With the page reattached, Junior wanders around until he finds the next corporeal area to explore. Why, what do you know, it’s a tall tree with a mysterious buzzing sound coming from it! Junior must like his trees like he likes his coffee — covered in bees! The camera pans out lovingly from the massive, mighty tree, lingering on all the hanging honeycombs so tantalizingly attached to its verdant boughs. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get some of that sweet, golden honey for our new friend Pooh, Junior? In fact, wouldn’t it be just fucking ass-tastic awesome if you kept the bees away from him with your Keyblade while he floated up the tree using a balloon and stopped off to gorge himself on any honey that he finds? Wouldn’t that just be great? No? Well, suck it up, kid, because that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing.
Tree Penis!
However, before that, we’re going to take a little time to “find” another member of the happy Hundred Acre Wood family. See, there’s another of those cheerful hollow logs lying just to one side of the splendiferous Hunny Tree. And inside, there’s a shy, tentative, teeny voice that belongs to one pink little Piglet. Piglet misses his friend Pooh and can’t seem to find him. But he takes one look at Junior and takes off running like Junior showed up in a butcher’s coat with a frying pan in one hand and the “Bacon!” dog from the old Beggin’ Strips commercials. This little piggy’s looking mighty smart, kids. Junior, on the other hand, can’t seem to take the hint and we play a nice game of “Chase my Piglet around the Hunny Tree” until the light goes off in Junior’s head and we chase in the opposite direction to the way Piglet is running. Wow, Junior, you’re a master of strategy!
Once cornered, Piglet stutters his apologies, presumably for letting the wanker with huge clown shoes corner him. As it turns out, Piglet was cautiously beating the grass (at least, the grass that didn’t spring back and frighten him) to see if he could find his friend Pooh. Meanwhile, as Piglet is explaining this and I’m trying not to choke to death on all the potential excrement puns one could make in this scene, who should come waddling up to the Hunny Tree but Pooh-bear himself. And as it turns out, I simply couldn’t continue to resist a scatological pun, as you’ll notice in the next screencap. Doublegood reference bonus, yay!
The constipation sensation that’s sweeping the nation!
Pooh hasn’t got time to be reunited with Piglet at the moment, however. He’s too busy scoping out the delicious golden honey that hovers just out of his reach in the beneficent boughs of the Hunny Tree. You can almost see him doing the carb junkie shuffle as he stares up the magnificent length of the mighty deciduous marvel before him. All this changes when Piglet tells Pooh that he’s “brought what you asked for.” Oh, gods. We’ve gone from Pooh and Piglet in a honey-soaked buttsex orgy to Piglet being Pooh’s little whoring bitch. I weep tears of blood here, people.
The “what” turns out to be a balloon. The plan is the previously noted notion that Pooh will hold the balloon and float up the Hunny Tree to gather all that delicious honey all to himself. Piglet wonders if Pooh just goes cavalierly floating off to rob the honeycombs if the bees won’t be angry and perhaps sting him to death, or even pop his balloon and make us start this entire damned thing over again. But surely that won’t happen, since Pooh realizes that he’s got Junior, and Junior can keep all those nasty bees away with his massive Keyblade! Yeah, Pooh-bear? Better pack an Epi-pen, that’s all I’m saying.
While they’re planning and plotting to send Pooh up the tree with Junior’s expert assistance, Owl shows up to be pompous at them and give some “pointers” on how to do the deed. First thing Owl says is that there’s no actual honey in the beehives, it’s all in the holes along the tree’s trunk. That flies in the face of conventional logic, but that’s certainly not a first in a Squenix game. Owl also tells us that the bees will become angrier the closer Pooh gets to the hives or the honey depository holes, so Junior will have to swat them away. If jumping from branch to branch is too difficult and time consuming, Junior can use the “Rush” command to catch up to Pooh quickly, even though the method isn’t exactly reliable. Owl, no offence, since you’re supposed to be the wise exposition/instruction character and all, but we’d already worked this out like ten damned minutes ago. Can we just get on with this? I need another drink, and I’d really like to have some justification for being three sheets to the wind on a Sunday morning without having been to church first.
As it turns out, this mini-game gives me all the excuse I need to pound down a beer bong on this bright and cheerful Sabbath day. You see, jumping with Junior — even when someone with MAD SKILLZ like my husband doing the jumping — is akin to taking a three-wheeled soap box racer to the Indy 500. No matter what you do, you’re going to suck. If the camera’s not actively trying to throw you off, the tree is, and it’s damned near impossible to keep up with Pooh as he gorges his way up the tree in the two minutes you’re allowed for this honey-stealing spree. Two minutes neither my husband nor I will ever get back, I’d like to remind you.
