Up, Down and Touch the Ground

"Up, Down and Touch the Ground"
Song

"Up, Down and Touch the Ground" is a song from the 1966 musical film featurette Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. The song was also subsequently incorporated into the 1977 musical film, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which is an amalgamation of the three previous Winnie-the-Pooh featurettes including The Honey Tree. In the song Winnie the Pooh's exercise makes him hungry, and although he over-eats (it leads to his stuck-in-Rabbit's door incident later in the film), he is proud of his fat stomach and he exercises to gain weight and grow even rounder. Halfway through the song however, he bends down too far, accidentally ripping the stitching on his bottom as a result of becoming fat, but upon seeing his bottom in the mirror, he quickly ties it together again. By the end of the song Pooh has rationalized his over-eating by calling his hunger, "healthy".

The song was written by Robert & Richard Sherman who have written most of the music for the Winnie-the-Pooh franchise over the years.

Anecdote

When first approached by Disney to write the songs for Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, American songwriters Robert & Richard Sherman struggled with the concept. The insight and inspiration for the Pooh songs came from an unlikely source, as is explained in the Sherman Brothers' joint autobiography, Walt's Time:

Walt (Disney) said 'Read the Pooh stories and let me know what you think.' We tried, but the stories just weren't coming through to us. At that time designer Tony Walton was working on Poppins. He was English born, and he was about our age, so we asked him to give us some insight on the Pooh character. His eyes lit up. 'Winnie the Pooh?', he said. 'I love Winnie the Pooh! Of course I'll help you!' Three hours later, he was still talking about Pooh, inspiring us no end. He explained how he had been a chubby little boy, and had felt very insecure. But Winnie the Pooh was his buddy, because Pooh was pudgy and proud of it. Pooh was probably the only character in the world who exercised to gain weight! Pooh was a wonderful, lovable friend who would never let you down or turn his back on you. Soon, we started to fall in love with Pooh ourselves. Our songs for Winnie the Pooh were truly a love affair, thanks to A. A. Milne and to Tony Walton.