Pingu

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♥ This article is dedicated to Carlo Bonomi (March 12, 1937 - August 6, 2022), who passed away on his hometown in Milan, Italy, at the age of 85, Antonio Lupatelli, author of the illustrated book adaptation (1930 - May 18, 2018), Otmar Gutmann (1937-1993), and Marcello Magni (June 27, 1959, Bergamo, Italy - September 18, 2022, from prostate cancer).
Pingu

Noot Noot!
Genre: Comedy
Clay animation
Slice of life
Running Time: 5 minutes
Country: Switzerland (production origin)
United Kingdom
Release Date: 28 May 1986 – 3 March 2006
Network(s): SF DRS (Switzerland)
BBC Two (UK, 1990-2002)
CBeebies (UK, 2002-2015)
ABC Kids (Australia)
Created by: Otmar Gutmann
Distributed by: SF DRS
BBC
HIT Entertainment
Starring: Carlo Bonomi
David Sant
Marcello Magni
Seasons: 6
Episodes: 156


Pingu is a Swiss-British stop motion clay animated children's comedy television series created by German television producer, animator, and director, Otmar Gutmann, the first four seasons were produced from 1986 to 2000, and the last two were produced by HiT Entertainment from 2003 to 2006.

Why It's a Nootful Delight

  1. The characterization is fantastic and almost all of the characters are easy to relate to, this is mainly due to the fact that the show tries to portray the characters as realistically as possible, with the main characters acting exactly how a normal family acts in real life:
    • Pingu himself is a charming, likable, and fun character who is very relatable as well. Even though he makes mistakes and occasionally quarrels with his sister from time to time, he generally cares about his family and friends.
  2. Amazingly well-done stop motion claymation with Max Fleisher-style movements, which look outstanding for a show made in the late 80s and early 90s. The animation improved significantly in Seasons 5 and 6.
  3. Catchy theme songs for each season. Seasons 1 and 2 use a Yogi Bear-esque theme titled "Küchenchef", while Seasons 5 and 6 use a short disco tune. Plus, when the episodes were rerun as part of The Pingu Show, a brand new opening sequence was added featuring Pingu sliding across the ice and into his new whale-shaped house.
  4. Speaking of the theme songs, David Hasselhoff himself (yeah, the same man who guest starred in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie) sang "The Pingu Dance", which was the theme song used for Seasons 3 and 4 and later Seasons 1 and 2 for the redubbed versions.
  5. Pingu's catchphrase "Noot Noot!" (or "Nug Nug!" in official sources), is very catchy and pretty humorous. His catchphrase became so iconic to the point of becoming an internet meme.
  6. The 2016 Japanese reboot Pingu in the City is very good. It is one of those rare reboots where a UK cartoon character becomes so popular in Japan, that any Japanese animation team would decide to bring the series that was from the UK back into modern-day television, it was done very well, and the concept alone stands out amazingly.
    • The CGI animation in Pingu in the City is very good as it takes the interesting approach of making the CGI resemble stop-motion animation similar to Bob the Builder: Ready Steady Build. The framerate also didn't change from seasons 5-6, despite the show's change of style, which is impressive.
  7. It is one of the longest-running stop-motion kids shows as it ran from 1990 to 2006, for a total of 16 years.
  8. What makes the show unique is that the characters never speak English, substituting it for a fictional penguin language, which is not just clever, but allows the viewer to think of what the penguins are saying themselves. This makes it one of the rare cartoons in which the characters don't regularly speak a certain language (or maybe if you call it the first cartoon in the UK, despite being made in Switzerland during production)
    • This did lead to several fan-made series dedicated to translating the episodes, as well as a lot of gag dubs.
  9. Despite the slice-of-life style of the episodes, Pingu and his family and friends still tend to have some silly mayhem, like "Pingu Looks After the Egg" and "Pingu Goes Fishing".
  10. Pingu aired on Cartoon Network in the US before moving to Sprout (now Universal Kids).
  11. Fun voice acting from an Italian actor who also worked for the Milan Centrale Railway Station, the late Carlo Bonomi, who did all of the voices (that is until the first 4 seasons were remade/redubbed, when some of the characters' voice acting was done by Marcello Magni and David Sant; however, the voice acting sounds good regardless).
  12. Enjoyable music soundtrack.
  13. Cute character designs.
  14. Really fun episodes.
  15. Seasons 5 & 6 were very good attempts at trying to revive the show with impressive character redesigns, faster pacing, and higher quality stop-motion animation that you would expect from Aardman, Stoopid Buddy Studios, or even Screen Novelties.
    • The fifth and sixth seasons were almost as enjoyable as the first four seasons, and still kept most of the charm from the classic seasons, in a similar manner to how Season 5 of Fireman Sam kept most of the charm from the first four seasons. Unlike how HiT Entertainment managed things with Fireman Sam after that show's Season 5 and Bob the Builder with its 2015 reboot, they stayed very true towards Pingu, understood the source material, and had a lot of fun with the stories that the writers commissioned for the HiT Entertainment seasons of Pingu.
    • As part of The Pingu Show, a new segment titled Penguin Facts with Professor Pingu was introduced. It taught real-life facts about penguins which were accompanied by humorous sketches.
  16. It spawned a twenty-two-minute television special, "Pingu at the Wedding Party", which was only available in the UK at first but was then aired in a few more countries, e.g. Poland.