Happily, regardless of how well you do or in this case don’t do in the honey thieving, once this mini-game is over, Junior is kicked back out to the book and receives the item Naturespark. Taking the Naturespark over to the Fairy Grandmother will get you the Bambi summon, which is about as effective in battle as a chocolate kettle, but it makes the completionists happy, so there’s that. We’ve also completed the first mini-game, and that makes me happy. So happy, in fact, that I’m going to have another drink to celebrate. This one’s for Jesus, Mary, and…uh, Fred. Yeah, Fred. Cheers!
Junior adds the next page from his stash to the book to get to the next fun-filled mini-game area. This time we go to Rabbit’s house to “find” him and his expansive vegetable fields. There’s a letter in Rabbit’s mailbox which says “I hope we’ll be finding more honey together soon!” from Pooh. Oh, dear gods. Oh, game designers. Let me have my happy memories of gentle, non-smutty Hundred Acre Wood. Please, I beg you. There is only so much a 12-year-old British homo with a tiny penis can take by way of unintentional double-entendre, and we’re right up against it.
Thoroughly confused by his reading of Rabbit’s mail, Junior comforts himself by going out into Rabbit’s garden and digging up a few cabbages, pumpkins, and carrots. You can find items buried beneath the veggies, but it’s nothing to write home about. Still, it doesn’t do to pass up a free potion and get a little beta-carotene into the diet.
Meanwhile, at the other side of Rabbit’s house, Pooh and Piglet stand what is the presumed entrance, even though the door is on the other side. Since Rabbit is well, a rabbit, I suppose it makes sense that his front door would be a rabbit hole. Piglet explains that Rabbit’s house came back, but even though Pooh has been calling and calling, the house says there’s no one home. It couldn’t possibly be that Rabbit has a stick lodged up his ass and hates the thought of Pooh invading his treasured home, could it? I thought everyone in the Hundred Acre Wood were all the best of friends? When are they going to break out the Pooh Sticks and brownies? Apparently not now, as Pooh calls one more time and the house does indeed stress that there’s no one home.
Of course Junior is too greedy to let an empty house go without an investigation, so he barges right in by the door that isn’t shaped like a rabbit hole. Pooh, on the other hand, crawls in the rabbit hole to ask “Nobody” if they’ve seen Rabbit. By now, the stick up Rabbit’s ass is probably shaking hands with his gallbladder. Pooh makes it through the rabbit hole, and we finally lay eyes on long-suffering, persnickety Rabbit. It seems that Rabbit’s been terribly afraid that Pooh will come into his house, eat everything he can get his honey-smeared hands on, make a mess, then leave Rabbit to clean it up. Huh. And you guys wonder why I’m so adamant about not having children. If that’s not your Exhibit A, I don’t know what is.
And, as it turns out, Rabbit isn’t nearly as empty on the food items as he may have previously stated. Junior finds a stash of honey, leaving Rabbit to “graciously” offer some to Pooh-bear, who takes it and eats it all. The damage to Rabbit’s food stores done, Junior leaves Rabbit’s house for more vegetable picking. As he exits, Piglet comes running up behind him, begging Junior to help Pooh. It seems that the caloric effect of the entire contents of a pot of honey on a rather short anthropomorphic bear goes straight to the hips. Pooh is stuck in the rabbit hole entrance he had originally used to get into Rabbit’s house. Outside, Junior and Rabbit convene on Pooh to see what should be done. Rabbit says that some carrot top juice is just the thing to slimming down a portly Pooh, and that we could get some if we travel across the bridge to Rabbit’s carrot patch. However, the phrase “carrot top juice” is giving me the humorously-shaped vegetables. I know what Carrot Top looks like, and I’m not drinking any “juice” made from a guy who plucks his eyebrows more than my Aunt Elizabeth. I don’t care if the stuff makes you fart perfume and pee rainbows while a choir of angels sing, I’m just not doing it.
If that weren’t bad enough, Rabbit has just now noticed the devastation Junior has wrought to his once-prosperous carrot patch. Only, it seems that Rabbit is more than happy to lay the blame on Tigger, who is bouncy, bouncy, bouncing up the lane towards Rabbit’s house. Tigger plows straight into Junior, knocking him over. Perhaps now would be an excellent time for Tigger to show us the move that got him kicked out of the Siegfried and Roy show? No? Dammit.
