The penguins first appeared as scene-stealing side characters in DreamWorks Animation's Madagascar in 2005, led by Skipper with Kowalski, Rico and Private. Their popularity led to the Nickelodeon series The Penguins of Madagascar in 2008 and their own feature film in 2014. Clips of their Spanish and English dub voices spread widely on meme pages and messaging apps in Latin America and Spain. Their mock-serious missions became a reusable shorthand for secret plans and group schemes, keeping the characters popular long after the films.