About

Penguins Of Madagascar is the name of a group of penguins from the 2005 animated movie Madagascar, as well as the name of a TV show and movie about the penguins, titled Penguins Of Madagascar. In a parody of The A-Team, each of the penguins has a code name and specialty, starting with Skipper, the leader, Kowalski, the brains, Private, the face, and Rico, the demolitions expert. Since their debut, the penguins have been heavily featured in memes, notably Well Boys, We Did It. Racism Is No More and Kowalski's various memes.

Origin

The penguins were first featured in the movie Madagascar, which released on May 27th, 2005. They also appeared in the subsequent films Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, released November 7th, 2008, and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted, released on June 8th, 2012. Throughout the film series, the penguins have had several of their scenes and phrases turned into memes. This meme force hit its stride when they were given their own TV series called Penguins of Madagascar, which began airing on November 28th, 2008. A trailer for the TV show was posted to YouTube on January 19th, 2018, by Showtapes Reviews,^[1] receiving 28,000 views in three years (shown below).

Spread

Following the success of the TV show, a movie was optioned that would serve as a spin-off for the Madagascar series. The movie was also titled Penguins of Madagascar, and it was released on November 26th, 2014, to great success both financially and memeticly. A trailer for the movie was posted on the Peacock Kids^[2] YouTube channel on June 12, 2014, where it received 1.7 million views in seven years (shown below).

After the release of the movie, Penguin's content dried up, meaning that all future memes had to be made using older material, requiring a rewatch of the series. This wasn't easily done when the show was on cable TV, but after moving to Netflix, it became much easier to get high-quality screenshots and videos to make memes with, helping them to spread into new formats.

Related Memes

Kowalski

Kowalski is a penguin character from the 2005 American animated feature film Madagascar. The character has been featured in many sub memes related to the series as a whole.

Big Brain Kowalski

Big Brain Kowalski is a two-panel reaction image macro featuring screenshots of the character Kowalski from the animated television series Penguins of Madagascar. The top image shows the character with a normal skull shape and his tongue sticking out, and the bottom image shows Kowalski smiling with an enlarged head. The images are usually juxtaposed by increasingly verbose expressions (similar to Tuxedo Winnie the Pooh).

Well Boys, We Did It

Well Boys, We Did It. Racism Is No More is a memorable quote from a fan-made parody of the Penguins of Madagascar television series. Online, people have used a screenshot of the penguins dancing and used the quote as a phrasal template to react to perceived superficial solutions to complex issues.

Knows What Sex Is Table

"*Knows What Sex Is" Table*":https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/knows-what-sex-is-table is a humorous two-by-two table used to assign four people or characters based on whether they have sex and have awareness of what sex is. Spawned by a viral Penguins of Madagascar meme, the format gained popularity online in late March 2021.

Kowalksi, Noted

"*Kowalski Noted* refers to an image of the penguin Kowalski from the Madagascar franchise writing on a notepad, accompanied by the word "noted." It is used as a reaction image and in image macros.

Wouldn't That Make You Gay

Wouldn't That Make You Gay? refers to a series of screenshots from the 2014 animated film The Penguins of Madagascar of the penguins sitting in a life raft, with Skipper subtitled as saying, "wouldn't that make you gay?" Starting in 2018 the images became a popular image macro, with the word "gay" often changed. It is closely related to the Well Boys, We Did It. Racism Is No More meme.

When Your Girlfriend Has A Twin Sister

When Your Girlfriend Has a Twin Sister… refers to a copypasta that goes "When your girlfriend has a twin sister but you get confused and end up fucking her dad." In early 2017, it spread through Instagram after it was paired with an image of a confused penguin from Madagascar.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References