3-2-1 Penguins! is the second series created by Big Idea.
History
While the production of Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie was going on, Big Idea decided to create another series to fill in the space of VeggieTales.
The show was initially created by Jeff Parker, who thought on the concept of flightless birds. He later had help from Nathan Carlson and Phil Lollar, who previously worked with him on "Adventures in Odyssey".
After the success of the first episode, the series followed up five more episodes until 2003 when the production of Big Idea moved from Lombard, Illinois to Franklin, Tennessee.
In 2006, after NBC agreed to air the original six episodes on Qubo, they also offered Big Idea to produce more episodes of the show.
In total, the show has 26 episodes.
The show can be watched on TBN's "Smile of a Child", and on NBC's streaming service, Peacock.
In 2019, Phil Vischer stated in an interview that there are discussions about possibly rebooting the series. Later however due to them getting fired by Universal and Big Idea shutting down, this is unlikely to happen.
Episodes
Direct-to-Video (Season 1)
- Trouble on Planet Wait-Your-Turn (November 14th, 2000)
- The Cheating Scales of Bullamanka (July 20th, 2001)
- The Amazing Carnival of Complaining (November 16th, 2001)
- Runaway Pride at Lightstation Kilowatt (September 21st, 2002)
- The Doom Funnel Rescue! (December 21st, 2002)
- Moon Menace on Planet Tell-a-Lie! (July 1st, 2003)
Television (Season 2 and 3)
- I Scream, You Scream! (October 6th, 2007)
- The Green-Eyed Monster (October 20th, 2007)
- Lazy Daze (November 3rd, 2007)
- More is More (December 1st, 2007)
- Give & Let Give (December 15th, 2007)
- Practical Hoax (January 5th, 2008)
- Comedy of Errors (January 19th, 2008)
- Compassion Crashin' (February 2nd, 2008)
- Wiki Tiki (February 16th, 2008)
- Invasion of the Body Swappers! (March 1st, 2008)
- Git Along Little Doggies! (March 15th, 2008)
- Wise Guys (March 29th, 2008)
- Hogs and Kisses (April 12th, 2008)
- 12 Angry Hens (October 4th, 2008)
- Kennel Club Blues (October 11th, 2008)
- Oh Mercy! (October 18th, 2008)
- Promises, Promises (October 25th, 2008)
- Do Unto Brothers (November 1st, 2008)
- Between an Asteroid and a Hard Place (November 8th, 2008)
- In the Big House (November 15th, 2008)
Other Languages
- 3-2-1 Pinguinoak! (Basque)
- 3-2-1 Pingüins (Catalan)
- 3-2-1 Tučňáci (Czech) (Nova version)
- 3-2-1 Tučňáci! (Czech) (Minimax version)
- 3-2-1 Pinguïns! (Dutch)
- 3-2-1 Pingviinid! (Estonian (voice-over)
- Avaruuspingviinit! (Finnish)
- 3-2-1 Pingouins ! (French)
- 3-2-1 Pingüíns! (Galician)
- Unknown (German)
- 3-2-1 פּינגווינים! (Hebrew)
- 3-2-1 Űrpingvinek! (Hungarian)
- 3-2-1 펭귄즈! (Korean)
- Unknown (Latvian) (voice-over)
- Unknown (Lithuanian) (voice-over)
- پنگوئنها ۳-۲-۱ (Persian)
- 3-2-1 Pinguins! (Brazilian Portuguese)
- 3-2-1 Pinguins! (European Portuguese)
- 3-2-1 Super Pinguinii! (Romanian)
- 3-2-1 Пингвины! (Russian) (voice-over)
- 3-2-1 Pingvini! (Serbian)
- 321 පෙන්ගුයින් (Sinhalese)
- 3-2-1 Tučniaky! (Slovak)
- Pingvini v vesolju (Slovenian)
- 3-2-1 ¡Pingüinos! (Latin American Spanish)
- 3-2-1 ¡Pingüinos! (Castilian Spanish)
- 3-2-1 Penguenler! (Turkish)
- Cuộc du hành cùng chim cánh cụt (Vietnamese) (voice-over)
Fun Facts
Trivia
- This show was the first for several things:
- The first to mainly use arms and legs as a feature.
- The first to have everyone in the main cast appear in every episode.
- The first to be featured in 16:9 when it was brought back (excluding Jonah, as that series prior didn't become widescreen for the episodes until after the Pirates movie (yet there were some post-Jonah episodes that were made in widescreen that never saw the light of day)).
- The first Big Idea series to have its Hungarian dub outsourced to Minimax. Before this, VeggieTales' Hungarian dub was outsourced to RTL Klub.
- For the original episodes, it's rather ambiguous if the adventures the kids had were real or just dreams. What makes this confusing are the Comet Lounge segments, as they show that the adventures are in fact real. Since the show's revival, it states that they are real.
- Some of the original titles that was suggested were "Penguins in Space" and "Jason and the Penguinauts."
- Some of the episode ideas that were never made included Michelle becoming envious of her baby sister, Jason and the Penguins visiting a planet where everyone and everything is lazy, Jason and the Penguins visiting a planet where everyone is able to jump very high except for Jason due to him holding a grudge, and Michelle disobeying a rule which dooms an entire planet. The episodes dealing with envy, laziness, and forgiveness eventually became The Green-Eyed Monster, Lazy Daze, and Oh, Mercy!
- According to Tim Hodge, the concept for the revival was different from the final draft. Originally, the twins were going to be stuck in the Rockhopper when the Metric Magnetic Matter Disperser broke. Cavitus was also the main goal the crew were chasing after as he had the part to repair the Galeezle, so every episode has them trying to get the part. Hence why the twins had a spare bedroom in the ship, and Sol's appearances as the voice of reason, similar to Grandmum (Jason remarked about this in the first episode). They decided to change it more akin to the original videos, as they still wanted Grandmum and the cottage to appear. Though the concepts were still kept in the first and last televised episodes of the series.
- The show received a TV-PG rating when it was on Hulu, despite the fact that the show got a TV-Y rating on most other services and a Canadian G rating for the home video releases.