Children’s TV in the UK has always skewed weird. Which is why you might expect Pingu, the eccentric children’s animation following a cheeky five-year-old penguin, to have come from our irreverent minds. Sure, it might not feature any “creamy muck muck” (Dick and Dom in da Bungalow); custard-sucking hoovers (Teletubbies); kids doing medieval death rites (Raven); or a demonic digit touted as the devil’s finger (Stupid!). But Pingu’s nonsensical language, inappropriate plots and whimsical stop motion animation does also leave you wondering what CBBC producers are sprinkling on their Coco Pops.
Surprisingly, though, Pingu is not originally from the UK: it’s actually a Swiss-German creation. It was first conceived 40 years ago in 1984 by writer Erika Brueggemann. While working for a Swiss TV channel, she met animator Otmar Gutmann, who had been crafting a collection of clay penguins in his spare time, and the pair collaborated on a pilot alongside colleague and writer Guido Steiger, before producing four full series from 1990 to 2000.
The heartwarming show brought Pingu and his exasperated parents into the world, alongside Pinga (his younger sister); Pingo (his friend); Pingi (his love interest); and the wonderfully named Mrs. Peng-Sniff (his neighbour). Each episode – just five minutes long – revolves around Pingu getting into a pickle with his practical jokes, from causing havoc in an art gallery to sticking a thermometer in his tea to skip school.
Now, Pingu is set to shuffle back onto our screens thanks to a new reboot from Mattel, owners of the Pingu brand, and Aardman, beloved creators of doughy duo Wallace and Gromit. Details are hush-hush for now, but the release date is planned for 2025. “It will be funny, full of heart, and of course, there will be snow. The rest is an adventure yet to be discovered,” says Sarah Cox, Chief Creative Director of Aardman. It’s enough to make us “noot” with excitement.
There’s a naive innocence to Pingu, thanks in part to Penguinese, its made-up language. Characters in Pingu “noot-noot” – a kind of trumpeting noise that’s a bit like a party horn – and mumble in a gibberish dialect that sounds a little like Simlish. It’s made extra warm and fuzzy through its use of stop motion, the whimsical medium so many Brits grew up on – think Chicken Run and Postman Pat.
But it wasn’t all what we’d call child-friendly, exactly – there was a genuine edginess to the show. So much so, a load of the episodes were banned from being broadcast on the BBC. Sure, it wasn’t the explicit ultra-violence of Tom trepanning Jerry’s skull with a frying pan, but plots included: Pingu wetting himself after drinking too much (of an unknown liquid), locking lips with Pingi, bleeding from his beak, and being tormented by a giant walrus that infiltrated innumerable nightmares.
What the BBC did show became wildly popular. And it wasn’t just the UK that fell in love with Pingu; the franchise was exported to more than 150 countries. In Japan, he became an undisputed icon and a mascot of kawaii culture, with £2m worth of memorabilia sold a year in the early 2000s.
He couldn’t quite break America, though – even with David Hasselhoff’s cringey hip-hop bop “Pingu Dance” promoting the show in 1993. But Britain wanted more, more, more.
After the original run ended in 2000, the penguin was picked up by HIT Entertainment for £16m in 2001 and made into a flagship CBeebies show. HIT’s chief executive Rob Lawes was quoted at the time saying that Pingu had been “totally under-exploited” when it comes to commercial opportunities, which sounds a bit horrific. But work on the show was a far more cockle-warming experience.
“It was brilliant!” says reboot producer Bella Tomlinson. “One of my fondest memories was unwrapping all the original puppets and props. The crazy walrus sticks in my mind from the very trippy Pingu’s Dream episode.” The team made replicas of the fragile plasticine puppets using more sturdy resin that allowed for different movements – a single “noot-noot”, Tomlinson says, took a whopping nine different gestures.
David Sant, a voice actor and mime who played 17 of the Pingu characters (along with Marcello Magni), also has buoyant memories. “I loved it. It was so much fun,” he says. “Yes, it was vocally exhausting going from Robby the Seal to Pingu’s mum, for example, but what a dream job!”
The aim was to make it a continuation of the original series. “We replicated it as much as we could, as we were all such Pingu fans, and desperately wanted to honour this fantastic little penguin. We were definitely up for keeping Pingu as naughty as possible,” Tomlinson says. Some details had to be softened for the Beeb. “We had to stop his dad smoking his pipe and the toilet humour was toned down a bit. But we did manage to get a fart in the bath in one episode called Stinky Pingu – one of my personal favourites.”
Nominated for a BAFTA in 2005, the revival series lasted until 2006, featuring 52 new episodes. Later, there was a Japanese CGI series in 2017 – Pingu in the City, where he moved from igloo to metropolis – and since then, Pingu has continued to pop up in memes, TikTok filters and an impressive array of Japanese merch that still attracts fans, despite the show no longer being on air.
Pingu was a comfort blanket for ’90s and ’00s kids everywhere growing up. “I remember watching it on Saturday mornings, around 7am, when my parents were still asleep. Only one channel had kids shows on and it started with Pingu and went downhill from there,” says Sam, a 36-year-old agency creative and Pingu fan from Catford. It still gives him a fuzzy feeling. “The comforting opening theme; a dialogue-free world where even the angriest noots of Pingu’s dad were harmless; the ASMR patting of the flippers. It was self-care for ’90s kids.”
Sam agrees the stop motion is part of what makes it feel so British. “We’re a nation that loves claymation. Morph walked so Pingu could slide on his belly,” he says.
What really makes Pingu so big in Britain is that he can be rather naughty. “It’s his cheeky laugh and him totally ignoring his parents half the time. Bawdy humour always seems quite British,” Tomlinson says. Pingu isn’t one of the usual goody-two-shoes kids’ TV characters acting as a mouthpiece for moralising (we’re looking at you, Sportacus of LazyTown).
Basically, he’s a little terror, like we all were – he would definitely play knock, knock, ginger and leave his mate to take the flak. There are so many moments of mayhem throughout the six series: when he flings his seaweed onto the floor; when he can’t be arsed to incubate his family eggs; when he abandons his sister; the time he pisses all over the toilet seat and wrecks the igloo.
It’s true that Pingu did mature a little bit in Pingu in the City, which saw him enter the rat race and sell his soul, like the rest of us. But here’s to hoping Pingu regresses to his infantile exploits come 2025 – let’s just pray he’s not an iPad scroller.
I’ll certainly be dunking my thermometer in my cuppa to get out of the office and into the igloo to find out.