Pingu

Pingu
GenreAnimated sitcom
Children's television series
Clay animation
Stop motion
Comedy
Created byOtmar Gutmann
Erika Brueggemann[1]
Written byErika Brueggemann
Silvio Mazzola
Voices ofCarlo Bonomi
David Sant
Marcello Magni
ComposersAntonio Conde (1990–1994)
Andy Benedict (1995–2000)
Keith Hopwood (2003–2006)
Country of originOriginal series:
Switzerland
Revival series:
United Kingdom
Original languages
No. of series6
No. of episodes156 (+1 special) (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers
  • Theresa Plummer-Andrews (2003–2006)
  • Jocelyn Stevenson (2003–2006)
  • Christopher Skala (2005–2006)
Producers
  • Otmar Gutmann (1990–1993)
  • Seishi Katto (1993–2000)
  • Javier Garcia (1993–2000)
  • Jackie Cockle (2003–2006)
  • Bella Reekie (2003–2006)
Running time5 minutes
25 minutes (special)
Production companiesOriginal series:
Pingu Filmstudio[a]
Revival series:
HIT Entertainment
Original release
NetworkSF DRS (Switzerland, Series 1-4)
ZDF (Germany, Series 1-4)
CBeebies (UK, Series 5-6)
Release7 March 1990 (1990-03-07) –
present
Related
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Pingu is an animated children's television series originally produced in Switzerland. It was co-created by Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann[1] that centres on the titular anthropomorphic emperor 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 Swiss toy company Editoy AG, and later on, Pingu BV handling IP ownership of the series.

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 Pingu from Pingu BV 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 animated in stop-motion like the original, is currently under development at Mattel Television Studios and Aardman Animations.[6][7]

The IP rights to Pingu are currently held by an entity owned by HIT/Mattel named Joker, Inc., which is usually called through its trade name "The Pygos Group" on copyright and trademark notices related to the Pingu property.

  1. ^ a b Pingu season 5 end credits. Archived from the original on 12 December 2021. Originated by: Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann
  2. ^ Stevens, Dana (1 February 2008). "The March of the Pingu". Slate. Retrieved 22 May 2017.
  3. ^ "Pingu Fact #5 (viewable in webpage source code)". Archived from the original on 2 February 2007.
  4. ^ a b Dickson, Andrew; Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (11 January 2016). "How we made Pingu". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
  5. ^ "2005 Children's Pre-School Animation | BAFTA Awards". awards.bafta.org. Retrieved 13 August 2022.
  6. ^ "Aardman and Mattel to co-develop Pingu animated TV series". app-aardman-cms-prod.azurewebsites.net. Retrieved 25 October 2024.
  7. ^ "Mattel and Aardman bring back Pingu". Retrieved 11 November 2024.


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