The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Cartoon Brew has news of an incredibly early television animation. Pingwings, by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, beloved by generations of British viewers young and old as the creators of essential animated tea-time viewing like Bagpuss and the Clangers. Tony Milnes from Spite Your Face Productions described a bit more about this early 60s series which was thought to be lost until recently:

“Pingwings is, so far as I can gather, the very first production by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin’s Small Films. The pair would go on to create pre-school classics like The Clangers, Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog that generations of British children and parents have grown up with. I mention it because while the latter are household names over here, Pingwings is almost completely unknown. Which is criminal, because it’s amazing.

Demonstrating a gleeful disregard for the shortcomings of filming stop-motion out of doors, the show concerns the adventures of a family of wooly penguins that live in a farmyard. Even the most famous of Small Films work is notoriously low-tech, but here you can see how they started out, working literally out of a barn.”

He’s not kidding, folks – much of this golden period of kid’s animation was indeed produced cheaply in a barn, often using hand-knitted characters. There’s a clip on YouTube of the first episode. (thanks to Marko from Neorama for the link)