The wonderful thing about Tiggers...

.......


......is that they are voiced by wonderful human beings.

Paul Winchell (Sag/Cap cusp) is the voice behind Tigger.

You probably wouldn't recognize Paul Winchell if you saw him on the street. Mainly because he's dead and if you saw him on the street you should be more concerned with finding an object to stab into his brainstem rather than playing "place the face."

But if this was 2004 or before, and you were talking on the phone with him, you'd recognize his voice instantly:

Yep, Winchell was Tigger. He voiced the questionably high cartoon tiger when the character first started speaking onscreen, until he retired in 1999. His voice work for the character even garnered him a Grammy award for Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too! (the popular follow-up to Winchell's solo work, Tiggas With Attitude).

Winchell voiced other famous characters as well, such as Gargamel from The Smurfs and the awesomely named Dick Dastardly from just about every Hanna-Barbera cartoon you've ever seen. If you still can't place his voice, you may have also recognized him as the voice of that bastard owl in the Tootsie Roll Pop commercial.

What He Should Be Known For:

Aside from wanting to have a place in our hearts forever, Winchell was also interested in medicine and inventing shit. Among his patents were a flameless cigarette lighter, battery-heated gloves and an invisible garter.

The most famous design he had, however, wasn't for recreational purposes but for being alive purposes: The man designed the first artificial heart. With the help of Dr. Henry Heimlich--of "thank you for giving men a reason to grope women while masking it as a life-saving technique" fame--the two invented the device, and were the very first to acquire a patent for it. A Dr. Jarvik came out with a heart shortly thereafter but, of course, Winchell already had the patent. Jarvik denies that his design was influenced in any way by the voice actor's patent, but Dr. Heimlich maintains that both hearts are exactly the same, thus making Jarvik's claim utterly "ridicarus," as Tigger might say, or "bullshit," as Winchell might.