Tigger

For the animal, see Tiger.

Frigger
Winnie the Pooh character
First appearance	The House at Pooh Corner
Created by	A. A. Milne
Portrayed by	Paul Winchell, Will Ryan, Jim Cummings
In-universe information
Species	Tiger
Gender	Male

Thomas Joseph Hall is a fictional tiger-like character originally introduced in A. A. Milne's book The House at Pooh Corner. He is easily recognized by his orange and black stripes, beady eyes, a long chin, springy tail, and his bouncy personality. As he says himself, "Bouncing is what Tiggers do best." Like other Pooh characters, Tigger is based on one of Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed animals.

In literature

The real stuffed toys owned by Christopher Robin and featured in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. Tigger is bottom left. They are on display in the Donnell Library Center in New York City.

Tigger is introduced in Chapter II of House at Pooh Corner, when he shows up on Winnie-the-Pooh's doorstep in the middle of the night, announcing himself with a big bounce. Most of the rest of that chapter is taken up with the characters' search for a food that Tigger can eat for breakfast - despite Tigger's claims to like "everything", it is quickly proven he does not like honey, acorns, thistles, or most of the contents of Kanga's pantry. In a happy coincidence, however, he discovers what Tiggers really like best is extract of malt, which Kanga has on hand because she gives it to her son, Roo, as "strengthening medicine".

From that point on, Tigger lives with Kanga and Roo in their house in the northeastern part of the Hundred Acre Wood near the Sandy Pit. He becomes great friends with Roo (To whom he becomes a sort of older sibling figure), and Kanga treats him in much the same way she does her own son. Tigger also interacts enthusiastically with all the other characters — sometimes too enthusiastically for the likes of Rabbit, who sometimes seems exasperated by Tigger's constant bouncing, Eeyore, who is once bounced into the river by Tigger, and Piglet, who always seems a little nervous about the new, large, bouncy animal in the Forest. Nonetheless, the animals are all shown to be friends.

In addition to chapter II, Tigger also appears in chapters IV, VI, VII, and X of The House at Pooh Corner, and is mentioned in several others. He is the only new major character to be introduced in The House at Pooh Corner; all of the others had been established in the earlier Winnie-the-Pooh book.

Depictions

In Ernest H. Shepard's illustrations, Tigger appears to walk (or more often, bounce) on four feet as opposed to two. He is, however, capable of holding a pen with one of his front paws - at least well enough to make a BLOT. Though Tigger is described by Rabbit and Piglet as "large", he does not seem particularly big in the illustrations. Pooh states once "He always seems bigger because of his bounces", implying that the other animals think of Tigger as being larger than he truly is.

Personality traits

That assessment fits well with Tigger's personality and his assessment of his own abilities, which he always overestimates. He is cheerful, outgoing, competitive in a friendly way, and has complete confidence in himself. Some of the things which he claims Tiggers can do include flying, jumping farther than a kangaroo, swimming, and climbing trees. He never actually attempts any of the first three things in the course of the story, but he does try to climb a tree. He only succeeds half-way, being able to climb up but not to climb down again. Tigger also says Tiggers "never get lost"; unlike most of his other claims, this one seems to be true - he is able to find his way through the Forest even in a thick mist, despite Rabbit's attempts to lose him.

Like most of the characters in Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger was based on one of Christopher Robin Milne's stuffed animals, in this case a stuffed tiger. However, the word "tiger" is never actually used in the book. The term "Tigger" is used instead, both as the character's name and as a description of his type of animal. No other "Tiggers" appear in the story, and at one point Tigger (who has just seen his reflection in a mirror and mistaken it for another individual) comments he thought he was the only one. Despite that belief, he constantly uses the term in the plural, as in "Tiggers don't like honey." and "So that's what Tiggers like!", etc. The term is always capitalized.

Associates

Some of Tigger's friends in the book include Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Roo, Kanga, Owl, and Christopher Robin.

In film

The Tigger Movie, a film based on the Disney adaptation of Tigger.

