Barney & Friends
Appearance
Barney & Friends is a popular children's television show produced in the United States, mainly aimed at preschoolers. Barney is a purple anthropomorphic Tyrannosaurus rex who conveys learning through jumping around singing children's' songs with a friendly, optimistic attitude.
Barney
- I love you
You love me
We're best friends like friends should be
With a great big hug and
A kiss from me to you
Won't you say you love me too?- Theme song - Full lyrics and video at YouTube
- Super Dee Duper!
- Stu-u-u-pendous!
- Tee-riffic!
- And remember, I love you!
Baby Bop
- Has any one seen my blankey?
- Oh Goody Goddy *laughs*
Dialogue
- Shawn: I like spaghetti and pizza, are they healthy foods?
- Michael: Well they can be, but to be healthy, you need to eat lots of different kinds of food.
- Luci: Sure, look here! Come here, Shawn! These are the four food groups, Bread & Cereal, Meats & Protein, Milk & Dairy, & Fruits and Vegetables.
- Barney: Oh boy! Just look at all the good things to eat. I think it would take a dinosaur to eat all of that.
- Luci: Breads & Cereals are things like bread, and cereal, and rice, and crackers. Meats & Protein are things like Meat, and fish, and eggs, and peanut butter. Milks & Dairy are things like, milk, and butter, and cheese, ice cream, and yogurt. And there are lots of fruits and vegetables like apples, oranges, bananas, carrots, cauliflower, celery, and lots more.
- Barney: Yummy, yummy veggies!
- Michael: So a healthy meal could be.... Um, some bread, a little bit of peanut butter, um, a piece of cheese, and some celery sticks!
- Barney: Oh-ho. I'd like a meal like that.
- Shawn: Four kinds of foods make one healthy body. But what will happen if someone had only ate one kind of food forever and ever?
- Luci: Oh you wouldn't wanna do that. Something strange might happen.
- Barney: Oh. Like what?
- Luci: I'll tell you. There once was a boy who would only eat noodles. Oodles, and oodles, and oodles of noodles. And unless mom served him, he'd go boo-hoo-hoodles. Until she would fill up his plate. Yes unless he got noodles he get him mad noodles. And wiggle and whine and act terribly ruddles. He wouldn't eat salad or meatballs or froodles. He thought those were things that could wait. But then one dark day after eating his noodles, not carrots, and oranges, and such healthy froodles, that little boy turned into a noodle. And let that be a lesson to him, me, and youdle.
- Shawn: That couldn't really happen could it?
- Luci: No Shawn, that was just a story. But it wouldn't be a bad idea to remember all four food groups in every meal.
Direct-to-video specials
What a World We Share/Around the World with Barney
- Barney: We are having so much fun in the fiesta! [unknowingly bumps into Stella the Storyteller behind him] Oh! Excuse me.
- Stella the Storyteller: Barney!
- Barney & the Kids: Stella!
- Stella the Storyteller: Hola, everyone! Oh, what are you doing here in Mexico?
- Kristen: We've been looking all over the world for you.
- Stella the Storyteller: You have?
- Keesha: We have. You left your suitcase in the treehouse.
- Stella the Storyteller: Oh, thank you! I couldn't remember where in the world I left it. But how did you find me?
- Robert: Well, we knew you were going to France, so we started there.
- Danny: And then when you weren't there, we noticed these other stickers on your suitcase.
- Stella the Storyteller: Oh! I get a sticker from everywhere I go. That's how I remember where I've been.
- Barney: And they helped tell us where you might be.
- Keesha: [points on the sticker of Canada] This one led us to Canada.
- Kristen: [points to the sticker of Mexico] And this one led us here.
Quotes about Barney & Friends
- I was always looking for products and programs that I felt good about and that would entertain my young son and hold his attention, because very few things would hold his attention. ... I started noticing what worked with him and what didn’t – the characters, music, pacing and so on — and I came up with a formula in my mind of what was needed in order to work with preschoolers.
- Sheryl Leach on the creation of Barney & Friends, in "Thinking Big, Really Big: Sheryl Leach" at StartupNation
- [Children recognize that] Barney thinks like them ... He celebrates the child in childhood. ... We don't really think about what the parents are going to like and dislike.
- Sheryl Leach, quoted in Handbook of Children and the Media (2001) by Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer
- Barney is much more than just a fun creature of kids' imaginations. He is a politically correct teacher of everything on the liberal left's agenda, from New Age evolution to radical ecology.
To many children Barney has become a guru of sorts. He teaches transcendental thought and mystical ideas. Nothing comes through Barney's teachings more clearly than the New Age idea of using our minds to create miracles. No one should deny that positive or negative thinking can tremendously affect our lives. But such powers are clearly physical and end with the normal experiences we enjoy. God alone is supernatural.
- The idea of a seance is at the forefront of almost every "Barney" program. On one show Mother Goose talks to the children from one of her books. Led by Barney, the children commune with Mother Goose and conduct a seance to bring her to them. As they sing and dance their little ditty she — poof! — appears in their presence. The Bible calls that necromancy and says a person who participates in such behavior is an abomination unto the Lord. This kind of occult activity fills the "Barney" material. Conjuring someone up is certainly not kids' play!
- Reverend Joseph Chambers in Barney, "The Purple Messiah" (1993)
- Barney, the harmless, ever-so-lovable purple dinosaur who is the star of the highest-rated public TV show for children in the United States, Barney and Friends, becomes a fierce object of hate. A Barney lookalike was viciously attacked in a Texas shopping mall, and an "I Hate Barney Secret Society" has formed, turning Barney's "I Love You, You Love Me" theme song into "I Hate You, You Hate Me, Let's Go Out and Kill Barney!" ... Barney and Friends was envisioned as a toddler show. It was created in the late 1987 by Sheryl Leach, a young mother who wanted a simple program that would entertain her pre-school children. ... Kindergarteners often do still like Barney, but by grade school, most children have learned to disdain him. ... How one wields Barney (whether one "loves" him or "hates" him) is akin to riding a merry-go-round: one does it differently at different ages.
- Laura Desfor Edles in Cultural Sociology in Practice (2002) Ch. 3 : The Media and Popular Culture, p. 100
- Barney and Friends is known for drawing the adoration of preschool viewers and the occasional joke or rolling of the eyes from parents and other adults due to its saccharin sweet content.
- Media and the American Child : Learning the Hard Way (2007) by George Comstock and Erica Scharrer, p. 133