Pong Pagong is a muppet-style character developed by the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) for the Filipino children's show Sesame!, a co-production between CTW and the Philippine Children's Television Foundation (PCTF) which debuted in 1983. Pong Pagong is an anthropomorphic turtle, similar to Big Bird of Sesame Street, standing over six feet tall and towering over human co-stars and aged to be around six years old. Together with its co-muppet, Kiko Matsing, the characters were custom made in New York for Sesame. Both characters were inspired from a Filipino fable, "The Monkey and the Turtle", which was annotated to English by José Rizal in 1889.