But though Winnie the Pooh became a hugely successful brand, Christopher Robin just wouldn’t sell.

“There’s only one thing to be done,” said the executives at Disney, and replaced him with a six-year-old girl.

Among the frantic merchandising activities laid on to mark the 80th anniversary of Hundred Acre Wood, Disney has commissioned an animated series My Friends Tigger and Pooh.

The Bear of Very Little Brain will be more active and the characters first rendered by Ernest Shepherd will appear in 3-D computer animation in brighter colours.

But what is most likely to anger longtime Milne devotees is the arrival of the “tomboyish girl” in the role usually played by Christopher Robin.

“We got raised eyebrows, even in-house, but the feeling was that these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only the introduction of someone new could provide,” Nancy Kanter, of the Disney Channel, told USA Today.

Disney says that the series will target preschool children. “The young character will elicit physical, cognitive and emotional responses from the viewing audience and will also address them directly,” said a spokesman.

The series is an attempt to increase Disney’s share in the pre-school market, worth an estimated £11.9 billion, the company said this week. Industry observers consider the new character a clever move.

Thomas Ranese, of marketing consultants Interbrand, said: “Pooh appears to be a robust brand that can handle expansion.” It is a phrase reminiscent of the time the bear over-indulged on the honey at Rabbit’s house.

A world away in Totnes, Devon, Lesley Milne, widow of A.A. Milne’s son Christopher Robin, the inspiration behind the stories, gave a short verdict.

“He hated the character Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh and Disney,” she said. “He detested the whole set- up so much that I don’t think he would have minded the loss.”

Winnie was a bear that the young Christopher Robin encountered at London Zoo; Pooh a name he had given to a swan. His childhood teddy bear got both titles, but after his father incorporated him and the bear into a series of successful children’s books, it was the son who suffered the consequences. At boarding school he learnt to box to protect himself from bullying.

It was those books, he later said, which “filched from me my good name and . . . left me with nothing but the empty fame of being his son”.

Nicholas Tucker, author of The Rough Guide to Children’s Books believes that Mr Milne came to terms with the stories before he died in 1996. “I think he would be saddened by this,” he said. “He would find it ironic to be written out at this late stage.” For his part, Mr Tucker thought the new character a huge error. “All of the stories are based on Christopher Robin’s questing relationship with the characters,” he said.

“They’re built around a boy who arrives and puts things right, like little boys do.”

At the check-out of the Winnie-the-Pooh Shop in Canterbury, David Phillips thought the replacement a shame.

But he admitted that “they’ve never managed to make toys out of Christopher Robin. People come in and ask for him, but he only ever appears as part of a group. Perhaps we’ll be getting toys for this new girl now.”

AND ... CUT!

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