Winnie the Pooh licensing rights at WDW?

[stellablue]

Hi all,

This was posted on another board, but got no responses so I thought I'd try here and see if you experts know.

Does WDW own limited rights to Winnie the Pooh? I noticed that WDW does not make cakes with Pooh characters on them, yet you can purchase a Winnie cake from the supermarket down the road. I've read another poster say that they were not allowed to have Winnie the Pooh characters at their WDW wedding (instead of the Mickey & Minnie ones). But then again, WDW definately sells Winnie the Pooh merchandise, has an attraction, and has Winnie characters doing meet & greets, etc...

Anyone have any info on this?

Thanks!

 

[bradk]

disney doesn't own any rights to pooh. they license their use. disney actively pays royalties to be able to use and market pooh and its characters.

and yes, it's all governed by specifics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Slesinger_Lasswell

and to muddy it up a bit, the slesingers have just the merchandising rights in the US and Canada. pooh himself and the movies et al are owned by the milne family and disney licenses his use directly through them.

so for example, if the slesinger family said 'okay, you can make pooh cakes,' it means disney most likely needs to pay them a percentage of every pooh cake sold.

ETA: see also http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1002887,00.html

 

[stellablue]

disney doesn't own any rights to pooh. they license their use. disney actively pays royalties to be able to use and market pooh and its characters.

and yes, it's all governed by specifics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Slesinger_Lasswell


so for example, if the slesinger family said 'okay, you can make pooh cakes,' it means disney most likely needs to pay them a percentage of every pooh cake sold.

ETA: see also http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1002887,00.html

THANK YOU for that info!! I've been so curious about this and I knew if I hung in long enough, one of you experts would have an answer!!

 

[Brian_WDW74]

They sell cookies with Pooh characters on them at WDW, so I don't know why they wouldn't sell cakes. Here's a picture that ortholablady posted in another thread:

 

[bradk]

to be clear, what we are talking about is cakes you can order and have decorated. they can't put pooh characters on them.

whether cookies exist or not is irrelevant. disney doesn't own pooh so anything they do is at the discretion of the people who do.

 

[stellablue]

to be clear, what we are talking about is cakes you can order and have decorated. they can't put pooh characters on them.

whether cookies exist or not is irrelevant. disney doesn't own pooh so anything they do is at the discretion of the people who do.

Yes, I was referring to the cakes you can order for birthdays and such. The only thing I saw that came close was a cake WDW made with a spilled honey pot on it. It was cute, but no Pooh characters.

I've seen pictures of cakes from the market down the road from WDW (can't recall the name-it's a chain) and they sell cakes with Pooh characters-they must pay a percentage of their sales to the Winnie heirs.

 

[bradk]

they may.. or they may not be doing it legally too.

i don't know the details with disney. maybe they have exclusive licensing rights to some things and others are available to other parties. could be the case with cakes for example.

when you deal with licensing, it can get very specific and nitty gritty. the writer's strike for example is a case of what happens when you aren't specific enough, namely a new medium comes into play that the old contract didn't cover. rarely do you have a blanket contract.

slesinger also probably maintains the rights to approve all pooh merchandise. i'm quite certain when disney licenses its products to manufacturers that it all goes through an approval process to ensure the characters are portrayed exactly how disney wants them to be.

 

[stellablue]

Also, WDW may not think it's necessary to offer Winnie the Pooh cakes-maybe they don't think it's worthwhile to have to pay the royalties since it's an item that would be purchased less frequently.

The thing I don't quite understand is, with regards to animation, there are two different likenesses of Winnie the Pooh. There's the AA Milne drawings and the rounder brighter cartoon ones we associate with Disney. When Disney portrays Pooh, they only portray the "Disney version"-I' assuming this "version" of Pooh was created by and therefore owned by Disney. Sorry if I'm not making any sense here, I'm just wondering how that falls into play here.....

In any case, wow that Slesinger family must be LOADED!!!

 

[bradk]

i'm pretty sure disney just disneyfied pooh, nothing more than that. just made him more cuddly and animation friendly. as it is, the characters have changed themselves over the years. in fact, same as most other disney characters, most notably mickey himself.

and forget the characters in the park. they've been reinvented time and time again and often 'bear' little resemblance sometimes between generations.

anyway, dunno about the slesinger fortune. there was a very highly publicized and bitter battle between disney and slesinger for years. slesinger claiming disney owed them more money, disney trying very hard to get slesinger's rights revoked and transferred back to the milne family (who are more buddy buddy with disney). i'm sure it cost both sides a pretty penny and disney has just a few more pennies than most when it comes to exhaustive legal battles.