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65 reviews in total

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97 out of 155 people found the following review useful:
It's a Kids show, It's a Kids show, It's a Kids show, It's a Kids show.........SHUT UP!, 9 August 2004

Author: Angel Meiru

Okay, you hippies are probably wondering what I have against an "education" and "informative" show like "Barney"? Well, I have a lot of hate against it for these reasons:

1. It teaches that having a personality and individualism is immoral. No one on the show has a personality. Everyone dresses alike, talks alike, acts alike and dances alike. Even in the episode called "Being an Individual", kids try to tell Barney about what they like and EVERYONE on the planet should do what I like. Do you wanna teach your kid that being an individual is wrong?

2. "A Stranger is a Friend,You Haven't Met" Episode. While seemingly harmless, the show's producers soonfound that it could also be extremely dangerous for young children. In fact, several young Barney-lovers from across the U.S. fell victim to pedophiles, who were using the show's friendly message to lure children away from their parents. The episode has since been pulled, but the damage had been done. So called "Innocent" mistakes in programming, like this one, clearly show why parents need to watch television WITH their children.

3. IF your not happy all the time, you are a bad person. No one seems to show any other emotion but happiness, no matter which situation they are in. If the child's parents get mad or sad for some reason, the child may think of Mommy or Daddy differently. Not a good message at all.

4. Magic solves everything! Seems like every problem is solved by magic. At least in shows like "Fraggle Rock", it teaches us that magic CAN backfire at it is best to solve problems on your own. Does Barney teach this? NO, of course not. There HAS to be magic in there. And the problem is, a lot of two year olds cannot tell fantasy from reality, and might think their parents, siblings or relatives can use magic to solve everything, yet become confused when they CANNOT use magic and think they are weird. Another boner pulled again.

5. Barney makes no distinction between stealing and sharing. He has even specifically said that "stealing is okay if the person you steal from doesn't mind". Kids can learn that if you really want something, stealing is a perfectly acceptable way to get it. This is not something that preschoolers need authority figures to tell them.

6. "If I just have the right thing, I can solve all my problems." Whenever the kids have a problem, Barney gives them whatever they need to solve it. The message being sent here is "Don't try to think to solve this! It's too much work, and the solution probably wouldn't work anyway. Just use this." Because of this, children could stop thinking through things (Barney said it was too much work) and become dependent on the "right" object. (The right shoes, the right food, the right computer, the right exercise machine...) This is obviously a good message for the Barney marketers, but it's not good for preschoolers.

7. The message that cheating is okay. In another episode the children are involved in a contest to carry a peanut on a spoon without dropping it. One child puts peanut butter on his spoon, and easily wins. The child is then rewarded for his creative thinking, when the child in fact bent the rules, and changed the game so that he could win. This teaches that cheating is good, you win and people think that you are creative, when in real life you will often be disqualified, or worse, and severely disliked by other competitors who played by the rules.

8. Do the kids in this show eat anything else besides cakes, cookies and candy? That teaches that it is okay to eat tons of junk food and avoid healthy food, despite Barney's so called "Health Food" song. Other than that, EVERYONE in the show eats junk food. No wonder there are so many obese kids in America and Europe.

And finally....

Most other kids' television shows teach creative problem solving well, without having to resort to "magic". Barney could also have done that but instead decided to use the method that was A) best for the marketers and B) took the least time and money for scripts. It's a blatant sellout that shows just how little the Lyons Group actually cares about children.

That is my rant for you all.

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33 out of 55 people found the following review useful:
Is there anyone who likes this show???, 2 March 2003
Author: brownrecluse62 from Evanston, IL, U.S.A.

"Barney and Friends," the notoriously stupid kids' show about a big cuddly purple dinosaur who makes kids use their imaginations, has been the brunt of so many jokes since it started airing (my favorite spoof of it was Animaniacs' "Baloney & Kids," in which Baloney, the numbskull orange dinosaur, is taunted and has anvils dropped on his head). There are too many things wrong with this show for me to discuss here, so I'll just say my favorite ones:

(1) All the kids look like they are (and they probably are) preteens and teenagers, and this dopey purple idiot is teaching them things like the alphabet, counting, colors, shapes, and everything else every 5-year-old should know. If this were real life, the kids (or, should I say, teens) would throw stuff at Barney and laugh, instead of sitting in awe while he teaches them the difference between indoor and outdoor voices.

(2) I know that using one's imagination is important, but here, Barney needs to tell them to imagine. It's as if they can't imagine so much as a rock without saying, with Barney's instruction, the magic words "Shimberee, shimberah, shimberee, shimbeRAAAAHHHH!"

