The Walt Disney Company licensed certain Winnie-the-Pooh film and related rights in 1961.
The agreement involved the estate of A. A. Milne and Stephen Slesinger, Inc., which held important merchandising and adaptation rights. This licensing deal enabled Disney to develop its own animated versions of Pooh and his friends.
Disney’s first theatrical Pooh featurette, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, arrived in 1966. It was followed by Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day in 1968 and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too in 1974. These shorts were later combined with new material for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in 1977.
A common mix-up is treating 1966 as the start of Disney’s Pooh rights. That was the year of the first theatrical featurette, while 1961 marks the licensing agreement that preceded it.