Pingu

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.

In 1984, Erika Brueggemann was working at Schweizer Fernsehen 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. Otmar 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 7-minute pilot called "Pingu: Eine Geschichte Für Kinder Im Vorschulalter," which was finished in 1986.

The pilot was eventually screened at the 1987 Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Kleiner Baer award.[7] The positive reception to this pilot persuaded the director of Schweizer Fernsehen, Ulrich Kündig, to commission an entire series of the Pingu cartoons.

The first production year from 1988 and starting broadcast with 1990–2000 created 104 five minute episodes and one special twenty-five minute episode. The original stories were written by Erika 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 style 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 that he had already developed and used for Osvaldo Cavandoli's La Linea.[9][10][11][12] This feature enables people of diverse linguistic backgrounds to be able 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 this song is used as the theme to Pingu in international airings, and was also heard in the re-dubbed version of the "Pingu Looks After the Egg (retitled Pingu Helps with Incubating)" episode, replacing the "Woodpeckers from Space" song from the original version.

A special twenty-five minute episode, Pingu at the Wedding Party, was also produced in 1997, and introduced a family of green penguins.[14]

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 contains all of the show's 156 episodes and Pingu at the Wedding Party, but it contains the re-dubbed versions of series 1–2, and contains the original version of the special, without the titles and credits.

Pingu aired on Nickelodeon's CBBC block in the UK 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 US. It aired on Sprout until it was removed sometime in 2009, and it has not been broadcast since then. Currently, the show is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Instant Video in the US.

A documentary documenting the production and fans of the series, called Pingu - A Cartoon Character who conquers the world,[24] was produced in the early 1990s 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 music video was also released via 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 Kenya, Pingu was screened on KBC.

In South Africa, the original series of Pingu began airing on SABC2 and the 2003 series later went onto air on e.tv as part of their children's strand Craz-e!.

In Nigeria, Pingu was being shown on NTA.

In Australia, episodes of Pingu originally aired as a segment on the children's program The Book Place on the Seven Network from 1992 to 1996, and later aired on ABC Television as a standalone program in 1998.

In Germany, episodes of Pingu were aired from 10 November 1990 on ZDF, and later on KI.KA.

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 and then on Okto from 2012 to 2014.

Pingu aired in New Zealand on TV3 from 1996 to 2006, and on Four beginning in 2011.

Pingu was also aired in Malaysia on TV3 as a part of the morning television program.

In Canada, Pingu airs on TVOKids, CBC Kids, Knowledge Network, Toon-A-Vision, and YTV. Pingu has been a mainstay of the children's programming blocks 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 the show is available in English and French language versions. Some of the 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.[26] Pingu remained part of the Milkshake! Block for just over a year before being pulled from 5Star and its digital service.

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.

Pingu received mostly positive reviews, Common Sense Media rated the show a 4 out of 5 stars stating "Parents need to know that this claymation series is funny, endearing, and entertaining. Although the series is appropriate for all ages, the plots might be difficult for the youngest viewers to follow".[27]

• Pingu at IMDb