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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Tristin Hopper: Caillou is an aggressively bad show ruining the world's children ... and it's all Canada's fault Back to video

For a country that obsesses about its international reputation, Canada is strangely tolerant of an institution that garners us new foreign enemies every day.

I’m talking, of course, about Caillou, quite possibly the world’s most universally reviled children’s program.

Produced in Canada and inspired by a Quebec children’s book series, Caillou attracts a stunning level of animosity for a series about the relatively uncontroversial daily life of a four-year-old boy.

There are “I hate Caillou” Facebook pages. Dozens of parenting blogs have documented the phenomenon of burning parental loathing for the show. And a simple Google search for “caillou hate” turns up more than 400,000 results.

The reviews are similarly dismal. On IMDB, the series has a pitiful 4.3 stars out of 10. On TV.com, it also scores an F with a 4.8/10 rating.

Change.org, meanwhile, features no fewer than three petitions begging for the show to be pulled off the air.

The crux of most Caillou complaints is that the title character has an almost supernatural ability to reach through the television and turn the show’s young viewers into shrill monsters.

“Children who watch this program tend to copy Caillou’s behavior. Whining, demanding, throwing (themselves) on the floor kicking and screaming,” writes a Michigan mother on the petition “Remove ‘Caillou’ from the air.”