Pingu

Pingu is an American animated stop motion television series created by Otmar Gutmann through his Otmar Gutmann Productions company with Aardman and 20th Television. It premiered in 1990 on Fox, through its "Fox Children's Network" morning block. The series follows the eponymous young mischievous penguin and his adventures in the South Pole. The show has been widely regarded for its comedy and morals. It was popular enough to get a franchise with two movies and five video games.

Production / History
In 1980, Swedish-based animator Otmar Gutmann created a 30 second short film revolving around a penguin, a polar bear and their antics. He decided to see if he could put his characters on television. Most of the Swedish networks rejected it for the reason being that it was a simplistic concept. During a trip to America, Otmar decided to check out a newspaper. In the advertising section, he found an ad for the soon-to-launch Fox Children's Network. Seeing his penguin character as a chance to get himself some popularity, Gutmann fled to Fox Studios and pitched the show to Rupert Murdoch, who suggested making a 7 minute pilot short film for test audiences. When said audiences reacted positively to the short, the show was greenlit and work started.

Otmar Gutmann and Fox were looking for good animation providers. They eventually settled on the British animation company Aardman. The company's five-star talent and work made the studio a perfect fit. Season 1's animation was fairly limited, mainly due to the budget not being too high. However, by the time Season 3 premiered, the animation noticeably got more fluid. This was a result of the budget being raised.

When Gutmann and his team noticed the ratings were drooping during Season 4's broadcasts, they'd knew they would be cancelled. So once Season 4's production finished, they went out to work on the movie: "Pingu's Very Special Wedding", released in 2000. When both the movie and the show's season sets ended up performing very well, the show was brought back in 2003 for a 5th season. This was the first season to be produced in widescreen, as Fox was testing the boundaries for their HD feeds. The animation this time was outsourced to long time stop motion curators Hot Animation Studios, which Fox picked for their award-winning work on Bob The Builder. Aardman still did a bit of animation work for the show, however. Seasons 5-7 broadcasted both over-the-air on Fox...and cable on the newly-launched Fox Family Channel, which was made from the remnants of The Family Channel. These seasons also introduced Marcello Magni and David Sant into the cast.

After those seasons, the franchise went on hiatus, that is until the 2017 CGI film adaptation's positive reception caused 20th Century Fox Television to greenlight 2 new seasons of the show. The team and animators from the 2017 movie came to work on the seasons, so season 8 was the first season to be made in CGI. This time, animation was outsourced to both Dandelion Studios and Polygon Pictures. Two Japanese stars joined the cast: Ryota Iwasaki and Fumiya Tanaka. The seasons broadcasted on Fox, Fox Family, and soon after 20th Century Fox got bought by Disney: Freeform / Disney Channel.

Reception
The show has been praised for its "never-declining" quality. The show roughly gained a big fanbase in it's home country of America. Japan also gave the franchise a ginormous amount of publicity. Common Sense Media calls the show "funny, endearing, and entertaining". The show was also given a 7.4 on IMDb.

Home Media
The show's first three seasons were separately released in 2000 in order. Season 1's release date was September 4th, 2000. Season 2's release date was October 7th, 2000. Season 3's release date was November 12, 2000. Seasons 5 to 7 were released to DVD on October 6th, 2003, November 10th, 2005, and December 12th, 2006. Seasons 8-9 were released to DVD on November 26th, 2018, December 30th, 2019, and January 9th, 2020. All seasons are available to stream on Disney+.