Banned & Censored Qualities

  1. The classic run, while great, can have its hiccups, especially with its characters:
    • Even though it's for children or kids, the episode "Pingu and the Doctors" shows blood to the point it could be something off of an adult cartoon before Robot Chicken came out 13 years ago after the episode was released. That was used when Pingu accidentally broke his beak.
    • Pingu's parents, particularly his mother, are sometimes abusive towards Pingu in some episodes. One episode was when Pingu refused to eat his dinner in "Pingu Runs Away", he rocks his chair and ends up pulling all the food off the table. His parents are so furious that his mother approaches him and ends up spanking him. Pingu goes crying to his father asking for a hug (implying he was asking for sympathy), only for him to reject it (implying he believed Pingu deserved what he got). In "Pingu Quarrels With his Mother", she slaps him across the face, but in that instance, immediately regrets doing so, even if Pingu was throwing a temper tantrum. This scene was enough for it to be cut out when the episode was released on VHS in the UK.
    • The first two seasons were unnecessarily redubbed with Carlo Bonomi re-recording his lines and the music also being reworked too in later releases.
    • Pingu's father can be a big jerk. In "Grandfather Comes to Visit", he is mean to Pingu and Pinga and rude to Grandfather (yelling at them for Grandfather's magic trick), showing that he is a really bad host. Another example, in "Like Father Like Pingu", is just a show-off and tries to hog the glory of Pingu's large catch.
    • Pingu's sister, Pinga, can be unlikable sometimes. She frequently cries and throws temper tantrums a few times (e.g. "Pingu and the Gift"), either to avoid facing the consequences or just to get what she wants. However, she is not as bad as how D.W. from Arthur is, as the intention in the show was to make the kids and parents in this series act as closely realistic as possible, which made the series work. However, her behavior can be somewhat justified as she is a baby.
    • Pingu sometimes treats Pinga as the punching bag in a few episodes.
    • Numerous confusing plot holes that don't make any sense. In "Pingu and the Baker", Pingu steals a tart, returns home, and is caught, but why couldn't he finish the tart before he arrives home? Another example in "Little Accidents" is if Pingu couldn't reach the toilet to use it, how did he go all the other times?
    • Pingu's mother forced him to chop wood in one episode, which is incredibly dangerous, especially if a child is doing that.
  2. Like The Ren & Stimpy Show, Total Drama, 6teen and Looney Tunes, it had some censorship issues (especially in the UK and the US), even when broadcasting on Cartoon Network in 1996 before moving to PBS Kids Sprout in 2005, four years after its hiatus from US broadcast.
    • "Pingu's Lavatory Story" (called "Little Accidents" in the UK) has a disgusting scene where Pingu pees all over the floor, which was the obvious reason why the episode was banned.
    • An episode called "Pingu's First Kiss" featured Pingu and Pingi kissing together to the point of beak-to-beak contact, causing the episode to be banned in the US.
    • The walrus/seal/sea lion that appeared in "Pingu's Dream" is terrifying, and it was the sole reason the episode had to be banned from television viewing.
  3. There are also some bits of gross-out, such as Pinga pooping herself (to make matters worse, she goes on the table) in "The New Arrival", the scene where Pingu checks his baby cousins' diapers in "Pingu the Babysitter", he opens the diapers and the poop is explicitly shown in it (it also begs the question, if Pingu's baby cousins are shown wearing diapers and Pinga is a baby herself, then why isn't she wearing diapers as well?), and the aforementioned scene of Pingu peeing in "Little Accidents".
  4. It had a share of some bad episodes, but not too many to find, such as "Pingu Quarrels with His Mother".
