A
heffalump is a
fictionFiction is a branch of literature which deals, in part or in whole, with temporally contrafactual events...
al,
elephantElephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant...
-like creature mentioned in the Winnie the Pooh stories by
A. A. MilneAlan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Life:A. A...
. Heffalumps are mentioned in
Winnie-the-PoohWinnie-the-Pooh, commonly shortened to Pooh Bear and once referred to as Edward Bear, is a fictional bear created by A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh , and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner...
(1926) and
The House at Pooh CornerThe House at Pooh Corner is the second volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, written by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard. It is notable for the introduction of the character Tigger, who went on to become a prominent figure in the Disney Winnie the Pooh franchise.The title comes from...
(1928) and later appeared in the animated
The New Adventures of Winnie the PoohThe New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is an American animated television series made by The Walt Disney Company, and inspired by A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories.-Overview:...
(1988–1991) and
Pooh's Heffalump MoviePooh's Heffalump Movie is an animated Winnie the Pooh film, released by Walt Disney Pictures in 2005. This is the third theatrical feature-length film based on Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise to not be a collection of previously-released shorts....
(2005).
Origins
In the fifth chapter of
Winnie-the-PoohWinnie-the-Pooh is the first volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne. It is followed by The House at Pooh Corner. The book focuses on the adventures of a teddy bear called Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends Piglet, a small toy pig; Eeyore, a toy donkey; Owl, a live owl; and Rabbit, a...
, Pooh and
PigletPiglet is a fictional character from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books. Piglet is a baby pig who is the best friend of Winnie-the-Pooh. Despite the fact that he is a "Very Small Animal" with a stutter and a generally timid disposition, he often conquers his fears and seems to want to be...
attempt bravely to capture a heffalump in a trap. However, no heffalumps are ever caught in their trap, and indeed they never meet a heffalump in the course of the books. The sole actual appearance of heffalumps in the books come as Pooh tries to put himself to sleep: "[H]e tried counting Heffalumps [but] every Heffalump that he counted was making straight for a pot of Pooh's honey ... [and] when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalumps were licking their jaws, and saying to themselves, 'Very good honey this, I don't know when I've tasted better', Pooh could bear it no longer." We learn nothing more about the nature of the beasts in the writings.
In the third chapter of
The House at Pooh CornerThe House at Pooh Corner is the second volume of stories about Winnie-the-Pooh, written by A. A. Milne and illustrated by E. H. Shepard. It is notable for the introduction of the character Tigger, who went on to become a prominent figure in the Disney Winnie the Pooh franchise.The title comes from...
, Pooh and Piglet fall into a similar trap (it's implied it was the same one) and think that it was made by a Heffalump to catch them. Pooh and Piglet rehearse the conversation they'll have when the Heffalump comes, but Pooh falls asleep and when Piglet hears a voice, he panics and says the wrong thing. He is mortified when the voice turns out to be that of Christopher Robin.
Explanation
Although this is never explicitly stated, it is generally thought that heffalumps are
elephantElephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant...
s from a child's viewpoint (the word "heffalump" being a child's attempt at pronouncing "elephant"):
E. H. ShepardErnest Howard Shepard was an English artist and book illustrator. He was known especially for his human-like animals in illustrations for The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne....
's illustrations in
A. A. MilneAlan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Life:A. A...
's original books depict heffalumps (as seen in Piglet's dreams) as looking very much like elephants.
In Disney's adaptations of the stories, Heffalumps are first mentioned in the 1968 featurette
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery DayWinnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day is an animated featurette based on the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne. This film, which was the second Winnie the Pooh short, was originally released by The Walt Disney Company on December 20, 1968, as a companion to the film The Horse in the Gray Flannel...
, and seem to be a product of
TiggerTigger 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...
's imagination. Heffalumps first actual appearance was in the television series
The New Adventures of Winnie the PoohThe New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is an American animated television series made by The Walt Disney Company, and inspired by A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories.-Overview:...
. In both, the animated films and all subsequent television series, they are also depicted as looking like elephants, albeit slightly cuddlier and less fierce than those Pooh imagines in the books.
In the animated television series, most heffalumps are enemies of Pooh and his friends. They are known to steal honey and are often associated with
woozleA woozle is a fictional creature mentioned in the Winnie the Pooh stories.No woozle illustrations appear in A. A. Milne's original stories, but it is often assumed that a woozle is something like a weasel, and they are depicted as such in the characters' imaginations during Winnie the Pooh and the...
s. One particular heffalump named Heff was the dim-witted sidekick of Stan the Woozle and was afraid of
RooRoo is a fictional character created by A. A. Milne and first featured in the book Winnie-the-Pooh. He is a young kangaroo, the son of Kanga.- Profile :...
because he thought Roo was a giant mouse. (This is perhaps a reference to the
Looney TunesLooney Tunes is a Warner Brothers animated cartoon series which ran in many movie theaters from 1930 to 1969. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and is Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. The regular Warner Bros...
