After reading so many negative reviews I felt that I needed to write my own review. As a child this show was great! It taught me how to have a very active imagination, it gave me a love for music and dancing and it taught me how to see the good in things and how to keep a positive outlook. I loved the show so much I even named our dog Barney ( the dog we got when I was about 4 and was completely obsessed with the show). I had totally forgot about Barney for the most part until one day I started singing a song to my daughter that was from the show. So I found a whole bunch of the old episodes and movies that I watched when I was little on YouTube for my daughter to watch. One episode in she was hooked and I remembered every single song and taught her how to sing along with them. One thing I really like about the show is that it encourages kids to get up and move and dance while watching the show. Most little kid shows seem to try to get the kid to just sit still for the whole thing. Yes the music is simplistic, because its for little kids. One of the reviewers complained about how all of the kids looked and dressed the same. I have to say that's completely wrong. This was a show that had kids from all different nationalities and body types as I am typing this up my daughter has an episode on and in it there is a girl of Asian descent, a Latino girl who is on the chunkier side, a African American boy and only 1 white boy and each of them have their own distinctive style. If you look at plenty of other kid shows there is a lot less diversity. Another reviewer complained about the show only showing junk food, and we just watch an episode where all the snack were either fruits, vegetables, or nuts, not to mention Barney has its own song about eating apples and bananas. Another reviewer complained about the kids always being happy, which again is not true there are plenty of episodes showing a whole range of emotions, from jealousy, anger, fear and so on. But each one talks about how to handle your feelings, and yes how to have a positive outlook ( which by the way, its been proved that the most successful people are the ones with a positive attitude). Lastly while it does have some educational qualities its not a crazy amount but TV is not supposed to be educational. TV is for entertainment and if you are relying on TV to educate your kids, you will be failing them, Parents need to take an active part in their kids education and not expect a TV show to do it for them. Pretty much all kids shows are somewhat annoying but Barney is far less annoying then Kipper or Cailliou, or the Barbie movies ( don't even get me started on them, fighting over glitter, enough said). Also Barney does not push any agenda on the show. There are plenty of shows out there that are pushing their own view points on kids and I am thankful that Barney doesn't. That way my child can approach any issue with no pre-conceived notions and her and I can have an open and honest discussion so that she can make up her own mind on what she believes without feeling like her favorite TV show taught her to believe something else!

1. CHILD ABDUCTION - Barney is telling us "A stranger is a friend you haven't met". That is basically telling them there are no bad people (I know they're little kids and they don't understand murderers, thieves, But all the other educational shows, books and even our parents have said "Never talk to strangers". So picture this - you're a two-year-old Barney viewer, you're at the playground in the sandbox and a man walks up to you and says "Hey you, you wanna come with me?" and you say "Yes, because you're a friend I haven't met". And your parents look up from a newspaper or magazine they were reading and see you getting into the man's car. And the parents run up to the car but they make it there too late. You've been kidnapped.2. OBESITY - The only food they eat on the show is junk food. This is teaching kids that the only kind of food in the world you can eat is sugary foods. And our parents have always said that junk food is bad for us. So when we're one or two, our minds are completely open. And when we see those kids on Barney eating nothing but junk, we think that's the only kind of food in the world. So, later in life when you've eaten nothing but sugar in your life so far, you become overweight, obese, or maybe even have diabetes.3. KIDS STEALING AND CHEATING - According to Barney, cheating is "creative thinking". So cheating on tests by writing the answers on your arm is "creative"? Our parents have always told us that cheating is wrong. Also according to Barney, stealing is "okay as long as the person you stole from doesn't know it's gone". Don't even get me started on this. STEALING IS OKAY?!!! So say you're a one-year-old Barney viewer with a mind completely open and you hear Barney say that. Years later, you're in a video game store and you find a game that you really want but you don't have enough money for it. Then you think "Wait a minute, didn't someone tell me as a baby stealing is okay?". So you shoplift the video game and you get caught and arrested. What you would you say? "The purple dinosaur made me do it"?.4. ADULT/CHILDREN RELATIONSHIPS - Revert you back to the previous quote "A stranger is a friend you haven't met". Also Barney is also teaching children that they should love everyone and give everyone a big kiss on the cheek. So picture this - you're a two-year-old Barney viewer and you're at the playground in the sandbox and a man walks up to you and you stand up and give him a kiss on the cheek, after that the man gets a strange (you know what I mean) look on his face and asks you if you would like to go with him and well, I think you can see where I'm going from here.

Before I go into this review, let me introduce myself. I was born in April 1999, I'm a freshmen in high school, I have a 4.0 GPA and this recently finished quarter had a 98% average in school. I am a competitive cheerleader as well as a school cheerleader and a dancer. Also, my mother has been an elementary school guidance counselor for 20 years, so for six years before I was born. I watched Barney and Friends when I was little, and I honestly can't remember much of it other than it was my great grandmother's favorite show to watch out of all the programs I was exposed to. I do not, however, recall anything people have been complaining about. I don't recall the "Strangers are friends you haven't met yet" or whatever episode. People don't go into this realizing it's a KID'S SHOW. I grew out of it before I was in grade school. I was my mother's first child, so she tried her hardest to not screw me up. So she let me watch Barney? Revisit my brief introductory paragraph. Do I sound screwed up? I think SpongeBob is way worse than Barney, as studies have shown Spongebob shortens children's attention spans and delivers inappropriate themes. I have never gotten molested or abducted even though I'm extremely naive. Even if I did watch that episode about strangers, my grandmother, mother, babysitter or great grandmother (assuming she could hear the TV because if I was 2, she was 80) probably sat me down and told me they were referring to children of my age, not grown-ups. If a child did get kidnapped because of this supposedly evil message from the show and the parents are blaming it on Barney, they should be blaming themselves for not clarifying and making the topic more coherent. Another great example: When I was little, my mother would let me watch Sex and the City with her. It's not like I wanted to, I was just kind of there, but I watched it all the same. Any time I would ask her about something on the show, she would tell me and I would find it "gross." I have not repeated anything said, done, or talked about on that show because she explained it to me. In conclusion, let you're children watch Barney. It's not the worse thing on television, and it does have some good morals for the right audiences (Preschoolers and under).Thanks for reading.

Now, the first thing I should tell the readers - I'm on the autism spectrum so it's okay for me to sometimes watch kids shows when I'm 21 and childless. That will help you refrain from yelling at your device screen that I must be out of my mind (or at least I hope it will). A few years ago my sister's children were watching a recent episode of Barney, and my reaction was like that of many people: "God this is so DUMB." But I fondly remember watching Barney as a child, and even on my eighth birthday there was a miniature Barney toy in/on the cake, and I got a BJ doll that year too:) But I eventually grew up just like everyone does and by the time my sister's tots were around my enjoyment of Barney was years behind me. But a little while ago I found some 1995 episodes on YouTube, and yesterday when I watched one of them, instantly I felt like the 4-year-old I was at that time, a very pleasant nostalgic feeling indeed. I'm going to watch that episode again now. I give this show a 6 out of 10 because the newer episodes don't compare to the ones I watched when I was young...Goodbye now.