  5. Pingu's mother's newer voice given by Marcello Magni in the HiT Entertainment era sounds miscast as his performance for Pingu's Mum makes her sound stuck up and snooty, which does not sound like her character.
  6. The Pingu Show, while having good animated segments, is just a rerun of older episodes of Pingu. They do occasionally air the odd 1 or 2, but this is just lazy.
  7. While the stop motion is good, it still clearly cuts corners to save money (this is the case within only the first four seasons instead of all the seasons). Character models are frequently reused for background characters, sometimes a prop can shift positions between frames and the character animation can be stilted from time to time. This is why the early seasons had some choppier and stiffer stop-motion.
  8. There are some plot holes and logical inconsistencies in the show, for example, fish is used as the currency in this world, but then why would you need a job as a mailman to earn fish, why not just be a fisherman, and why would you eat your own money.
  9. HiT Entertainment canceled the original Pingu series in 2006 without an explanation or an announcement after Season 6 had finished production. The reason why was never explained. It was only for the fans to figure the pieces out together. Pingu did come back after its 10-11 year cancellation with a Japanese reboot called Pingu in the City in 2017, but this time with Mattel and Polygon Pictures having the rights to the latter. Sadly, this did not last long as Mattel canceled the reboot series in 2019 after the show's second season also without an explanation, reason, or announcement.
  10. Just like how Pat & Mat, a Czechoslovak stop-motion TV show, had an English dub and a Dutch dub despite the original having no dialogues, the show also had a Korean dub on VHS as well as an English dub. Granted, with the English dub made in South Korea on tape, it was made so that they could teach South Korean viewers how to speak the English language. Not that it's a bad thing or anything, but all the same, it takes away the gibberish Penguin charm from the original version since no one was questioning the fictional language. But as for the Korean dub, it was just there with unnecessary human dialogue made for the characters to speak.
    • In another regard to the English dub, the voice acting sounds atrocious. Pingu's Mum sounds like a sexualized pornstar, Robby sounds like Noddy's US voice for Noddy's Toyland Adventures (except somehow even worse), while everybody else sounds like the actors are hardly even trying with their character voices at all, including Pingu, the main character himself. It is also inconsistent, too. Sometimes, the audio has the character's voices being spoken, but the few other times, they go back to using the late Carlo Bonomi's original recordings in some of these episodes on these tapes, which makes this dub feel completely pointless.
      • If we are talking about both dubs, the way the dialogue is placed into the actual episodes feels out of place because first of all, the characters' mouths don't lip-sync their mouths to match the lines the actors are speaking out at all, and secondly, none of the characters can even speak any of the human languages like English and Korean in the show themselves.
  11. Noot Noot can get repetitive or annoying at some times.
    • This has led to it becoming a viral Internet meme.

Trivia

  • "Pingu & the Doll" is banned from US television, possibly due to the episode with Pingu playing as a Native American stereotype.
  • The episode "Pingu's Lavatory Story" was banned due to its heavy focus on uncensored urination.
  • Despite being British, the series's first four seasons were made in Switzerland from the late 1980s-2000.
  • Season 4 was the last season of Pingu to air in the 20th century, and to last to be the classic series.
  • Before Pingu, the late Carlo Bonomi recorded some railway announcements in Italy for the Milan Central Railway Station, they remained in use from 1985-2008.
  • Seasons 5 and 6 were animated by HOT Animation, the same animation team behind Bob the Builder and Rubbadubbers.

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