Caillou is just the latest in a long history of annoying children’s characters
Is it illegal to murder purple dinosaurs?
Television programming for children is not known for its subtlety. Keeping the attention of small viewers requires literal bells and whistles, which means TV shows for kids are usually loud, bright, and, frankly, pretty annoying.
The perky voices and saccharine story lines parents find themselves assailed by today may feel particularly irritating (I’m looking at you, Caillou, you little brat), but they really haven’t changed much since Mickey and Minnie’s helium-voiced hijinx of nearly a century ago.
Here’s a look back at some of the most grating children’s TV personalities ever.
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse, perhaps the most recognizable American cultural icon, came to life in the late 1920s. A decade later, Disney was pumping out a dozen Mickey shorts a year, and by the 1950s, he was the mascot of a theme park and a beloved TV show, The Mickey Mouse Club. But from the earliest animations, Mickey’s voice was utterly grating: at once high-pitched and monotone. His rodent antics somehow seemed cute to viewers, but watch one of his old cartoons and see if you can help feeling he’s laughing at you a little bit.
Barney
Of all children’s characters, Barney, the giant purple dinosaur with the doofy, nasal droning is among the most reviled. On his long-running show Barney & Friends, the tiny-armed T. Rex hung out with dorky human children and other walking stuffed animals, like Baby Bop, an obnoxious Triceratops, and a 7-year-old Protoceratops with the precocious name B.J. (“Hats off to BJ,” one episode was titled.) Though educators and child psychologists thought it taught solid values, most sane people were driven nuts by the near-hysterical glee of the show’s central character. In 2002, Barney & Friends made TV Guide’s “50 Worst Shows” list.
Teletubbies
The Teletubbies are most notable for their utter lack of purpose. Never is it made clear what they are supposed to be (babies? toddlers? aliens? toys?), what they’re doing living in an earth hut (the “Tubbytronic Superdome”) or why their closest friend is a frightened-looking vacuum cleaner named Noo-Noo. Stranger still, the foursome, who have televisions implanted in their abdomens, seem to literalize contemporary parents’ worst fears: incapable of language, the ’tubbies spend their time bopping around making indecipherable sounds and watching movies on each other’s bodies. Talk about too much screen time.
The Wiggles
It’s hard to think of anything creepier than four grown men calling themselves The Wiggles. Except maybe those grown men singing songs off their children’s album, “Yummy Yummy.”
The brightly turtlenecked Australian quartet was spawned from a pop group called The Cockroaches, and their variety show has now run for over two decades. On it, the men sing and dance like escapees from an asylum, against a bold, bubbly set, to entertain audiences that, weirdly, sometimes include adults. Looking for another reason to hate them? The maddeningly cheery troupe grossed $45 million in one recent year.
Caillou
Ask any parent of a toddler you know what their least favorite kids show is — really, turn to one and ask right now — and you will hear only one answer: Caillou. The mysteriously bald Canadian four-year-old is the most irksome export from the north since Avril Lavigne. He spends most episodes whining — to the over-enunciated dismay of his doughy, asexual parents — or asking inane questions about things most bright four-year-olds already understand. Viewers are also lucky to catch Caillou during his “learning to share” phase, so he can often be found loudly lamenting that he must divide the spoils of his privileged, suburban life with Rosie, his two-year-old sister.
Most parents want enriching, wholesome television programming designed to entertain children and teach them about tolerance and charity and all that crap. But too much time spent in the sanitized and freakishly uncomplicated moral universe of most of these shows, where the most cataclysmic injustice is a boo-boo, and you might end up tearing your hair out.
Regardless, the bottom line remains: if 23 minutes of infuriatingly peppy and nauseatingly wholesome TV is the price for a little break, parents will happily pay it.
