Pingu is an animated children's television series co-created by Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann that first aired in Switzerland.[1] It was produced from 1990 to 2000 by Swiss companies The Pygos Group (originally called Editoy AG, then later Pingu BV) and Pingu Filmstudio (originally Trickfilmstudio) in Switzerland. It was later revived from 2003 to 2006 by British companies HIT Entertainment and HOT Animation. The series focuses on a family of anthropomorphicemperor penguins who live in the South Pole; the main character is the family's son and title character, Pingu.
The series originally ran for four series from 7 March 1990 to 9 April 2000 on SF DRS, with the revival run of two more series from 1 August 2003 to 3 March 2006 on CBeebies. It was nominated for a BAFTA award[2] in 2005.
Pingu became 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',[3] 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),[4] accompanied by turning his beak into a megaphone-like shape.[5] 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. In series 5–6, the cast was jointly voiced by David Sant and Marcello Magni.[5]
A Japanese reboot of the series, Pingu in the City, began airing on NHK on 7 October 2017 and ended on 30 March 2019; it was later shown in the United Kingdom on ITVBe's children's block LittleBe.
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.
Pingu is the show's main character—a typically playful, curious little penguin. His name comes from the German word for penguin, Pinguin. He is stubborn and mostly well-behaved, but prone to making mischief and throwing occasional tantrums.
Pinga is Pingu's little sister. She resembles an emperor penguin chick, as do other young penguins throughout the show. She is happy and playful, but very sensitive and clever, and often a target for Pingu's pranks.
Mr. and Mrs. Penguin are Pingu and Pinga's parents (their actual names are not revealed). Father is a postman who uses a non-smoking pipe in the early episodes but quits later. He is a short-tempered but loving penguin and has a motorised sledge to deliver the mail, sometimes with Pingu's help. Mother is a caring, loving, and hard-working housewife who spends most of her time cooking and cleaning. She sometimes gets help from Pingu and Pinga, and always gives them a cuddle when they have learned a lesson.
Grandfather is Pingu and Pinga's paternal grandfather, who first appeared in the episode "Music Lessons". He is an expert accordionist, as he demonstrates to Pingu in that episode, and also a former professional weight lifter.
Recurring
Robby is a seal who is Pingu's best friend. His name comes from the German word for seal, Robbe. First appearing in the episode "Pingu Goes Fishing", he is friendly and playful, yet cheeky in many ways. He is bluish gray in the first four series, and light gray in the last two.
Pingo is a somewhat foolhardy penguin. He has a long beak that is essentially flat at the bottom but slightly rounded on the top and a head that is wider and taller. He often persuades Pingu to do wild and silly things with him. He was originally a bully in the first episode, but later he became Pingg's and Pingu's friend.
Pingg is Pingu's other penguin friend. He also has a long beak, but a shorter head than Pingo. Like Pingo, he was originally a bully, but later became one of Pingu's friends.
Pongi is a penguin who wears glasses and has a short round beak. He first appeared in the episode "Ice Hockey".
Pengy is a penguin very similar to Adélie penguins and first appears in "Pingu and the School Excursion". In the episode "School Time", Pingu resembles Pengy.
Pingj is a green penguin who appears in Pingu at the Wedding Party. He speaks with an accent that seems typical of his breed.
Punki is a penguin who first appeared in the episode "Pingu Delivers the Mail". He has a tuft on his head and wears striped trousers.
Bajoo is Pingu's other non-penguin friend. HIT Entertainment reveals him as a strange newcomer to the Antarctic in the appearance of a yeti. He was introduced in 2005 and appeared in the last episode, "Pingu and the Abominable Snowman". He also appeared in the 7–11 music video and The Pingu Show.
Pingi is Pingu's love interest and Pinga's best friend. She has thick white eyelashes and a somewhat flattened beak. She first appeared in the episode "Pingu's Admirer".
Supporting
Mr. Peng-Chips is Pingu's teacher. He lives at the local school and rings the bell when it is time for school to begin or end. He first appeared in the episode "School Time".
The Doctor is the neighbourhood doctor. He lives in a nearby igloo clinic, treats Pingu's injuries, and aides in the birth of Pinga.
Mr. Peng-Hoven is a poor penguin who lives in a tattered igloo and frequently receives Pingu's acts of kindness. He first appeared in the episode "Pingu and the Barrel Organ".
The Aunts are Mother's sisters and Pingu and Pinga's three maternal aunts. In "Pingu Goes Away", Pingu goes to stay with one of his aunts. In "Pingu the Babysitter", he cares for another aunt's twin chicks whilst she and Mother go out; then in "Pingu Makes a Mistake", he cares for the third aunt's egg, which is due to hatch.
The Twins are Pingu and Pinga's cousins. The appear in "Pingu the Babysitter", where Pingu cared for them when their mother goes out with his mother.
Grandpa is Pingu and Pinga's maternal grandfather who appeared in "Grandpa is Ill" and "Pingu Cannot Lose"; in the latter, he is shown to be good at bowling.
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?"[6]
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".[6] 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.[7] 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,[6] and some of the later stories were written by Silvio Mazzola. These episodes were animated at Trickfilmstudio in Russikon, Switzerland.[8] 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.[9][10][11][12] This feature enabled people of diverse linguistic backgrounds to follow the story.[11][12]
In 1993, David Hasselhoff released a single titled "Pingu Dance",[13] 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 international airings, and 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.[14]
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.[15] HIT later revived the show, and produced a further 52 episodes[16] 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."[6]
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.[17][5] 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.[5]
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.[18] In 2020, an exhibition event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the original "Hugo" animation was held in Tokyo.[19]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.[20] It was directed by Naomi Iwata and written by both Kimiko Ueno and Shigenori Tanabe, with music done by Ken Arai.[21] It features voices by Ryota Iwasaki and Fumiya Tanaka, in a similar style to Carlo Bonomi, David Sant, and Marcello Magni.
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.[22]
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."[23] 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,[24] 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.[25]
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."[26][27]
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.[28]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".[29]
Internet popularity
Pingu has been the subject of various internet memes online. Notably, one in May 2022 spread across social media platforms YouTube and Tiktok, in which the Lacrymosa of the third section (Sequentia) of Mozart's "Requiem" accompanies a viral video of Pingu the penguin saying "Noot Noot".[30] The meme gained popularity, using the choir symphony to depict feelings of terror and dread.[31][32]
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References
Notes
↑ Formerly known as Trickfilmstudio Otmar Gutmann for series 1-2.
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