Pingu is a Swiss-German animated children's television series co-created by Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann[1] that centres on the titular anthropomorphicemperor penguin and his family, who live in the South Pole. The series aired on SF DRS for four series from 7 March 1990 to 9 April 2000, and was produced by the Swiss animation studio Pingu Filmstudio; with sister company The Pygos Group (originally called Editoy AG, then later Pingu BV) handling global distribution.
The series has been popular outside of Switzerland, particularly in the United Kingdom and Japan, in part due to its lack of a real spoken language: Nearly all dialogue is in an invented grammelot "penguin language" referred to as 'Penguinese' or 'Pinguish',[2] consisting of babbling, muttering, and the titular character's characteristic sporadic honking sound, which can be popularly recognized as "Noot noot!" or other variants (stated to be "Noo, noo!" by the defunct Pingu website's trivia page),[3] accompanied by turning his beak into a megaphone-like shape.[4] In the first four series, all the characters were performed by Italian voice actor Carlo Bonomi, using a language of sounds he had already developed and used earlier for Osvaldo Cavandoli's La Linea.
After British children's company HIT Entertainment purchased The Pygos Group in 2001, they produced a revival run of two additional series in the United Kingdom through their in-house studio Hot Animation, which aired on CBeebies from 1 August 2003 to 3 March 2006. It was nominated for a BAFTA award[5] in 2005. The characters were voiced by jointly voiced by David Sant and Marcello Magni.[4] A computer-animated revival series produced in Japan, entitled Pingu in the City, ran for two seasons on NHK from 7 October 2017 until 30 March 2019. A third revival series, being animation in stop-motion like the original, is currently under development at Mattel Television and Aardman Animations.[6]
The program is set in Antarctica and focuses around penguin families living and working in igloos. The main character, Pingu, belongs to one such family. He frequently goes on adventures with his little sister, Pinga, and often gets into mischief with his best friend Robby and his love interest, Pingi.
Production history
In 1984, Erika Brueggemann was working at Schweizer Fernsehen (the German-speaking division of SRG SSR) when she was introduced to animator Otmar Gutmann. Gutmann pitched a clay animation show starring sea lions who crawled around in a funny way. Erika Brueggemann liked the idea of a clay cartoon character, but she preferred the clay penguins that Gutmann had made. She suggested that the main character should walk upright like a human and asked, "Why not a penguin?"[7]
Brueggemann's colleague, Guido Steiger, agreed with her idea. Gutmann was not immediately convinced, since he had already created many sea lion characters out of plasticine, but he eventually pushed forward with the penguin idea too. According to Erika Brueggemann, she gave "countless demonstrations on my part about how 'my' penguin had to move and act".[7] From this framework, Brueggemann, Gutmann and their team created a seven-minute pilot, "Pingu: Eine Geschichte Für Kinder Im Vorschulalter", which was finished in 1986.
The pilot was screened at the 1987 Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Kleiner Baer award.[8] Its positive reception persuaded the director of Schweizer Fernsehen, Ulrich Kündig, to commission an entire series of Pingu cartoons.
The series began production in 1988 and started airing on SF DRS from 1990–2000, originally consisting of 104 five-minute episodes and one special 25-minute episode. The original stories were written by Brueggemann and Guido Steiger,[7] and some of the later stories were written by Silvio Mazzola. These episodes were animated at Trickfilmstudio in Russikon, Switzerland.[9] In the styling of voices, a retroscript was chosen, and all voices were performed by Italian voice actor Carlo Bonomi without a script, using a language of noises he had already developed and used for Osvaldo Cavandoli's La Linea.[10][11][12][13] This feature enabled people of diverse linguistic backgrounds to follow the story.[12][13]
In 1993, David Hasselhoff released a single titled "Pingu Dance",[14] a rap song (in Switzerland only) based on the Pingu shorts and featuring samples of Penguinese. A portion of the song is used as the theme to Pingu in the third and fourth series, as well as the re-dubs of the first two series. It was also heard in the re-dubbed version of the episode "Pingu Looks After the Egg" (retitled "Pingu Helps with Incubating"), replacing the "Woodpeckers from Space" song from the original version.
