Pingu (1986)
Plot.
Where to Watch.
Currently Pingu is available for streaming online, rent, buy or watch for free on: Amazon Prime Video, The Roku Channel, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Streaming in:🇺🇸 United States
Cast & Crew.
Carlo Bonomi
Pingu / Pinga / Mama / Papa / Robby / Pingo / Punky / Grandfather / Pingi / Pingg / Banjo / Pongi / Schoolmaster (voice)
Marcello Magni
Mama / Pingi / Pinga (voice)
Carlo Bonomi
Pingu
David Sant
Papa / Pingu / Grandfather / Robby / Pingo / Pingg / Pongi / Punky / Banjo / Schoolmaster (voice)
Otmar Gutmann
Creator / Director / Characters
Erika Brueggemann
Creator / Characters
Silvio Mazzola
Writer
Sam Michaels
Pingu
Media.
Details.
Release DateMay 28, 1986
StatusEnded
Seasons6
Episodes156
Running Time5m
Content RatingTV-Y
Genres
Last updated:
This TV Show Is About.
Wiki.
Pingu is an animated children's television series originally produced in Switzerland. It was co-created by Otmar Gutmann and Erika Brueggemann 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', 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), 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 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 in 2005. The characters were voiced by jointly voiced by David Sant and Marcello Magni. 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.
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.