Too Smart for Strangers

I'm neutral to Welcome to Pooh Corner, and it is not as good as any other Winnie the Pooh incarnation. I didn't grow up with Welcome to Pooh Corner because it's from long before I was born, it didn't have any reruns on TV at all during my lifetime, and I never owned any of the video releases. However, I've seen this episode and many other ones online. This is the worst or least good WTPC episode/special. This is one out of the only three episodes on YouTube, and I've seen all of them. I was originally planning on going in-depth about this in my review on WTPC as a whole, but after learning there was a page for it, I decided to do separate reviews on this episode and the series as a whole. I don't like Too Smart for Strangers, I don't hate/dislike it, it's a mixed bag like the rest of the series. Allow me to explain why.

Too Smart for Strangers has had a controversy in recent years because of the part where Pooh talks about molestation and genitals. I agree that it is too dark for a kid's show, especially anything Pooh-related, although the title character is right about touching others' private parts and molesting being unacceptable. How does he know about that? The animals from the Hundred Acre Wood are all naked/nearly naked plush dolls with no private parts and no pants. I never thought I'd hear my favorite bear talk about these items.

Pooh Bear and Piglet are right about stranger danger and any mention of it being scary and doing what we can to avoid strangers being a smart thing to do. However, the former comes off as TOO smart. So much for being a bear of very little brain. Too Smart for Strangers? More like Too Dumb for Strangers.

Tigger and Roo sing a duet about making your parents believe what you report to them about encountering a stranger. It briefly says if your parents don't believe what you say, you should keep repeating it until they believe you. It doesn't work that way (or does it?).

The plot is very confusing. I mentioned a couple of the plot holes earlier, but there's more. The characters watch multiple clips of real-life kids encountering strangers and how they handle it, and they mention being friends with those kids. How do they know them? Have they met them off-screen previously? Christopher Robin and his parents, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, and Darby from My Friends Tigger and Pooh appear to be the only humans who can find the Hundred Acre Wood. In a duet Pooh and Piglet sing towards the end, they say if they were to end up in stranger danger, they'd tell their moms or dads. They don't have any parents. Pooh and his friends live in their own little forest and don't encounter many strangers. They don't go into the real world very much. How do they know how to handle stranger danger? Could Christopher Robin have learned about stranger danger and touching others inappropriately in school and talked to his stuffed animals about them? I can't imagine a kid having such a conversation with his toys. The plot of Pooh's Great School Bus Adventure (another one of the show's educational specials and one of the other episodes on YouTube) makes sense to me because Pooh Bear mentions Christopher Robin taught him about school bus safety and etiquette, and the characters learn more tips from their adventure on the bus. They could've done the same with this episode but with the characters coming face to face with a stranger instead of riding a bus.

Instead of using the plot they picked, a stranger (maybe a heffalump or a woozle) could've come to the Hundred Acre Wood, and Pooh or one of his friends could've talked to the stranger, leading to them being kidnapped or ending up in some other kind of stranger danger. The characters who haven't been kidnapped or in stranger danger could've worked together to rescue their friend, and the victim could've learned what to do while in stranger danger and eventually got saved by himself/herself or their friends. The plot they picked could've worked if the episode/special came out sometime after The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh started because some new characters in the Pooh franchise have been introduced since then, and more creatures have been able to find the Hundred Acre Wood, but there are no new characters in Welcome to Pooh Corner.

There are 2 clips of kids being left at home by themselves, and they don't look or sound old enough to be left home alone. In one clip, a stranger shows up at a girl's front door, and she reports this to her parents on the telephone and doesn't let the stranger in. In the other one, a boy receives a phone call from a stranger, hangs up right away, calls his parents, and reports the stranger to them. Who leaves under-aged kids home alone anymore?

I already knew most of what Too Smart for Strangers was teaching before I watched it for the first time, but I learned a few tips from it, such as how strangers can be easy to come across at not-so-crowded places like construction sites and alleys and to never ride home with somebody I've never met who says they're friends with one of my relatives.

The special came out at the right time (1985). Back then, kidnapping was very common, and Disney had no choice but to make a PSA about what to do if one were to end up in stranger danger. Using familiar characters in a PSA is a more effective way to handle it than using real-life, unfamiliar faces because that could give more people motivation to watch it, and your favorite characters are shown to be in a similar situation you might be in. However, they could've made a PSA with different characters, like maybe the Mickey Mouse gang. Using Pooh characters was out of place, but the information is useful for the most part. If you don't like this and are looking for a better PSA about stranger danger with familiar characters, watch the Sonic Says "Stranger Danger" skit from The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.