Noot Noot

About

“Noot Noot” is the sound made by the titular character from the British-Swiss children’s TV series Pingu. Due to its frequent utterance throughout the series, the soundbite of the catchphrase has been incorporated into a variety of pop music mash-ups and photoshopped images on Tumblr.

Origin

The Show

Pingu^[4]is a British-Swiss stop-motion claymation TV series about a family of penguins in the South Pole that premiered on Swiss channel SF DRS on May 28th, 1986 and ran for six seasons over two decades, before concluding with the finale episode on March 3rd, 2006. In the series, the characters speak a made-up language known as “Penguinese,” one of the most well-known phrases being “noot noot,” which is mainly associated with the titular character.

The Phrase

While various clips from Pingu have been used as a popular sample within the YouTube Poop community since as early as 2008, the catchphrase “noot noot” didn’t gain momentum online until 2011. The first Urban Dictionary^[2] entry for “Noot Noot” referencing its Pingu origin was posted on June 23rd, 2011, by user Enw Ffug who defined it as:

“Pingu’s main method of communication.”

Spread

On August 20th, 2011, YouTuber SoloWooper~!^[1] uploaded the first known compilation of scenes from Pingu in which the character says “noot noot.” In less than three years, the video gained more than 140,000 views.

On July 23rd, 2011, the Facebook page “Having a ‘Noot Noot’ Sesh With Pingu,” was created. As of June 2014, the page has gained over 47,000 likes.

On March 13th, 2013, YouTuber Richmeister^[10] uploaded a video (below, left) titled “Nice legs, Daisy Dukes, makes a man go NOOTNOOT,” which features the Starstrukk song “3OH!3” edited so the song’s whistles are replaced with “Noot Noot.” On March 6th, 2014, YouTuber Annon Yek^[9] uploaded a Noot Noot compilation (below, right). As of June 2014, the video has gained over 90,000 views.

On March 13th, 2014, the Tumblr blog noot-noot-mother-fucker^[11] was launched. The blog features pop songs such as Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty to Me” and ‘Let it Go’ with key phrases replaced with “Noot Noot,” which sparked a “Noot Noot” remix trend on Tumblr. On March 26th, the “Noot Noot” themed Tumblr blog officialnoot^[10] was created. In 2014 there were several Tumblr posts tagged Noot Noot which have gained over 6,000 notes, including furbearingbrick’s^[4] daffodil post (below, left), randombosmer’s^[5]Frozen post (below center) and holy-dildo’s^[6]Death Note post (below, right).