Pingu

Pingu is a Swiss animated children's television series about a family of penguins who live at the South Pole. The main character is the son, Pingu, though some episodes feature Pingu's parents and (after her hatching) his baby sister Pinga, his friend Robby the Seal, and other minor characters.

History
104 five-minute episodes were originally made, from 1986 onwards. The episodes were written by Silvio Mazzola, and directed and animated by Otmar Gutmann using claymation techniques, at Trickfilmstudio in Switzerland.

A special twenty-minute episode ("Pingu at the Wedding Party") was also produced, in 1997, which introduced a family of green penguins and a killer vacuum cleaner.

In 2001, HIT Entertainment bought the UK rights to the series (including the original 105 episodes) for £15.9 million and produced a further 52 episodes, created at Hot Animation and first broadcast in 2004. These feature new voice actors Marcello Magni and David Sant, as Bonomi, now in his sixties, was considered too old.

One reason for Pingu's international success was its lack of dialogue per se. All dialogue was in a honking "penguin language" ("Pinguish" or "Penguinese"), performed (without script) by Carlo Bonomi similarly to La Linea (also dubbed by Bonomi).