BERLIN (AP) — Overlook SpongeBob SquarePants, Sesame Road and the sourdough starter craze: a depressed German loaf of bread named Bernd das Brot is celebrating his twenty fifth anniversary because the reluctant star of a youngsters’s tv program that by accident turned equally widespread with adults.
A cult traditional in Germany, Bernd das Brot (Bernd the Bread) is a puppet famend for his deep, gloomy voice, his perpetual pessimism and his signature expression, “Mist!” (Suppose “crap!” in English.)
Performed and voiced by puppeteer Jörg Teichgraeber, Bernd is a tv presenter who needs nothing to do with TV and may’t wait to go dwelling to stare on the wallpaper.
This 12 months, his buddies — a sheep and a flower bush — are urging him to grow to be a bread influencer.
Bernd’s beginnings
Born as a sketch on the again of a serviette in a pizzeria, creator Tommy Krappweis drew Bernd’s notorious grimace after co-creator Norman Cöster’s face once they have been requested to give you mascots for KiKA, a German youngsters’s public tv channel.
Comedian artist Georg Graf von Westphalen designed Bernd as a pullman loaf — white bread sometimes sliced for sandwiches — with quick arms and a everlasting scowl. Bernd channels German stereotypes along with his grumpy disposition, penchant for complaining and dry humorousness and irony.
Bernd’s first episode aired on KiKA in 2000 alongside his more-optimistic buddies, Chili the Sheep and Briegel the Bush.
A reluctant reputation
As a result of KiKA is a youngsters’s channel, there was sometimes useless air from 9 p.m. to six a.m. On Jan. 1, 2003, the community put Bernd’s quick episodes into the night time loop for the primary time.
The transfer introduced an grownup viewers — typically these sitting at dwelling and smoking pot, or returning after a protracted night time of partying — into Bernd’s world, cementing his reputation as a German cult traditional.
In 2004, Bernd received the Adolf Grimme Prize — the German tv equal of an Emmy — as a result of the jury stated he represents “the right to be in a bad mood.”
“Bernd shows you that you are less vulnerable with humor and self-irony. And perhaps the most important point is: It’s totally okay if you don’t feel well sometimes. That’s completely fine,” Krappweis, Bernd’s creator, stated in a KiKA Q&A about Bernd’s anniversary.
Bernd’s damaged coronary heart
Bernd is depressed for a mess of causes, together with his failed try to be the mascot for a bakery’s promoting marketing campaign (that is how he ended up as a TV presenter, as a final resort).
But it surely’s in Episode 85 that we lastly study Bernd’s damaged coronary heart.
“A long, long time ago I fell in love with a beautiful, slim baguette. She was so incredibly charming and funny,” Bernd tells Chili and Briegel. “However sadly it was in useless.
“She only had eyes for this run-of-the-mill multigrain bread with its 10 types of grain. It was so depressing.”
The kidnapping
Regardless of Bernd’s greatest efforts — one in every of his catchphrases is “I would like to leave this show” — the episodes have by no means grow to be stale. He sings, he dances, he’s been to house. He is the star of merchandise, a online game and headlines like “Give Us Our Daily Bernd.”
He was even kidnapped! In 2009, his 2-meter-tall (6.56 toes) statue was stolen from his conventional place outdoors the city corridor in Erfurt, the place KiKA relies.
A declare of duty surfaced on YouTube, by sympathizers of a gaggle of demonstrators who have been protesting an organization that had produced cremation ovens for the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz. The demonstrators, nonetheless, denied involvement in Bernd’s kidnapping and the video was faraway from the web.
Bernd was held hostage for practically two weeks earlier than being found unhurt in an deserted barracks.
The anniversary 12 months
KiKA is honoring Bernd’s twenty fifth anniversary — regardless of his complaints — with new episodes, an replace to his hit track and on-line actions for youths and adults alike. The celebrations start now, as Bernd’s birthday is Feb. 29.
The newest sequence will premiere in September as Bernd, Chili and Briegel launch the social media channel “Higher with Bernd” of their efforts to make him right into a bread influencer.
The trio will current innovations to make college, and life, simpler for viewers however naturally their concoctions backfire. Bernd as a substitute turns into a defluencer — and an involuntary trendsetter.
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AP journalist Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.
