Hello & welcome back to A Look at Disney Halloween. Last year, for my Halloween review, I reviewed the Halloween special, Boo To You Winnie The Pooh. Which started a strand of Pooh related holiday specials. Today, we are taking a look at an episode, that while not a Halloween episode, is a good one for this time of year. And once again, Piglet is the main character of this episode. This show sure liked Piglet and putting him in situations that would make him uncomfortable. I gotta give show credit for that.
The Monster Frankenpooh
Not too much to say on the title, just a reference to Frankenstein. That's about it!
The Plot
Tigger, Rabbit, Gopher, & Piglet are at Piglet's house telling stories on a dark night. Tigger wants to tell a scary story set at night and this story looks something like this...
whereas Piglet wanted to tell a story about a nice scientist, who was just making a PB&J (yum!) but Tigger said, he was finding the story scary from how un-scary it was.
So he came in and took over and thus Frankenpooh entered the picture. And we got the story of how one Dr. Von Piglet created Frankenpooh and the town came to hate him and this monster as he was looking for blood, oh wait no, sorry this is a kid's show. For money. Oh right, hunny. And we get a cute little gag where Tigger makes Frankenpooh so big that he hits the top of the screen.
Cute and then we the townspeople going to attack Dr. Von Piglet. And then we see Frankenpooh rampaging through the town for his hunny.
We then see the smallest and easily most adorable Angry Mob form to go after Dr. Von Piglet.
We then see Piglet back in his house on top of the shelf above his fireplace shaking and scared apologizing for the monster. Rabbit reminds him that it is just a story and that he needs to learn to separate fiction from reality and he asks "Isn't that right, Pooh?" as we see a monstrous sized Pooh closing out. I can see why this segment was only 5 minutes long. Is that to say, this segment was bad? Um well, I'm torn here. On the one hand this is a good setup for what could've been a decent episode if the story had been expanded some more and we actually got to explore the story that Tigger was telling but the same time, it feels to me that the writers, Mark Zaslove and Carter Crocker didn't have enough faith in this story to make it longer then 5 minutes. Again, I don't want to call this episode bad because it isn't but I just feel that so much more could've been done with the concept. Because with the story that was being told, I feel that if they had just started off with Tigger's narration and let the story play out, we could've gotten a fun episode. Again, I'm torn because I feel this episode could've been more then what it was but I do not at all think it is bad. Just disappointing. It's almost harder reviewing a disappointing episode then it is something that is outright bad or just wonderful because you don't have the passion either way to celebrate or to incinerate. I'm so torn here, I want to be mad at this episode for wasting good story potential but I cannot find it in me to do so. And no, it's not because of this being something related to Pooh. I have gotten angry at Pooh shows before, Too Smart For Strangers and A Valentine For You are perfect examples of that but here, the thing is, when watching this episode, I enjoyed it. It's just that when I stopped to think about this episode, these thoughts popped up.
Characters
This'll be broken down into Main & Supporting. With that out of the way, let's begin.
Main Character
Piglet voiced by John Fiedler
As I said in the introduction, Piglet is the sensible character to use this type of story and I did like the idea of Tigger inserting him as the mad scientist as so goes against Piglet's personality but I just wish that had been played around with this idea some more. Again, I want to stress that this episode isn't bad but it fell short of what it could've been.
Tigger voiced by Paul Winchell
Tigger was the contrast to Piglet's innocence as he wanted to add all of these scary & horrible things to the story. He wanted to make it bigger & badder. It was interesting to see and just so much fun to watch Tigger take over this story and create the monstrous Frankenpooh. That was a bit funny.
Supporting Character
Frankenpooh voiced by Jim Cummings
There is nothing to say about Frankenpooh other then that it is just so funny to see this monstrous sized Pooh Bear.
My Final Thoughts
My opinions are split on this episode. On the one hand, it isn't bad but at the same time, I just feel like that more could've been done with this story. Again, in no way do I think is bad. Join me next time for my look at KP's Halloween episode as I review...
October 31st
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