A special 25-minute episode, Pingu at the Wedding Party, was also produced in 1997, and introduced a family of green penguins.[15]
HIT Entertainment buyout
On 29 October 2001, HIT Entertainment bought the rights to the series, including the original 104 episodes and the wedding special, for £15.9 million.[16] HIT later revived the show, and produced a further 52 episodes[17] from 2003–2006. These episodes were animated through stop motion like the original, but used resin casts of the original clay puppets, which had deteriorated by this time.
The HIT Entertainment episodes were made by a completely new team at HOT Animation, but co-creator Erika Brueggemann still traveled to the company's headquarters in the United Kingdom to check on production. At the time, she said, "Last year a production company from England bought everything... I traveled to Manchester last summer and met their highly motivated team who worked with great commitment, humor and responsibility towards children. I think Pingu is in good hands now."[7]
Contrary to some sources, there was never any CGI used in these later episodes. When HIT Entertainment bought the rights, Carlo Bonomi was replaced with new voice actors Marcello Magni and David Sant.[18][4] Magni and Sant, Italian and Spanish actors based in London, both had mime and clowning backgrounds and were already aware of the clown language "Grammelot", on which the penguin language was based.[4]
In February 2012, Mattel acquired Pingu through its purchase of HIT Entertainment which was rebranded to Mattel Television shortly after.[19]
From its debut in the country in 1992, Pingu became well known in Japan. According to writer Silvio Mazzola in 1996, Pingu was most popular with high-school girls, with over 90% of Japanese girls aged 13–17 knowing about it.[20] In 2020, an exhibition event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the original "Hugo" animation was held in Tokyo.[21]Pingu currently airs as part of NHK's children's program Nyanchu's World, and also on Cartoon Network Japan. Various merchandise exclusive to the country has been created, including tie-in toys with KFC and Mister Donut, as well as various video games.
A Japanese-produced reboot of the series, titled Pingu in the City (Japanese: ピングー in ザ・シティ, Hepburn: Pingū in za Shiti), was announced in 2017. It premiered on NHK-E on October 7, 2017. Unlike its previous series, it is computer-animated, and features Pingu and his family moving to a big city. Each episode involves Pingu attempting to help out anyone there with their jobs, although he usually messes it up. The series was produced by Polygon Pictures in the same style of the original stop motion series through computer animation.[22] It was directed by Naomi Iwata and written by both Kimiko Ueno and Shigenori Tanabe, with music done by Ken Arai.[23] It features voices by Ryota Iwasaki and Fumiya Tanaka, in a similar style to Carlo Bonomi, David Sant, and Marcello Magni.
2024 revival
On 21 October 2024, Aardman Animations announced that a new revival of the series is in the works with Mattel.[6]
Broadcast history
In the United Kingdom, the BBC aired the original version of Pingu on the Children's BBC slot on BBC One from 1990 onwards. In 2002, when the BBC created the CBBC channel, it was moved to its preschool channel CBeebies. They used the original cartoon title card for series 1–2, and the first 13 episodes of series 3 used the claymation-inspired intro.
JimJam has aired all of the show's 156 episodes and Pingu at the Wedding Party, but it showed the re-dubbed versions of series 1–2, as well as the original version of the special, without the titles and credits.
Pingu aired on Nickelodeon's CBBC block in the United Kingdom for a period of time in the late 1990s.[24]
According to a 2008 Slate article asking "When will America embrace Pingu?", the series has "been an international sensation for more than two decades while remaining as obscure to American audiences as a Eurovision pop star".[25] The show has only rarely been broadcast in the United States. At first, Pingu was shown on Small World, a showcase of internationally produced shorts that aired during Cartoon Network's Sunday morning lineup from 1996 to 2002. In 2005, the series returned to the country on the new Sprout channel, finally airing as a separate show in the United States. It aired there until it was removed sometime in 2009, and has not been broadcast since then. Currently, the show is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Instant Video in the United States.