(3) The show's methods of teaching lessons to the 2-to-5-year-old crowd are really lame. The dialogue is so banal that I can't see how even the cast members believe any of this junk. And the lines are not unintentionally hilarious enough to inspire a chuckle in a cynic like me. Except for one notable exception, the "5 Senses" episode, which contained lines such as the following (all said in amazed tone of voice):

"This rock is smooth...but it's hard!"

(banging on sand) "This sand is hard. (picking it up) But now it feels soft. (rubbing it in hands) But now it feels scratchy!"

(surprised/delighted even beyond usual "Barney" standard) "This chair is hard!!!! But the cushion is soft!!!!!!!!"

So if you want a good educational show for your kids, turn on "Sesame Street" or "Mr. Rogers." They are much better than this baloney.

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16 out of 22 people found the following review useful:
This is a KIDS show, 25 June 2004
Author: teena2-geo from USA

I have to admit that I do not like Barney. BUT, everyone who has commented, remember that the show is aimed at PRESCHOOLERS, not you! My son is 3 years old and loves it. This show encourages his love of music and singing. It has helped him learn how to use his imagination. The songs and characters might drive me nuts sometimes but I cannot fault a show that encourages imagination. I have to admit as much as the song "I love you" used to drive me nuts, I love the fact that every time my son sings it/hears it, "With a great big hug and a kiss from me to you", he runs over to wherever I am and hugs and kisses me like the song says. It encourages children to care about one another. (To those of you who keep saying it is mind numbing and restricting--WATCH IT WITH A PRESCHOOLER! See what they get out of it). I should say that Sesame Street is still my all-time favorite kids show, but don't knock the show unless you have a pre-schooler and have watched it with them.

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22 out of 36 people found the following review useful:
Even when I was hobbit height I loathed it., 17 March 2005
Author: Lady-of-Rohan from New Zealand

Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Postman Pat, Oscar the Grouch, the Happy Giant. What do all of these names have in common. They're wonderful memorable childhood TV characters. Why? Because they're classics. And classics are timeless pieces of entertainment that will stay with you forever. They shape your early years, how you learn, what you learn, and even how you act with others. And you know who isn't in that list? Barney the Dinosaur. And why? BECAUSE HE IS THE MOST ANNOYING CHILDREN'S CHARACTER EVER CREATED BY GOD!

Imagine a purple therapod about 9 feet tall with a voice so high it makes dogs howl at a 5-mile radius. Then add a theme song based on "Yankee Doodle" and voilà! you have Barney. The problem with this character is that he is extremely annoying. And I don't mean annoying as in uncomfortable to stand. I mean mentally grating and painful to see and hear. While Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and Grover are down to earth characters that are fuzzy and lovable, Barney is more sugary, yippidy, and "in your face". And let's not forget the infamous "I Love You" song played EVERY TIME the show finishes. It's so deliciously bad, it's "download onto your ipod to torture friends" worthy.

1/10

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8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Too Much Time On Your Hands, 3 November 2007
Author: mekubeku from United States

Barney haters have way too much time on their hands in order to be able to sit and write a five page hate letter to the "hippie" parents who let their kids watch Barney - If ya don't like Barney...fine but get a life and focus your anger and hate on something a little more challenging than Barney, it's as though you cannot comprehend anymore than your preschooler. Each parent is individual, stop trying to pass your crap onto others. Teahcing your kids to hate and rant about it was never seen on an episode of Barney...you will not be rewarded for your creative ways here. Children are unique and forcing children to abide by your way of thinking is harsh, there will be a lot more than Barney that you will not be able to shelter them from once they grow into teenagers...hope you have a lot of rant left in you!

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10 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
A Great Show for Kids (whether you like it or not), 31 December 2004
Author: trueluvnanarchy from United States

'Barney & Friends' is a good educational show for kids, plain and simple. After reading the reviews on this page, I feel I must respond to some of the comments, many of which were made by folks who obviously jumped on the anti-Barney bandwagon without actually watching the show first.

First, in regard to the common complaint that Barney doesn't teach kids about any feelings other than happiness: Do you think kids today need to be taught about sadness, anger, violence, or fear? Is there not enough of that in their lives already? Kids aren't immune to life and they're lives are more than what they see on a TV show. The 30 minutes of pure unadulterated happiness exhibited by Barney and his friends in most episodes is an appealing contrast to the bleak stress-filled real world many kids are exposed to for the other 23 1/2 hours of the day. So many kids live in poverty or in dysfunctional or abusive families, or both, and they constantly hear about death and destruction radiating out from every corner of the globe. Fortunately, many kids can turn on PBS and see happy optimistic puppets telling them how wonderful life can be; perhaps it evens things out a bit in a child's impressionable mind.

