Michael McShane

Avenger Penguins was an animated series produced by Cosgrove Hall Films in 1993. It was animated by Alfonso Productions, a Spanish based animation studio also responsible for bringing Cosgrove Hall’s previous show Fantomcat to life. It aired largely on Children’s ITV and was originally to be called “Hell’s Penguins”. It has the distinction of being the last Cosgrove Hall cartoon to be animated using hand painted animation cels, as all 2D animated series from the studio thereafter would use computers for the ink and paint process; with the animation drawings scanned and then digitally coloured.

The story revolves around three bike riding Penguins that inhabit Big City, uniting to protect it and its citizens from the evil Caractacus P. Doom, an insane and reclusive criminal scientist. The Penguins attempt to prevent Doom’s schemes but find themselves often hampered by their own miscommunicating and occasional scraps with other biker gangs infesting Big City, such as The Stink Brothers, a canine squad of Hell’s Angels. As with most Cosgrove Hall cartoons, the series poked fun at the popular concepts of having creatures performing inhuman action feats and stunts in an animated medium, made popular by the then enormously successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The core the show’s themes is heavily and coincidently similar to Biker Mice from Mars, although with the two shows being aired at exactly the same time, and from two different parts of the world that hadn’t any connections whatsoever with each other, it is completely difficult to determine who ripped off who.