Papa Pig, father of the cartoon piglet Peppa Pig, is overweight, sometimes a little haphazard, but sweet. One can understand why the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – overweight, permanently haphazard and not particularly dear – recently mentioned Pappa Wutz in a disjointed and embarrassing speech to entrepreneurs in northern England, even for his standards. Papa Pig is a bit stereotypical, said Johnson, but one can learn from “Peppa Pig World”, an area of the English amusement park Paulton Park, said Johnson. What Johnson meant by that remained vague and is a matter of fact. Regardless of this, however, you can definitely ask yourself what can you learn from Peppa Wutz?
First of all, the more popular a TV show is, the more its potential to cause outrage grows with it. The series has always been a political issue. An episode in which Peppa and her brother George befriend the spider “Mr. Skinny Legs” after Papa Pig told them it was harmless is banned in Australia. This is to prevent Australian preschoolers from making friends with a highly poisonous Sidney funnel-web spider. A British doctor complained in 2017 about the “unrealistic” efficiency of Doctor Brown Bear, who immediately supplies all patients with medicine and thus arouses false expectations in terms of basic medical care. And the following year, Peppa Pig ran into trouble in China after teenagers adopted her there as a subversive tattoo motif.
Anyone who knows the series or is forced to watch it over and over and over again with their preschoolers, however, also learns a lot of constructive things: That it is great to sip spaghetti together with the family, for example. That mums are, of course, a bit smarter than dads across the board. That school is fun, especially when the teacher is a gazelle with a French accent. That you can live in a world that can do completely without smartphones. And of course: that jumping into muddy puddles is the most cathartic experience in the world.
But the most important lesson Peppa Pig teaches is this: If, like Peppa inventors Mark Baker, Neville Astley and Phil Davies, you tell a story about a traditional nuclear family in primary colors and animal shapes, which is easily translatable into many languages, you can get out of it With a little skill and humor you can build an incredibly valuable global brand with countless merchandising deals. In 2019, the American group Hasbro bought the Peppa production company for the equivalent of around 3.4 billion euros. Soon there will even be a “Peppa Pig World” in Sichuan, China. If that doesn’t get too subversive.