders and Pooh soap dispensers.

According to Disney, Pooh is bigger than any of its spin-offs from A Bug's Life or Toy Story or The Lion King. He's even bigger than Mickey Mouse. Winnie the Pooh is currently the number two licensed toy line in America, with only Barbie pipping him to the post.

"Pooh belongs to everybody," says John Singh of Disney's consumer products division in an attempt to explain a phenomenon that has sky-rocketed in just two short years. Mostly his success is a reflection of Disney's extraordinary marketing muscle and an assiduous corporate courtship that stretches back more than half a century.

As early as the Forties, Walt Disney entered tortuous negotiations for the rights to the Pooh menagerie, dealing with both A A Milne's estate and Dutton Publishing, which issued the books in America.

When a deal was eventually struck in 1964, Disney trod carefully, giving up on the idea of a full-length feature and opting instead for a series of short films that adhered closely to the original stories.

From the outset, however, E H Shepard's illustrations were redrawn as Walt Disney decided, in quintessential Hollywood fashion, that Winnie the Pooh didn't look enough like Winnie the Pooh. No longer Christopher Robin's raggedy bed companion, Pooh became a smiling Californian sort of bear with fur as golden as the honey he so loved to eat.

In time, as Disney invented whole new plotlines to put Pooh on TV, he developed a very West Coast psychobabble sensibility, which involved lots of hugging and affirmations of friendship. He also acquired a skimpy bright red T-shirt that on one less chubby than he might have been accused of looking downright sexy.

For 30 years, Disney subcontracted the merchandising of Pooh to Sears Roebuck but that all changed in 1996.

Disney had developed into a world-class entertainment conglomerate with access to television stations, shops and a string of toy-making contractors kept busy by its never-ending series of big screen hits. It took over the merchandising itself and the Pooh machine went into overdrive.

In deference to parents with memories of the original stories, Disney has put out a line of toys called Classic Pooh, which more closely resemble the E H Shepard originals, but to most American kids Winnie the Pooh is Disney Pooh and they wouldn't want him any other way.