The song was written and produced by Aart Mol, Cees Bergman, Elmer Veerhoff, Erwin van Prehn and Geertjan Hessing (under the pseudonym "Adams & Fleisner"), all of whom were former members of the Dutch glam rock band Catapult.^[1]

The idea for the song began when Gert van den Bosch's (co-founder of Boni Records) children asked him if he could produce a record based on Woody Woodpecker, whom they were big fans of.^[2][3] The song was recorded at Cat Music, which Mol, Bergman, Veerhoff, Van Prehn and Hessing had formed in 1979. The vocals were done by Bergman, Hessing and Anita and Sylvia Crooks of the vocal trio The Internationals.^[1] The Woody laugh (provided by Hessing) used in the song was first heard in "Let's Break" by Master Genius in 1983, another Cat Music project.^[4][3]

The album version of the song features sound effects from the Speak & Spell toy, sampled from "Home Computer" by Kraftwerk.

The music video starred Peter Slaghuis and Bianca Bonelli, hired by Cat Music to be the members of the group.^[1] Slaghuis had done remixes of Cat Music's other projects, such as the Special European Edit of "After The Rainbow" by Joanne Daniëls (along with Emile Noorhoek) and "Steppin' Out" by Digital Emotion, while Bonelli would later have a solo single called "Je Veux L'amour (Follow Me)", also written and produced by Cat Music.^{[1][5][6][7][8][9]}

In the video, the woodpecker plays one prank after another on the Slaghuis/Bonelli flight crew, messing with their spaceship and leaving the duo hardly any time to sing. The video was filmed in the Airplane Museum at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.^[6] Peter, Bianca and the flight crew's pilots and scientists (played by Cat Music themselves, except Aart Mol and Geertjan Hessing^[3]) lip-sync to Cees Bergman, Hessing and Anita and Sylvia Crooks' vocals during the video.^[1] In order to avoid being sued by Universal Studios, a new character named Tico Tac was created as the group's mascot and used in place of Woody. Tico was named after the 1982 song of the same name by Polysix, another Cat Music project. He was designed by Dirk Arend, who was occasionally doing cover artwork designs for Boni Records and Break Records under the pseudonym "Fruut" at the time, and animated by Bjørn Frank Jensen and coloured by Frits Godhelp at Toonder Studio's.^[10][11][12]

The song was covered by the South African outfit Café Society in 1985, with their version holding the No. 1 position on the South African Top 20 for 7 weeks;^[13] Doctor Pecker in 1986,^[14] The Smurfs in 1995,^[15] V-Kid in 1999,^[16] Swedish singer Evelyn in 2001,^[17] Norwegian bubblegum/trance/dance group SpritneyBears in 2003 (their cover laid in second place on the Norwegian chart, spending 8 weeks on that chart in total),^[18] Cirez D in 2004,^[19] and Kidz Hitz Party 2: Back To School in 2007.^[20]

The song was featured in the 1986 pilot episode of Pingu as well as the original version of the episode "Pingu Looks After the Egg", whereas the redubbed version of the latter has David Hasselhoff's "Pingu-Dance" in its place.