Pingu was created by Otmar Gutmann and first aired in 1990 as a Swiss stop-motion series, later shown widely in Britain and around the world. The penguin family speaks Penguinese, a made-up language of honks and noises performed by Carlo Bonomi, which helped the show cross language barriers. Its short intro became familiar to a generation of children through television repeats and home video. Online, that familiarity turned the theme into shorthand for innocent, clumsy and very nostalgic humour.