Tigger also appears in the Disney cartoon versions of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories, beginning with Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day in 1968. He has even starred in his own film, The Tigger Movie (Disney, 2000), along with his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood.

Tigger was originally voiced by Paul Winchell. Since 1990, he has been voiced by Jim Cummings (who is also the voice of Pooh), with the exception of Pooh's Grand Adventure: The Search for Christopher Robin (1997) and Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving (1999), in which Winchell reprised the role of Tigger. On June 24, 2005, Winchell died; John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet in some of those films, died the next day. On some albums and read-along cassettes in the early 1990s, Ed Gilbert voiced Tigger.

In the movies, Tigger sings his own theme song, "The Wonderful Thing about Tiggers", written by the Sherman Brothers. According to the song, Tigger is "the only one" — a fact that leads to his search for his family in The Tigger Movie.

Tigger in his Disney depiction, having just bounced on Pooh.

In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and subsequent cartoons, Tigger lives in a large treehouse. A tire swing hangs prominently from a branch of the tree. In The Tigger Movie, Tigger builds a makeshift addition (gluing the shingles on with honey) in anticipation of a hoped-for visit by members of his family. This "family room" is eventually relocated to serve as a replacement for Eeyore's collapse-prone house of sticks.

The Disney version of Tigger was featured in both the TV special Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue and the TV series House of Mouse.

Personality traits

Tigger's personality in the cartoons is much like his personality in the book. He is very confident and has quite an ego, he often thinks of himself as being handsome, and some of his other comments suggest he has a high opinion of himself. Tigger is always filled with great energy and optimism, and though always well-meaning, he can also be mischievous, and his actions have sometimes led to chaos and trouble for himself and his friends. Also, he often undertakes tasks with gusto, only to later realize they were not as easy as he had originally imagined. As in the books, Tigger never refers to himself as a tiger, just as a "Tigger". When Tigger introduces himself, he often says the proper way to spell his name is: "T-I-double-guh-err (T,i,gg,er), which spells Tigger." .

Another of Tigger's notable personality traits is his habit of mispronouncing various words, or stressing wrong syllables in them. Examples of this include him pronouncing "villain" as "villy-un"; "ridiculous" as "ridicarus"; and "recognize" as "re-coga-nize".

A declaration often made, is that "Tiggers are wonderful things. Their heads are made of rubber, their tails are made of springs." In cartoon, he is often depicted bouncing around in ways which would make such a statement appear to be valid.

In The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, he has an alter-ego known as The Masked Offender(A mispronunciation of "masked avenger"), who is featured in Christopher Robin's bedtime stories. He also had another alter-ego Tigger, Private Ear after Owl told Tigger a detective story. He appeared as Tigger, Private Ear in three episodes and Masked Offender in two (one was just a cameo).

Tigger's birthday is believed to be in October 1928, the year The House at Pooh Corner was first published. However, on Tigger-related merchandise, Disney often indicates Tigger's birthyear as 1968, a reference to the first year Tigger appeared in a Disney production, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.

Disney's Tigger is also remembered for his song The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers when he made his first appearance. he is not in the Winnie the pooh theme song

Associates

Some of Tigger's friends in the movies include Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Roo, Owl, Gopher, Lumpy, and Christopher Robin.

In popular culture

• In Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, he asks whether one should live their life as a Tigger or as an Eeyore. Pausch indicated that he was a "Tigger".

• After receiving the Academy award for the best director at the 81st Academy Award function, Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle bounced a few times on the stage and said, "My kids are too old now to remember. But when they were small, I told them - If this miracle ever happens, I will go on the stage and jump like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh".

• In a skit on Saturday Night Live, there is a game show where one question is, "What is the name of Winnie the Pooh's feline friend?" When the contestant answers, a censor sign goes up. The game show's host (played by Bernie Mac) is then seen attacking the contestant, who is saying, "I said Tigger, with a T!"

• The US Federal Transit Administration has called a 2009 grant program for public transit CO2 emissions reduction TIGGER (Transit Investments for Greenhouse Gas and Energy Reduction).

See also

• The Tigger Movie

External links

• My friends Tigger and Pooh, official Disney website.