A documentary on the series' production and fans, Pingu - A Cartoon Character who Conquers the World,[26] was produced in 1995 and follows a detective who tries to figure out why Pingu became popular.
In 2006, Pingu was featured in a music video for Eskimo Disco's first single, "7–11". The video was also released on CD on 18 December 2006.[27]
In India, Pingu was aired by Doordarshan in the late 1990s. Since 2000, it has been aired by Cartoon Network, Hungama TV and Animax.
In Australia, Pingu originally aired as a segment on the children's program The Book Place on the Seven Network from 1992–1996, and later aired as a standalone program on ABC Television in 1998.
In Germany, Pingu was aired from 10 November 1990 on ZDF, and later on KI.KA.[citation needed]
Pingu was shown in the U.A.E. on their English-speaking television network Dubai 33.
Pingu was shown on television for the very first time in Singapore, and first aired on Kids Central, from 2003 to 2006, then on Okto from 2012 to 2014.
Pingu aired in New Zealand on TV3 from 1996–2006, and on Four beginning in 2011.
Pingu was also aired in Malaysia on TV3 as a part of the morning television program.
In Vietnam, the children's gameshow Những em bé thông minh ("Smart Kids") aired on HTV7 in 2007 was based on the Pingu property, with bits of episodes aired throughout the show.[28][29]
In Canada, Pingu airs on TVOKids, CBC Kids, Knowledge Network, Toon-A-Vision, and YTV. It has been a mainstay of children's programming on TVOntario since the mid-1990s. It can still be seen on TV in that country since APTN airs The Pingu Show as part of its morning children's programming block "APTN Kids", and is available in English and French language versions. Some controversial episodes, such as "Pingu Quarrels With His Mother" (also known as "Pingu Argues With His Mother") and "Little Accidents" (also known as "Pingu's Lavatory Story"), have aired uncut on APTN Kids. In British Columbia, Pingu is aired during commercial breaks on Knowledge Network.
In the United Kingdom, Pingu was featured in the Children In Need 2009 video by Peter Kay, which contained many other popular characters. This was shown on live television across the United Kingdom, and then sold on both CD and DVD. This was Pingu's final appearance for 8 years until Pingu in the City and is also Pingu's final clay animation appearance.
In August 2017, reruns of series 5-6 of Pingu started airing in the Milkshake! programming block of the British television channel 5Star.[30]Pingu remained part of the Milkshake! Block for just over a year before being pulled from 5Star and its digital service.
Home video releases
Pingu has been released several times on home video since its inception. BMG Video distributed the show on video in most countries, with the exceptions of the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, where BBC Video, C/FP Distribution and Sony Music Entertainment Japan distributed Pingu on video, respectively. In 1997, upon the show's move to the channel, ABC Video took over the video rights for Pingu in Australia from BMG. HiT Entertainment assumed the worldwide video rights to Pingu in 2003 and began self-distributing the show on video from there, whilst co-distributing it with ABC Video and Sony Creative Products, Inc. in Australia and Japan, respectively.
Reception
Pingu has received mostly positive reviews. Common Sense Media have it 4 out of 5 stars, stating: "Parents need to know that this claymation series is funny, endearing, and entertaining. Although [it] is appropriate for all ages, the plots might be difficult for the youngest viewers to follow".[31]
Other media
Internet popularity
Pingu has been the subject of various internet memes online. In 2012, a fan film called Pingu's The Thing, a crossover with John Carpenter's The Thing by animator Lee Hardcastle, went viral on release and again over the following years.[32][33][34][35] In 2022, a viral animation involving Pingu doing his trademark "Noot noot!" before staring off into the distance as Lacrimosa plays in the background gained popularity, using the choir symphony to depict feelings of terror and dread.[36][37]
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References
Notes
↑ Formerly known as Trickfilmstudio Otmar Gutmann for series 1-2.
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