running gag of
SylvesterSylvester J. Pussycat, Sr., or simply, Sylvester the Cat, or Sylvester, or Puddy Tat or gringo pussy-gato/Senor Pussycat , is a fictional character, a three-time Academy Award-winning anthropomorphic...
mistaking
Hippety HopperHippety Hopper is an animated cartoon character in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes series of cartoons.Robert McKimson introduced Hippety Hopper in "Hop, Look and Listen" , which created the mold into which future Hippety Hopper cartoons would fall: baby kangaroo Hopper escapes from the zoo, the...
for a giant mouse and the
fear of miceFear of mice and rats is one of the most common specific phobias. It is sometimes referred to as musophobia or murophobia , or as suriphobia, from the French souris, meaning mouse.The phobia, as an unreasonable and...
inherent in elephants.) Heff, who was voiced by
Chuck McCannChuck McCann is a movie actor, TV actor, stage actor, and a voice actor.-Early career:McCann was a comedy giant to a generation of children who grew up watching his children's shows in the New York metropolitan area during the 1960s, having worked his way up to regional star status by apprenticing...
, sounded just like Bouncer Beagle from
DuckTalesDuckTales is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Based on Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic book series, featuring the adventures of Scrooge McDuck and his nephews, the show premiered on September 18, 1987 and ended on November 28, 1990.- Premise :The...
.
PigletPiglet is a fictional character from A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh books. Piglet is a baby pig who is the best friend of Winnie-the-Pooh. Despite the fact that he is a "Very Small Animal" with a stutter and a generally timid disposition, he often conquers his fears and seems to want to be...
also befriended a young heffalump named Junior in two episodes of The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
. Junior lived with his parents, and his father, Papa Heffalump, was voiced by Jim CummingsJames Jonah "Jim" Cummings is an American voice actor.Born in Youngstown, Ohio, Cummings relocated to New Orleans, where he worked on the assembly of Mardi Gras floats. He later moved to Anaheim, California, where he worked "odd jobs" until the early 1980s...
. Mama Heffalump often had to remind Papa Heffalump of his many allergies. They appeared in a song called "Heffalumps and Woozles" with their partners, the woozleA woozle is a fictional creature mentioned in the Winnie the Pooh stories.No woozle illustrations appear in A. A. Milne's original stories, but it is often assumed that a woozle is something like a weasel, and they are depicted as such in the characters' imaginations during Winnie the Pooh and the...
s, in the film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
. Here, Tigger described them as honey-eating monsters. They and the song are also featured in the attraction at Walt Disney World, also called The Many Adventures of Winnie the PoohThe Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is a dark ride based upon the film The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, itself based on the Winnie-the-Pooh books by A. A. Milne. The attraction exists in slightly different forms at the Magic Kingdom in the Walt Disney World Resort; Disneyland Park; and...
, where the riders travel through the heffalumps and woozles in Pooh's dream.
Impact on popular culture
Since the 1950s heffalumps have gained substantial fame outside the Pooh stories.
- The term "heffalump" is whimsically used by adults to describe an elephant, or a child's view of an elephant.
- The term "heffalump trap" has been used in political journalism for a trap that is set up to catch an opponent but ends up trapping the person who set the trap (as happens to Winnie the Pooh in The House at Pooh Corner).
- In Scotland the word heffalump is used to describe an overweight or lazy person - literally meaning to heft (lift/shift) their lump.
- The protagonist (Gnossos Pappadopoulis) in Richard Fariña
Richard George Fariña was an American writer and folksinger. He was a figure in both the counterculture scene of the early- to mid-sixties as well as the budding folk rock scene of the same era....
's 1966 novel Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to MeBeen Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me is a novel by Richard Fariña. First published in the United States in 1966 the novel, based largely on Fariña's college experiences and travels, is a comic picaresque story of Gnossos Pappadopoulis that takes place in the American West, in Cuba during the...
believes his best friend to be named Heffalump for the majority of the novel, although Gnossos discovers in Cuba that Heffalump's birth name was in fact Abraham Jackson White.
There is a musical score called To Catch a Heffalump
(1971) by Willem Frederik Bon.
Pooh's Heffalump MoviePooh's Heffalump Movie is an animated Winnie the Pooh film, released by Walt Disney Pictures in 2005. This is the third theatrical feature-length film based on Disney's Winnie the Pooh franchise to not be a collection of previously-released shorts....
, released in 2005, looks at the differences between the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood and the Heffalumps, whom they fear as predators, cleared up after Roo becomes friends with a Heffalump named Lumpy.http://www.impawards.com/2005/poohs_heffalump_movie.html
Lumpy the HeffalumpHeffridge Trumpler Brompet Heffalump, IV or simply "Lumpy" is a fictional character created by The Walt Disney Company. He made up the "name game". His first appearance was in Pooh's Heffalump Movie...
later appears in the television program, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, on the Disney Channel. He continues to appear as Roo's friend and joins the gang on many adventures.