Why Is ‘Caillou’ So Hated? The Kids’ TV Show Hit American TV 25 Years Ago & Became an Instant Target

Barney & Friends became the bane of children’s TV in the 1990s and Teletubbies inherited that dishonor in the 2000s, but 2010s-era parental scorn belonged to Caillou. The animated children’s series debuted in Canada in 1997 and migrated to the United States 25 years ago — debuting on PBS Kids on September 4, 2000 — but good luck finding many viewers waxing nostalgic.

Caillou, you see, seems to be one of Canada’s most-despised cultural exports, perhaps surpassing Justin Bieber and Nickelback. In a 2017 column, the National Post’s Tristan Hopper deemed Caillou “quite possibly the world’s most universally reviled children’s program.”