She’s the little pig whose puddle-jumping antics with her brother George have delighted children for years.
But now parents in the US have turned on Peppa Pig, accusing the popular British animated series of turning their children into brats.
They have complained to The Wall Street Journal that Peppa is a bully who fat-shames her father and is a malign influence on impressionable minds.
One parent warned others not to let their children watch it, saying their daughter had begun to ‘lash out’ after seeing it. ‘
There is so much verbal aggression… Peppa is rude, bossy, a liar, tattletale and more,’ they wrote beneath a review of the show.
Four-year-old Peppa had repeatedly been seen ‘bullying her daddy, refusing to listen and acting entitled’, said another. Often, she was rude to people, including her good friend Suzy Sheep.
Kayla Tychsen, 33, a parenting coach and mother of two from Houston, said “Peppa is rude and impatient. The show teaches kids that this is who she is and that it’s OK.”
Some argue that Peppa is just like any other four-year-old. I think that’s probably true.
“But for me, the issue is that I don’t want to be modelling that behaviour for my children, to sit them in front of a show where that’s what’s happening and Peppa is bossing people around, or telling her parents what to do… or making comments about people’s weight.”
Armita Asgari, 41, a London-based personal shopper, said she noticed some new and alarming behaviours from her five-year-old son a few months ago when he responded ‘Ew! Yuck!’ when given some food to try and told their neighbour he had a ‘big tummy’.
She added “That was when I realized he had picked up all these behaviours from Peppa Pig.”
The cartoon, created by independent London animation studio Astley Baker Davies, has earned $11 billion for the UK.
After hitting screens in 2004, it won a Bafta and was the fourth most in-demand children’s series worldwide last year.
But it is not without its critics in the UK either, with whole threads on parenting website Mumsnet discussing the pitfalls, including one describing the show as “the work of the devil” and Peppa as a “narcissistic psychopath”.
Defenders of Peppa Pig say the show offers a portrait of a real child. Esra Cafer, senior vice-president of the franchise at Hasbro, the American toy giant that owns the Peppa empire, said the show had evolved over its 20-year run.
“Peppa has natural, authentic reactions to the world, and has the ability to express how she feels,” she said.
“Some parents may see it as too direct or rude. We see it as self-assertive and self-confident.”