Barney & Friends (seasons 1-8)

Barney & Friends
"Super-Dee-Duper!"
Genre: Children's television series Educational Adventure Musical Running Time: 30 minutes Country: United States Release Date: April 6, 1992 - May 14, 2004 Network(s): PBS Kids Created by: Sheryl Leach Kathy Parker Dennis DeShazer Distributed by: The Lyons Group Lyrick Studios (1997-2001) HIT Entertainment (now Mattel Creations) (2001-2010) Starring: Bob West (1992-2000) Duncan Brannan (1997-2002) Tim Dever (1999-2002) Dean Wendt (2002-2010) Julie Johnson Patty Wirtz Michaela Dietz Previous show: Barney and the Backyard Gang (1988-1991) Next show: Barney & Friends reboot (2024)

Barney & Friends is an American children's television series aimed at children aged 2–6 years old, created by Sheryl Leach and produced by HIT Entertainment. It premiered on PBS on April 6, 1992 and ended on November 2, 2010. The series features the title character Barney, a purple anthropomorphic Tyrannosaurus rex who conveys educational messages through songs and small dance routines with a friendly, optimistic attitude. Reruns aired on PBS and Sprout until 2015, and now air from December 17, 2018 to present on Sprout's successor network, Universal Kids.

Plot

The show revolves around kids who hang out with their plush dinosaur Barney, which he later comes to life and later visited by his friends, Baby Bop and BJ (Season 2 onwards) as they do activities while having fun.

Why These Seasons Love You

1. The show promotes strong positive messages about friendship, teamwork, cultural appreciation and problem solving. It also emphasizes active play.
2. Barney is a very appealing role model for little kids with his friendly and optimistic personality.
3. Catchy songs that help encourages kids to stay active.
4. Baby Bop (green) and BJ (yellow) are really cute.
5. Scooter McNutty and Miss Etta Kette are hilarious as puppets.
6. Some of the merchandise released during these seasons were creative.
7. Good acting from the child actors.
8. Speaking of which, it served as a launchpad for many well known actresses and/or singers today including Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Debby Ryan, and Mattison Pettis.
9. The show sometimes tackles serious topics such as disability. One of the kid characters is deaf and wears a hearing aid, and another has down syndrome.
10. Some funny moments here and there.
11. The show itself even had its own adaption produced in Israel from 1997-2000 as "Hachaverim Shel Barney" (החברים של ברני) and Korea as "Baniwa Chingudeul" (바니와 친구들) from 2001-2003.
12. While most songs were somewhat annoying, there is some songs that were actually less annoying and heartwarming such as "It's Good to Be Home," (originally a replacement for I Love You) which Barney thinks that his kids and the viewers feels very special to him, whenever you're alone, and need to be loved at.

Bad Qualities

1. Some episodes have filler in them.
2. It had a terrible film adaptation.
3. The show suffered a minor decline in quality sometime between Seasons 3-8. However, it went horribly downhill in Seasons 9-14.
4. Some songs can get annoying at times, even before the downfall.
   • The theme song, while memorable, is considered obnoxious by some fans.
   • The song, “I Love You," is kind of annoying.
5. The Barney Doll from the first season can be considered as "creepy" at times because of the eyes, but luckily it was improved in the second season.
6. BJ's first costume looked ugly. In addition, BJ had a deeper voice that received a polarized reception.
   • Thankfully, this was fixed in Season 3.

Trivia

• Original Barney voice actor Bob West also voiced Jasper and Pasqually for the Chuck E. Cheese's chain from 1986-98 and Duncan Brannan (who served as a fill-in for West and briefly took over as the singing voice) voiced Chuck E. himself from 1993-2012 and Mr. Munch, Jasper and Pasqually at various points in the 1990s. Earl Fisher (who voices Booker T. Bookworm) has voiced Pasqually since 1998.
• While filming for Barney and the Backyard Gang, Bob West was originally going to play as Barney, both for in the costume and voicing him, but when the crew realised he is too tall to play Barney, they hired David Voss, the first Barney performer, to play the costume while Bob West ended up voicing Barney in a microphone to sync the mouth movement for the costume.
• Barney's original names were going to be Cosby, Colby, and Danny.
• Originally, Barney was originally going to be as the anthropomorphic blanket, but it was too hard, and later a teddy bear who comes to life, but because of Sheryl's son were more interested in dinosaurs in the museum, the whole concept of the character later became the dinosaur that we all know and love with normal teeth being added to avoid to have any sharp teeth.
• While making Barney & Friends in 1991, in one concept, they were originally going to have other characters other than just Barney and Baby Bop such as a calypso-singing chicken, a country cow, and a frog styled after the 50's rocker "The Big Bopper," because of production challenges, they were later being performed as puppets before removing them completely when production started, the puppet-related characters didn't came to affect until Season 4, when some of the characters such as Scooter McNutty, Miss Etta Kette, and only in Season 5, Booker T. Bookworm being introduced, Scooter and Miss Etta stayed from the show until 2002, when the 7th season starts to remove Scooter and Miss Etta to focus more on the costumes, and earlier in one episode in Season 2 "Hoo Hoo's on The Forest?" another costume character known as "Mr. Honey Bear" appears and all the animal costumes used in Barney's Colorful World! possibly based on the original script of the 1st season.

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