Pingu
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:Pingu.png Pingu was a Swiss animated series aimed at children. It featured a family of penguins who lived at the South Pole, and primarily focused on the antics of the son, Pingu, and his friend Robbie the Seal. There were also a lot of family-based episodes, featuring the mother and father and (after she was hatched) his baby sister Pinga, as well as several other minor characters.
4 series consisting of 105 episodes in total of the show were made from 1986 onwards. The series was directed and animated by Otmar Gutman for Swiss TV (Trickfilmstudio) using claymation techniques.
Each episode was five minutes long, however a special one off 20 minute episode ("A Very Special Wedding") was also produced, which introduced a family of green penguins.
One of the features that made Pingu an international success was the fact that there was no dialogue as such. All dialogue was given in a kind of penguin language ("Pinguish"), performed (without script) by Carlo Bonomi.
In 2004, Hit Entertainment bought the UK rights to the series (including the original 105 episodes), and produced a further 52 episodes, which were broadcast in the same year. These feature new voice actors Marcello Magni and David Sant, as Bonomi, now in his sixties, was considered too old.
Although Pingu was set in the south pole, he and his family lived in an igloo, which are found in the North Pole only, inhabited by native Inuits.
In 1989, David Hasselhoff released (in Switzerland only) the single "Pingu Dance", a rap song based on the Pingu shorts and featuring a number of samples of Pinguish. A portion of this song is used as the theme to Pingu on the PBS Kids Sprout channel in the United States.
See also