Pepe is a
Muppet who appears in
Muppets Tonight and
Muppets from Space. He is not just a
prawn but a
king prawn, and is a touch smaller than
Rizzo the Rat.
Pepe seems to part of a rather unfortunate attempt to make the Muppets more
multicultural, since the only other recent addition to the Muppet core is an "
black" muppet named
Clifford (no relation to
the dog). Although he doesn't "look" Hispanic (understandable, since he's a crustacean), Pepe talks with a
ridiculous accent of some Latin-American variety.
The worst part is that he's actually funny. Perhaps I'm going soft in the head, but I can't help but laugh at a line like, "you tell him, and I will smack you. I will smack you like a bad, bad, donkey, okay?" It's that, and his upper lip...
An update: Pepe appeared in commercials for some fast food fish chain, which is in particularly bad taste considering that the
Muppet Movie made
Kermit the Frog's refusal to take on a similar project the spiritual core of the film. But it's OK, since they had to put out a new commercial in which Pepe apologized...