Violent Penguin (Series One)
May 3, 2021 10:18 AM   Subscribe

Violent Penguin (Series One)
Violent Penguin was a shortlived educational European children's cartoon from the recent past (although the country of origin and original date of broadcast are unknown). Long thought lost, the complete first series has recently re-surfaced on youtube. Created by the popular children's author (and multi-instrumentalist) Toby Vok (best known for the children's classic Spiders Are Wonderful), Violent Penguin ran for seven very similar episodes (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), in which the papercraft penguin interacted with plasticine people and taught them all various lessons in less than 30 seconds an episode. Alongside the seven episodes, there are two helpful compilation videos: The Complete Violent Penguin (all seven episodes all in a row), and The Concurrent Violent Penguin (all seven episodes all at once).

A Violent Penguin comic strip also once existed, but even less is known about that.

Violent Penguin is unaffiliated with all other penguin based children's media.
Role: writer, animator
posted by dng (4 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite

Just as traumatizing as the rest of the children's television I grew up with
posted by scruss at 7:17 PM on May 6, 2021 [1 favorite]


The second series has re-surfaced now, which I'm sure you'll all agree is pretty exciting. Once again, our hero meets and greets friends and foe alike with his customary grace and understand.

The second series ran for a further 7 30-second episodes (8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14), and there's also two more helpful compilation videos: The Complete Violent Penguin Series Two (not to mention The Complete Violent Penguin Series One And Two) and The Concurrent Violent Penguin Series Two

In many ways the second series makes the perfect companion to the first, and nowhere is this better illustrated than in The Concurrent Violet Penguin Series One And Two compilation, in which hiterhto unimagined patterns and meanings can be intuited if not understood.
posted by dng at 10:04 AM on May 9, 2021


The Complete Violent Penguin (Series Three)

"Toby Vok was known to be obsessed with the prospect of Violent Penguin becoming "syndicated", and as such strived to create enough episodes to reach the magic number that would allow the show to be eligible for the honour (28). Operating under the mistaken belief that cyrillic was simply the latin alphabet in mirror image, he hoped no one would notice that episodes 15-28 were simply episodes 14-1 flipped and reversed, but rather entirely new episodes titled for the emerging Russian market. However, his ruse was swiftly discovered, and he was soon blacklisted by every major broadcaster in every major country (except Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, D.R. Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Essex, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hull, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Korea, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Rwanda, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome and Principe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Korea, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe)"

The Concurrent Violent Penguin (Seres One, Two, and Three)

[TRANSMISSION BEGINS] ...atterns emerge where none before were seen. Patterns submerge where before they were seen. Order and chaos become as one. Chaos and order undone to none. This is the underlying reality of our world. This is what Violent Penguin has begun to reveal. The cycle shall continue the cycle shall not end. Soon all shall be penguin. Soon all shall be [TRANSMISSION ENDS]
posted by dng at 10:47 AM on May 12, 2021


The unbroadcast (and some say unbroadcastable) fourth series of Violent Penguin (Complete Series, playlist of episodes) was quite a departure from earlier episodes, and may prove jarring to viewers used to the classic Violent Penguin style.

Changes made to this series include:

– Set on the moon
– Filmed on the moon
– Dutch angle on zoom section
– Not enough to see or do on the moon

In the final episode, it is implied that Violent Penguin eventually returned to earth, perhaps to undertake untold adventures over the many long years of his life to come. Yet many observers have suggested that the great tragedy suggested by The Concurrent Violent Penguin (Series Four) is that Violent Penguin never left the moon, and was trapped there forever.

Toby Vok is known to dispute the idea that this was a tragedy.
posted by dng at 6:01 AM on May 14, 2021


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