Trivia / Pingu

• Acting for Two: In the original series, the voice of all of the characters were done by Italian voice actor Carlo Bonomi. Unfortunately his inability to speak English resulted in his dismissal from the revived series, and two actors from London replaced him.
• Bad Export for You: There is a version of the show formerly aired on the Canadian station APTN titled The Pingu Show. When this version was aired in the UK, it apparently had narration added and cuts for bowdlerization.
• Banned Episode:
  • "Hello Pingu" was banned in the US and UK due to the scenes where Pingg smacks Pingu on his head and Pingo making Pingu trip on his ball.
  • "Pingu Runs Away" was placed under an unofficial ban from broadcast or video distribution due to Pingu's mother spanking Pingu and the subject matter of Pingu running away from his house being considered inappropriate, along with the ice sculpture monsters having scared a lot of children who saw the episode alongside Pingu. It was also removed from British television in 2005 and was one of the few episodes that were pulled, and later banned from all future American airings due to these reasons. Even so, it did get included on the American DVD release Antarctic Antics in 2004.
  • "Little Accidents" was placed on official ban from broadcast or home video distribution (except the UK and Canada) due to toilet humour, the realistic appearance of urination, and alcoholic references, although Amazon Prime Video still has it up.
  • "Pingu's Dream" was placed with an unofficial ban from broadcast distribution due to the Giant Walrus being too frightening and haunting for too many young viewers. It was also removed from British television in 2003. It was still broadcast on occasion in the United States however, and was also released on DVD in the region (Region 1), but it wasn't released on VHS by BBC due to the major controversy towards this episode. The episode is also not banned in Malaysia.
  • "Pingu at the Doctor's" was placed under unofficial ban from broadcast or video distribution (except the UK and the US) due to a scene where Pingu injures his beak and is shown bleeding. This is the only episode to get banned in Poland.
  • "Pingu's First Kiss" was banned and removed from American television due to the beak-to-beak contact being found too inappropriate for children.
  • "Pingu Quarrels With His Mother" was banned in the US due to Pingu's mother slapping him.
  • "Pingu Gets a Warning" was banned in Japan due to the episode's lack of a clear accomplishment and Mrs. Peng-Sniff seemingly being a negative depiction of poverty not clicking with audiences there.
  • "Pingu and the Doll" was banned throughout most of North America due to Pingu stereotyping as a Native American. Presumably, for the same reason, this episode was also banned in Japan due to the portrayal of Native Americans. The ban has most likely been lifted, however, since it is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the United States.
• Blooper: The first UK VHS releases state that Pingu was first broadcast in 1991, which is actually the show's UK premiere year. The first episode was broadcast in the show's original network, RTSI in Switzerland, one year prior.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • When "Pingu and Pinga at the Kindergarten" first aired on the BBC, and subsequently released on their VHS line, a translation mistake resulted in the title coming off as "Pingu and Papa at the Kindergarten", even though Pingu's father doesn't appear in the episode. Fortunately, the title was corrected for later releases.
  • It's often been assumed Pingu Gets a Warning was pulled from television in Japan due to Mrs. Peng-Sniff chasing Pingu and Pingo with her carpet beater. This is actually not the case, as listed above.
• Died During Production: Series co-creator Otmar Gutmann died of a heart attack on October 13, 1993, after finishing work on Season 2.
• Executive Meddling: "Pingu at the Doctor's" was supposedly planned as a season one episode, but RTSI, worried about another backlash similar to what "Little Accidents" got, ordered the episode shelved before deciding to make it the second season premiere.
• He Also Did: Chris Sievey (Frank Sidebottom) of all people wrote "Pingu's Bedtime Shadows".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • At least half of the series was not shown in America, including the 25-minute special Pingu at the Wedding Party, though some advertisements on Cartoon Network featured footage from the episodes that were never broadcast in America.
  • Only the remastered episodes were included on the American DVD releases, as the cost for completely restoring the original soundtracks of the first two seasons would've been high.
  • "Pingu's Dream" was not included in UK VHS releases. This likely because it was too scary, so the distributors left it out.
  • Prior to the show's debut, Otmar Gutmann made several short films, some of which feature what would be Pingu. These shorts, and a rare pilot episode are only available on DVD in Japan.
  • The original APTN Canadian version of "The Pingu Show" is very hard to track down, since a majority of the search results of the show focus on the bowdlerized UK version.
• Licensed Game: With respect to the Game Boy game in 1994 and the PlayStation game in 1999, there were also 2 edutainment games released worldwide. The first is a Barrel of Fun in 1997, and the second is Pingu and Friends in 1999. Both games run on the MacromediaDirector engine.
• No Export for You:
  • There were several video games made for the series across many platforms, on Game Boy, PlayStation, Nintendo DS, and PC. These were only released in Japan aside from the PC games, which were released in the UK.
  • Pingu in the City has not seen a release in the United States for unknown reasons, though it can be easily found on websites like Youtube and various anime websites.
• Outlived Its Creator: Creator Otmar Gutmann died in October 1993. The original Swiss series ran until 2000 before being handed to HIT Entertainment and given a continuation in the UK. It was later revived as an All-CGI Cartoon, Pingu in the City in 2017.
• Reality Subtext: In "Pingu's Admirer", one of the road signs featured in the background has become well known for bearing the Russian words "Perestroika" and "Glasnost" on it in Cyrillic - two words that were extremely important considering what was happening in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the time.
• Rereleased for Free: As of December 1, 2020, the official Pingu YouTube channel, which had previously uploaded only episode clips, has been uploading compilations of full episodes. However, they later started uploading compilations of clips, with the reason being the full episode uploads were getting moved to the Fisher-Price Youtube channel.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • Part of the reason for the season one and two episodes being redubbed was the fact that "Music Lessons" contained a song the producers never bought the rights to.
  • Before HiT Entertainment bought Pygos, the series received limited exposure outside UK and Japan due to the show's rights being fragmented at that time. In fact, to complete their acquisition for Pingu, HiT had to also purchase underlying rights from SRG SSR, ZDF and Telepool ^note All three companies also originally co-owned copyrights to the first two seasons of the show with Pygos Group's precedessor Editoy AG..
• What Could Have Been: Pingu's name was originally going to be "Hugo".

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