Pingu | |
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Genre | Animated sitcom Children's television series Clay animation Stop motion Comedy |
Created by | Otmar Gutmann Erika Brueggemann[1] |
Written by | Erika Brueggemann Silvio Mazzola |
Voices of | Carlo Bonomi David Sant Marcello Magni |
Composers | Antonio Conde (1990–1994) Andy Benedict (1995–2000) Amin Bhatia (1995–2000) Keith Hopwood (2003–2006) |
Country of origin | Original series: Switzerland Revival series: United Kingdom |
Original languages |
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No. of series | 6 |
No. of episodes | 156 (+1 special) (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Producers |
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Running time | 5 minutes 25 minutes (special) |
Production companies | Original series: Pingu Filmstudio[a] Revival series: HOT Animation HIT Entertainment |
Original release | |
Network | SF DRS (Switzerland) ZDF (Germany) CBeebies |
Release | 7 March 1990 9 April 2000 (Switzerland) | –
Release | 1 August 2003 3 March 2006 (United Kingdom) | –
Related | |
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview) |
Pingu is a Swiss-German 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 anthropomorphic emperor 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.
Originated by: Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann
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