BERLIN — 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 grew to become 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 desires nothing to do with TV and may’t wait to go residence to stare on the wallpaper.
This 12 months, his mates — a sheep and a flower bush — are urging him to change into a bread influencer.
Born as a sketch on the again of a serviette in a pizzeria, Bernd’s notorious grimace was drawn by Tommy Krappweis who modeled it after co-creator Norman Cöster’s face. The duo had 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 brief arms and a everlasting scowl. Bernd channels German stereotypes together 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 friends, Chili the Sheep and Briegel the Bush.
As a result of KiKA is a youngsters’s channel, there was sometimes lifeless air from 9 p.m. to six a.m. On Jan. 1, 2003, the community put Bernd’s brief episodes into the night time loop for the primary time.
The transfer introduced an grownup viewers — usually these sitting at residence and smoking pot, or returning after a protracted night time of partying — into Bernd’s world, cementing his recognition as a German cult traditional.
In 2004, Bernd gained the Adolf Grimme Prize — the German tv equal of an Emmy — as a result of the jury mentioned he represents “the suitable to be in a nasty temper.”
“Bernd exhibits you that you’re much less susceptible with humor and self-irony. And maybe crucial level is: It’s completely okay in the event you don’t really feel properly typically. That’s utterly tremendous,” Krappweis, Bernd’s creator, mentioned in a KiKA Q&A about Bernd’s anniversary.
Bernd is depressed for a mess of causes, together with his failed try and 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 protracted, very long time in the past I fell in love with a stupendous, slim baguette. She was so extremely charming and humorous,” Bernd tells Chili and Briegel. “However sadly it was in useless.
“She solely had eyes for this run-of-the-mill multigrain bread with its 10 varieties of grain. It was so miserable.”
Regardless of Bernd’s finest efforts — one among his catchphrases is “I wish to go away this present” — the episodes have by no means change into stale. He sings, he dances, he’s been to area. He is the star of merchandise, a online game and headlines like “Give Us Our Every day Bernd.”
He was even kidnapped! In 2009, his 2-meter-tall (6.56 ft) 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 had 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 almost two weeks earlier than being found unhurt in an deserted barracks.
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 teenagers 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 faculty, 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.
