The Vinny Pukh Doll

I wasn’t a fan of Winnie The Pooh — at lest not the North American version. The characters seemed too flat and Winnie seemed to just go with the flow. Vinny, the Russian incarnation, on the other hand, is a go getter. He’s constantly thinking of ideas to get the honey, much more of a Wile E Coyote type except vegetarian.

About 14 years ago, my then girlfriend (now wife) introduced me to Vinny Pukh. It didn’t take long before I had watched over and over again the 40 minutes of film of Vinny Pukh and was just mesmerized. He was always on a mission, motivated, and even broke the fourth wall.

It got to a point where I thought of running a business around Vinny Pukh. What if I could introduce him North America like the next Pokemon or Tamagotchi? My first (and last) idea was a doll version of Vinny Pukh.

Wanting to do things legally, and to potentially get exclusivity, I tried to reach the copyright holders and discovered a strange mess of copyright protections post USSR. In the end, the effort to wage that battle exceeded my energy to push for Vinny Pukh doll for the masses. If I wanted one, I’d have to settle for the knock off like ones that were started to be manufactured overseas.

A bit later when I read Derek Sivers’ post on value of ideas vs execution, it reminded me of this story. Ideas are cheap — it’s having the know how and perseverance to execute that makes the difference.