To say Barney only teaches happiness isn't true anyway, there are several episodes that are solely dedicated to dealing with negative feelings like being sad, mad, scared or embarrassed, and how it's okay to feel these emotions. Granted, the children on the show are happy most of the time, but why shouldn't they be? It's a 30 minute kiddie show, should they all dress up in black veils and mope around like a bunch of goths? They are trying to make their audience, children age 2-6 years old, feel happy.

Secondly, to address the notion that Barney does all the work and imagining, thus setting a bad example for kids: This shows you haven't watched the show because Barney is a figment of the children's imaginations, and therefore all of Barney's ideas are their ideas. We see the fantasy from their imagination's perspective.

I thought for sure I'd heard it all when it came to putting down Barney and similar shows, but I was wrong. Now people are insulting kiddie shows for being too imaginative. I keep reading idiotic comments like 'these kids are seeing a big talking purple dinosaur, are they snorting PCP or something?!! That's going to scar them for life!!" Those types of comments might have been slightly humorous 25 years ago, maybe. But now this attitude has become so commonplace that people are seriously holding a show's creativity against it. For instance, a friend of mine who has a 4 year old son refused to let him watch the Teletubbies because it was, and I quote, "bizarre and too Orwellian". (!) Gimme a break. That's almost as silly as another reviewer's claim that Barney disrespects his preschool audience by talking down to them. That's so ridiculous, I'm not even going to respond to it other than to say, that's just silly.

Let 'Barney & Friends' be what it is: a simple sweet children's show that teaches young kids moral lessons while entertaining them with catchy songs and brightly colored dinosaurs. It's silly to expect anything different from a show that caters to such a young demographic. And next time, watch more than two minutes of a show before you submit a review for it. ~Darlene

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11 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
How to be good in Barneys views, 14 August 2006

Author: Taylorwolf11 from Yellowknife, Canada

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Barney teaches kids nothing!!! Here are some 3 reasons why you shouldn't let you kids watch this show: 1. Barney teaches kids that we should think EXACTLY like each other to get along.

2. Barney teaches kids that you shouldn't be sad, and if you feel sad, EAT LOTS OF ICE CREAM!!! 3. If you make people pity you they will give you what you want when you want it.

Barney is just a Fat doll who told kids strangers are your friends. He should NOT be trusted. And he is high every day!!!, he constantly GIGGLES!!!! DO NOT WATCH THIS SHOW!!!!!!!!!!! Your kids will thank you when there older

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Barney=Satan? I think not!, 14 March 2009

Author: fourbebe from United States

I have been an avid user of IMDb since I heard about it 5 or 6 years ago. Since then, I have dropped in every time I have finished a movie or had a question about some show or actor. In all the history of my visitations to IMDb, I have never been as shocked at the reviews as I have been for this show. I know that Barney is not the absolutely best show ever created, but I don't think that it is as EVIL as some people seem to think. Every review I read on this site about Barney was extremely negative.( I stopped after about 5 reviews, so I apologize if you had something nice to say) I do not particularly like Barney, but I feel that it is my job to defend him. First, let me make a few disclaimers. 1. I grew up with Barney, but did not watch him faithfully. I was at least 4 or 5 years old when he became "mainstream." That said, I have few memories of life without Barney. I don't know if this truly matters, but I feel that I should mention it. 2. My young daughter now watches Barney. She is only 1 ½ years old, so take that for what it is worth. 3. I go for the underdog.

