pingu is a british-swiss stop-motion clay animated children's comedy television series created by otmar gutmann and produced from 1986 to 2000 for swiss television by trickfilmstudio and the pygos group. it centres on a family of anthropomorphic penguins who live at the south pole. the main character is the family's son and title character, pingu.

the series originally ran for four series (each series made up of multiple seasons) from 28 may 1986 to 9 april 2000 on sf drs. pingu won a bafta award. the fifth and sixth series were produced by uk companies hit entertainment and hot animation.

one reason for pingu's international success is its lack of real spoken language: nearly all dialogue is in an invented grammelot "penguin language" consisting of babbling, muttering, and his characteristic sporadic loud honking noise "nug! nug!" accompanied by turning his beak into a megaphone like shape. this signature noise is written as "noot noot!" in popular culture. within the first 4 series, all the characters were performed by italian voice actor carlo bonomi, using a language of noises that he had already developed and used for the earlier osvaldo cavandoli's la linea. in series 5 and 6, the pingu cast was jointly voiced by david sant and marcello magni.