After some heavy-handed plonks to the head with the Plot Mallet about how tiggers like to bounce around all the time, Tigger announces that with his old favorite bouncing ground gone, Rabbit’s carrot garden will be his new bouncing ground. This sets us up nicely for the next super-fun mini-game “Keep Tigger from bouncing all of Rabbit’s carrots into the ground.” Owl shows up once again to give us the instructions for the game. Basically, if Tigger bounces on any carrot twice, that carrot is lost. So it’s up to Junior to run around and flail his arms around to make sure that Tigger can’t bounce on any carrot more than once. Wow. It’s just a laugh-a-minute in here. Add to it that Owl recommends using the “Rush” command that was so helpful in the earlier honey game, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for controller-throwing excitement. However, Junior manages to save eleven carrots out of fifteen and block Tigger enough times to get a good score out of the deal. Tigger is impressed, Rabbit is suitably grateful, and my husband is rewarded…well, he’s just rewarded. Like that. Rabbit runs off to make the carrot top juice and asks Junior to stay in his house until it’s finished. No sooner does Junior get in the door than Rabbit shows up, proclaiming the carrot top juice duly administered to Pooh. All they need to do now is to push Pooh out the hole. The only way the writers could have made this worse is if they’d made the magic Pooh curing elixir prune juice instead.
One mighty push later, Pooh goes flying out the hole and lands some distance away, breaking some pottery. Isn’t that always the way of it? Next time Rabbit, use Dulcolax. It’s trusted, it’s gentle, and it works overnight!
Junior is rewarded with a Mythril Shard for completing this section of the Hundred Acre Wood, and it’s back out to the book for more page attaching. Blah, blah morphic field, blah, blah book binding glue, blah, blah, I tore these out of your symbol and they turned into paper… okay, scratch that last part. Anyway, we’re back in the Gospel According to Pooh. This time Junior is headed to a lovely tall tree with a sturdy swing attached to it, with a lovely little bridge beside it.
Pooh and Piglet are hanging out on the bridge, watching something floating through the water towards them. They express wonderment about what that something could be, which is all the clue we need that we’ve found another denizen of the Hundred Acre Wood. Now, who would be so miserable as to throw themselves into the river besides Mickey Dolenz and me? As it turns out, it’s Eeyore. Pooh bids Eeyore a hearty hello, and Eeyore asks if it might be possible for Pooh and the others to pull him out of the water. So no floating on down to New Orleans to pick up on some swinging scenes for you, Eeyore? (side bonus: Watch in awe as Auntie AG shows her age! Not that I was old enough for the first wave of the Monkees, and discounting the fact that Mike Nesmith is old enough to be my dad, alas. But still, it’s the Monkees!)
Since Pooh and Piglet are perfectly content to let Eeyore stay in the water until his stuffing molds, it’s up to Junior to jump into the river to save him, which he does. As Eeyore dries off, he tells the others that it feels like something’s missing from him. Piglet, sharp-eyed little bugger that he is, notices that Eeyore’s tail is missing. Pooh asks Junior to look for Eeyore’s tail, which is Owl’s cue to come in and explain to us yet another premise that involves controller throwing and swearing, though luckily not in the same concentration as the last two mini-games. Owl tells Junior to take Pooh up to that sturdy swing we saw coming in and wait for him. He’ll tell us all about it when we get up there! Since we’ve already figured it out, just nod your heads and let Owl rattle on. You’ll be doing the old dear a kindness.
Of course, the most frustrating thing is to get Pooh to actually follow Junior up to the swing. To do so, Junior has to be locked on to Pooh with the target lock system. Junior will then move ahead slowly, allowing Pooh to follow him. Once we’re close enough to the swing, Pooh will bounce on ahead, ready for his happy swing fun time. Of course, Junior has to stand behind and propel the swing forward. There’s a brief, unavoidable tutorial about how to push the swing so that Pooh will swing up high enough to “see” Eeyore’s tail, and then the mini-game begins. The object of the mini-game is to get Pooh to fly out of the swing and land on a certain spot several yards away where Eeyore’s tail is hidden in his house. Yes, I know, I just ruined the totally shocking surprise ending of this mini-game and now you’re going to cry into your pillows. Just remember — I am not the one who replaced Christopher Robin with an icky girl, nor am I the one who wrote a smutty slashfic about the “Hundred Acres of Penis Orgy” starring all our happy Wood-land friends. A little perspective here, that’s all I’m asking for.
It takes Junior many, many, many tries to get Pooh to land just right on top of Eeyore’s house. It also takes a fair amount of honey, since Pooh will get tired after a few swings and make things more difficult. Each time Pooh goes flying out of the swing seat to land, usually in the river, Junior has to go back down the hill and get him, then lead him back up in using that target lock mind control trick. Thank goodness Pooh so damned dense that he’s actually willing to fall for a mind control trick from one such as Junior. It’s like Qui-Gon Jinn leading Jar-Jar Binks off a bridge, or at least one could hope.