- "Growing up is the greatest adventure of all."
- —Promotional tagline
Caillou is a television show about a 4-year-old boy named Caillou. The program formerly aired in the United States on PBS Kids and Universal Kids. The show is oriented for kindergarteners to adults. The TV series premiered in Canada on September 2, 1996, while it premiered in the United States on September 6, 1999.
The show has two reboots, one is Caillou's New Adventures, and one is a CGI reboot of the series has been announced for premiere in 2023.
History[]
The series has 5 seasons. The episodes started being made in 1996, some of the episodes were originally made into books which were published in 1992 and wrote in 1987. The first Caillou episode was Caillou Makes Cookies. Through out the whole series there have been many Crying Clips. By season 3 there were (and still are) 24 main characters on the show. When Caillou first came out, Caillou was 3 years old. By season 4, episodes started having Caillou imagining something at least once.
On September 6, 1999, Nickeodeon, Disney Channel and Toon Disney acquired the rights to the show and retooled it to fill time slots. While the show featured reruns of older episodes, there were also segments featuring Rexy (Caillou's stuffed dinosaur), Teddy (Caillou's teddy bear), and Gilbert (Caillou's pet cat) as puppets (along with a squirrel named Dee-Dee) used as a framing story, a music video segment featuring a group of kids called the Caillettes, and live action segments with kids in their everyday lives. Each show would focus on one single topic such as growing up, pets, and traveling. 40 half-hour episodes were produced.
In 2003, the show was changed slightly after the producers noticed that the puppet skits, music videos and real-life kids videos had more screen time than Caillou himself. The show added title cards at the start of the episode. The puppet segments were retooled into a single three minute story that would come after the first Caillou episode (Dee-Dee did not appear), the Caillettes segments appeared after the second Caillou episode, the real-life segments came after the third episode and a segment featuring the puppets inviting the viewers to play a game appeared at the end of the show right after the concluding Caillou episode. 16 new half-hour episodes were produced.
After a three-year hiatus, the live action and puppet segments were discontinued. Instead, it would feature three seven minute episodes and Caillou singing a song or inviting the viewers to play a game between segments. The episodes were redone in Flash Animation, too.
Reception[]
The show has been widely criticized by parents for Caillou being spoiled and annoying (despite his character improving in later seasons), as well as the poor parenting of the parent characters, which add to the lack of consequences Caillou is given for it. Many parenting groups have often formed "Caillou hate" pages and there have been petitions to remove the show from broadcasting. People have also made fan films depicting the characters as horrible people.
However, the puppet segments are looked back on fondly and have gained a following amongst older fans who watched the show growing up.
Characters[]
The table here shows what season the major characters first appeared in. No new major characters have been added to the show since Season 3.
| Season | Character Debuts |
| Season 1 (1996 - 2003) | Caillou, Rosie, Caillou's Mommy, Caillou's Daddy, Leo, Clementine. Grandma, Grandpa, Julie, Sarah , Andre, Ms.Martin, Mr. Hinkle, Gilbert, Teddy, Rexy, Jim |
| Season 2 (2000 - 2003) | Jeffery, Jason, Billy, Dee-Dee, Lee-Wun |
| Season 3 (2003 - 2015) | Jonus, Emma, Xavier |
Listed here are characters that are no longer on the show and why.
- Dee-Dee - Last appeared in Season 2 before the Puppet segments were retooled.
- Rexy - Last appeared in Season 3 when the Puppet segments ended.
- Teddy - Last appeared in Season 3 when the Puppet segments ended.
- Julie - Last appeared in Season 3, probably couldn't babysit Caillou anymore or got too busy.
- Jim - Last appeared in Season 3, probably stopped because he got too old for Caillou or moved away.
Trivia[]
- The show first premiered on September 2, 1996. However, according to Google, it says it took almost 4 months to air another episode, making Caillou Makes Cookies the first and only episode to air in 1996.
- Sometime in 1996, a website made by the official producers of Caillou with the domain of caillou.com was created.[1] The website is still running.
References[]
Links[]
- PBS Caillou website (retired as of 2021)
- Official website
- Universal Kids website for Caillou