-Ever since I was in kindergarten, Barney has been the butt of many jokes. I have to admit, most are funny and even laughable. Yet, even as a wee grade schooler, I couldn't help but shake my head and roll me eyes at whoever was telling the joke. If you are old enough to joke about Barney, you are too old for him. Barney was not made to entertain those who could already know how to share or how to wash their hands. Barney was made for the young and the young at heart. -Barney has more diversity than STD tests on a crack whore. Even from the early episodes of Barney and the Backyard Gang, there were at least 3 different ethnicities being represented. In the later episodes, you could tell there were many cultures showing up. A little bit stereotypical, but there was diversity, nonetheless. -Barney is catchy. Period. I have yet to meet someone who has never gotten one of his songs stuck in their head. I don't know if I consider this a good or bad thing, but it is definitely a trait of Barney. - Okay, so Barney may be lame. But you've got to look at who the audience is. Most 2 or 3 year olds that I know aren't very critical of dialogue or feasibility. If the songs and dance steps are something they can recreate, then it is okay in their book. So what if Tina and Derek talk like they are 5 years old when they are really at least 3 times that age? Little kids don't care. -There are much worse shows they could be watching. Some very popular show advertises "Krusty Krabs" in "Bikini Bottom". Another show has a main character who has a phallic protuberance on the top of his head while a co-star has an upside down triangle on the top of her head. (Think about it. Rhymes with Belly Buddies.) Just about any live-action Disney show gives subtle to obvious sexual references. Compared to these shows, Barney is totally innocent. -Many people seem to go line by line when bashing this show. Don't they know that could easily go the other way? In one of the first episodes of Barney and the Backyard Gang called Barney and the Campfire Sing Along, Tina and her mother sing the "I Love You" song. It really shows how much a parent's affection and involvement affects the child. Also, all of Barney's songs about saying "please" and "thank you" and the "Brush Your Teeth" song help kids to grow and take care of themselves. Ending statements: Okay, so Barney isn't the be all and end all of children's television shows. In fact, it may not even crack the top 50. But come on. Barney is not as bad as everyone plays him out to be. Yes, he can be terribly annoying. Yes, he can be slightly condescending. But immoral and corrupt? I think not. And for Satan's nostrils, stop trying to over analyze everything! So what, there weren't adults around? So what if the scripts sucked and the plot was horrible? So what if there were preteens in the show? Did you care when you were 3? No, and neither do the 3 years olds now! If Barney was meant to amuse 15 year olds +, they probably would have taken a different route. So just accept the show as it is- a young children's sing-a-long program!

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3 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
I feel ashamed that I loved this so much as a kid..., 10 May 2010

Author: TheLittleSongbird from United Kingdom

When I was a little girl, I loved Barney and Friends and never missed it. Then I never understood why my parents hated it so much. Seeing Barney and Friends again from an 18 year old perspective, I do feel sorry for my parents. My summary may be a little harsh, but I feel ashamed for loving this show. I do think though this is a perfect example of something you grow out of when you get older. Kids might like it, like I did, but now I find it too annoying and childish for my tastes.

First and foremost, the characters are very annoying and obnoxious now. I am not going to compare this to other shows or their characters, but characters like Rosie and Jim, Pingu and Big Bird are lovable characters and their respective shows are classics in my opinion. I may have liked Barney when I was little and I still remember the time when he was one of the attractions at Alton Towers, but now I see him as the annoying purple dinosaur he is, and to me his voice actor(s) sounds like he is high on something. Other than Barney, the most annoying character is Baby Bop. When I was little, I used to think she was adorable and huggable, but now she is probably the only character I consider more annoying than Barney, if that was actually possible. I even find Tutter from Bear in the Big Blue House much more adorable, and funny as well.

The music is incredibly repetitive and simplistic. I appreciate that the writers try to keep it simple, but like with Dora the Explorer they go overboard with the simplicity. The main theme song is merely a variation of Yankee Doodle complete with awful lyrics and out of tune singing, and the I love you, you love me song is the sort of song I have thought in a different light, in a bad way as well since seeing the show.

Then there is truly banal and childish writing, quite possibly the worst asset of the show. The writing alone made my parents wince with contempt because of the complete shallowness and banality of it all. Complete with repetitive story lines, next to no educational value(well to an adult), some of the cheapest effects for any children's show, blatant talking down to the audience and negative lessons such as stealing and cheating being okay. As a kid I loved the production values for their vibrancy and colour, but to an adult they are very tacky and unoriginal. I get the sense that Barney, BJ and Baby Bop are people dressed up in dinosaur suits and the scenery looks as though it is about to fall over any minute.

The voice acting is uninspired, and the kids sometimes act as though they don't know what they are supposed to be doing.

Any redeeming qualities? No not really... wait there's one. Stella the Storyteller. Probably the only character I can tolerate. Even as a young girl, I loved how pretty she was and her maternal attitude. And there you have Barney and Friends. I strongly dislike the show now, I loved it as a child, but now I hate how childish and simplistic it is. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I've heard it's worse. Maybe I'll check it out to give it the benefit of the doubt. 1/10 Bethany Cox

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8 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
It's really a good show, 10 March 2004
Author: AnnEliz5 from Southern California

I have been watching this since my 9 year old nephew was just a year old. Over the years, and now that my own children watch it, I see it differently. My son really remembers the things that Barney and Friends teaches and I am thankful. It's almost like Barney confirms the things I teach my son and they seem to sink in better (say manners). I have noticed that even at my age, I have favorite characters and can see the obvious difference between the original shows when it was The Backyard gang, and the new shows. Since this is meant for kids and it really gets down there with kids, it seems that parents and other grown ups who find it annoying, should just leave the room. I personally didn't start liking the show until I sat down with my nephew and watched it with him, singing and dancing with him. He had so much fun seeing me do what they were doing! Yay for Barney!

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