# Pingu

Pingu is an animated children's television series originally produced in Switzerland. It was co-created by Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann. It 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', consisting of babbling, muttering, and the titular character's characteristic sporadic honking sound, which can be popularly recognized as "Noot noot!" or other variants, accompanied by turning his beak into a megaphone-like shape. 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 BV in 2001, they produced a revival run of Pingu for 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 in 2005. The characters were jointly voiced by David Sant and Marcello Magni. A computer-animated revival series with two seasons produced in Japan for NHK, entitled Pingu in the City, aired from 7 October 2017 to 30 March 2019. A third revival series, being animated in stop-motion like the original, is currently under development at Mattel Television and Aardman Animations.
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.

## Storyline

| Season | Episodes | Episodes | Originally released | Originally released |
| Season | Episodes | Episodes | First released | Last released |
| Original series |||||
| 0 | 3 | 3 | 1980 (1980) | 26 May 1986 (1986-5-26) |
| 1 | 26 | 26 | 7 March 1990 (1990-3-7) | 27 October 1990 (1990-10-27) |
| 2 | 26 | 26 | 3 November 1991 (1991-11-3) | 20 December 1994 (1994-12-20) |
| 3 | 26 | 26 | 17 June 1995 (1995-6-17) | 5 September 1996 (1996-9-5) |
| 4 | 26 | 26 | 5 January 1998 (1998-1-5) | 9 April 2000 (2000-4-9) |
| First revival series |||||
| 5 | 26 | 26 | 1 August 2003 (2003-8-1) | 6 February 2004 (2004-2-6) |
| 6 | 26 | 26 | 3 January 2005 (2005-1-3) | 3 March 2006 (2006-3-3) |
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?"
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". 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. Its positive reception persuaded the director of Schweizer Fernsehen, Ulrich Kündig [de], 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, and some of the later stories were written by Silvio Mazzola. These episodes were animated at Trickfilmstudio in Russikon, Switzerland. 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. This feature enabled people of diverse linguistic backgrounds to follow the story.
In 1993, David Hasselhoff released a single titled "Pingu Dance", 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.

### 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. HIT later revived the show and produced a further 52 episodes 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."
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. 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.
In February 2012, Mattel acquired Pingu through its purchase of HIT Entertainment which was rebranded to Mattel Television shortly after.

### Japanese popularity and Pingu in the City

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. In 2020, an exhibition event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the original "Hugo" animation was held in Tokyo. 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, was announced in 2017. It premiered on NHK-E on 7 October 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. It was directed by Naomi Iwata and written by both Kimiko Ueno and Shigenori Tanabe, with music done by Ken Arai. It features voices by Ryota Iwasaki and Fumiya Tanaka, in a similar style to Carlo Bonomi, David Sant, and Marcello Magni.

### Second revival

On 21 October 2024, it was announced that a remake of the series was being co-developed by Aardman Animations and Mattel Television.

## Reception

Pingu has received mostly positive reviews. Common Sense Media gave 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". According to a 2008 Slate article, the series is "an international sensation", but still remains obscure among American audiences.