DISNEY GRINS, BEARS IT; POOH TAKES LICENSING CROWN IN MAGIC KINGDOM.

Byline: Jerry Hirsch The Orange County Register

Watch out, Mickey Mouse. A cuddly bear is creeping up behind you.

It's a poorly kept secret at Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. that Winnie the Pooh, a character who predates the famous mouse, is surpassing Mickey in many of Disney's markets.

``No, Pooh isn't bigger than Mickey, but Pooh is up there,'' Michael Eisner, Disney's chairman, said in a recent interview. ``Clearly, it is one of our top characters.''

In just-licensed toy sales, Winnie the Pooh characters have outsold Mickey, Minnie and friends $316 million to $114 million through November of this year, according to NPD Group, a New York sales and consumer data tracking company.

``No doubt, one of Disney's strategic goals in the next year or two will be to reinvigorate Mickey and his pals,'' said Marty Brochstein, executive editor of The Licensing Letter, an industry trade journal.

Disney officials won't release detailed sales comparisons on their characters, but a walk through any Disney store provides plenty of evidence that Mickey's dominance is under siege.

Piles of Pooh plush animals, stacks of Pooh sweat shirts, a $600 Pooh animation cell and a $3 squeezable-plastic squeaking Pooh are among merchandise filling many shelves. But there's just a scattering of Mickey Mouse items.

Even the sales clerks concede they have far more Pooh than Mickey merchandise. Children and women especially like Pooh goods, the clerks say.

Shopper Steve Kea of Orange will attest to that.

``I am buying this stuff more for my wife than my kids,'' said Kea, looking over a bulging display of Pooh merchandise at MainPlace in Santa Ana. ``She has a watch and other Pooh stuff.''

Shoppers like Kea explain the massive expansion of Disney's licensing and marketing revenue for Pooh, which Eisner said has grown from $390 million to $3.3 billion in the past three years.

The seeds for that growth were planted in 1994, when Disney terminated an agreement that gave Sears, Roebuck & Co. broad licensing rights to the character.

That's a huge business considering that recent Disney license agreements give the company upward of 10 percent of sales revenue as royalty payments, said Marvin Winkler, a former Disney apparel licensee who is now the chief executive of Gotcha International, the Irvine surfwear company.

Many of Disney's Pooh items have far higher margins because they amount to private-label goods when sold through Disney's stores and theme parks, said Brochstein.

``Pooh as a property is growing big-time and is getting more and more attention across all divisions,'' said Judson Green, chairman of Walt Disney Attractions, the company's theme park division.

A full-length Pooh feature film or video project with music by the Sherman brothers, who composed the score for ``Mary Poppins,'' is in production. A Pooh television special is planned for Valentine's Day.

``Disney has done a magnificent job overall with Pooh, licensing and marketing products that appeal to a lot of different audiences and demographics,'' Brochstein said.

Even Disney's theme parks are jumping on Pooh's bandwagon. At Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., Disney pulled its two Mr. Toad's Wild Ride attractions to make way for a new ride, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, scheduled to open in June. An even more elaborate Pooh ride is being constructed at the Disney park in Tokyo.

Green and other top executives say a Pooh attraction at Disneyland is inevitable.

``There's no doubt, for licensing, Pooh has become as important as Mickey,'' Mitchell said. ``The Pooh characters are so great to work with. They are so good and so pure that they can be liked by everybody.''

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PHOTO (Color) no caption (Winnie the Pooh)

Michael Owen Baker/Daily News