Eeyore was Christopher Robin Milne’s second acquired stuffed animal to become a Winnie-the-Pooh character.
The toy was given to Christopher Robin as a Christmas gift. Its drooping neck helped inspire Eeyore’s distinctive personality and appearance in the stories, where the donkey is cautious, gloomy and frequently concerned about his missing tail.
The order is a biographical detail about Christopher Robin’s toys, not the order in which the fictional characters first appear in the books. Eeyore appears in Winnie-the-Pooh, while Tigger does not arrive until The House at Pooh Corner.
The original toys eventually became important cultural objects. They were taken to the United States in 1947, remained with Milne’s American publisher for decades, and were donated to the New York Public Library in 1987.