I love you/you love me/Early 90s memory

August 13, 2015 12:33 PM

Are young adults nostalgic for Barney and Friends?

I've been wondering this for a while, and the recent news about Sesame Street on HBO reminded me.

When I was a kid in the '80s, I watched a lot of Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' neighborhood, and everyone I know who watched those shows looks back on them with a good deal of affection. In college, "remember such-and-such from Sesame Street?" was such an effective conversation starter that it was almost a cliche.

I was in middle school when Barney and Friends first aired. Toddlers loved him (including one whom I babysat weekly), and everyone else really, really hated him. Hating on Barney was part of the background noise of the early '90s.

The kids who watched the first few seasons of Barney are in their twenties now. Do they remember Barney with fondness, or eye rolling, or just a shrug? Is there a common opinion? Do current college students reminisce about Barney, or does the subject never come up? I'm not really looking for individual opinions, but wondering if there's a common generational attitude towards the show.

posted by Metroid Baby to Media & Arts (22 answers total)

I haven't noticed much of this among my peers (I'm in my late 20s). The show really hasn't ever come up in conversation since I was a kid, as far as I can remember.

There's not a whole lot to get nostalgic about. Sesame Street and Mister Rogers both had strongly differentiated characters and treated their viewers with a certain level of respect; I think by the time I was in early elementary school, everyone realized that Barney was bland and pandering, and just sort of stopped caring about it. That lack of emotional connection stopped any nostalgia from forming.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:49 PM on August 13, 2015

Best answer: I was watching Barney around age 4-5 and certainly didn't actively hate it. I might have even had a Barney lunchbox at one point? Very vague memories though. Certainly no nostalgia. I liked Tiny Toons better. I do remember singing obnoxious parody versions of the song. "I hate you, you hate me, let's get together and kill Barney." That sort of thing. Maybe around age 7, once I knew it was supposed to be uncool and lame?

I'm in my late 20s now but I was totally a PBS kid and I harbor enormous affection for Wishbone, Bill Nye, and especially Magic School Bus. Loved Magic School Bus. So many feels. So happy they've been coming on to Netflix.

I think Barney was directed at young enough kids that it's pre-nostalgia for most, maybe? Nostalgia tends to be for late childhood into adolescence in my experience.

Also to this day I am still trying to find that damn WGBH promo. It's my white whale.
posted by Wretch729 at 12:50 PM on August 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Yeah, I've never heard any young adults comment one way or the other on Barney, but isn't its target age range (as you say, babies and toddlers) quite a bit younger than the target age range for Mister Rogers' neighborhood? It probably complicates the "remember such-and-such?" phenomenon when most of a show's fans are too young to form stable long-term memories.
posted by Bardolph at 12:51 PM on August 13, 2015

I'm 28 and it doesn't really come up, in my experience, with people 20-30 who I know—in fact, nearly everything else comes up, but Barney doesn't.

For whatever reason the canonical "90s kid" nostalgia is for the stuff you watched as a grade schooler, not the stuff you watched as a toddler—lots of Nickelodeon shows, Disney Channel Original Movies, VeggieTales if you were a Christian-book-store type, etc.

Maybe the difference is that kids TV was much more regimented in the 90s? Pre-cable pickings were slim enough that you might plausibly watch toddler shows (though I think Mister Rogers and Sesame Street are generally older-skewing than Barney) into your peak nostalgia-forming years. My experience was of being constantly shepherded from one demographic slice to the next, from Blues Clues or Barney to shows that, implicitly or explicitly, said, "Now I am too cool for Barney and Blues Clues and I am going to watch this cool stuff that is selling me cool toys."

I think you're much more likely to find 20-30-year-olds nostalgic for Mister Rogers or Sesame Street.
posted by Polycarp at 12:53 PM on August 13, 2015

Best answer: I am in the relevant demographic (was a preschooler during Barney's first couple of seasons) and none of my peers have ever expressed any nostalgia for Barney, nor have I seen any signs on the usual suspects for that sort of thing like Tumblr and Buzzfeed.

Speaking for myself at least the shows I feel nostalgic for are those I watched later in childhood (with the exception maybe of Rugrats) which I remember better. I watched Barney, but honestly the only thing I remember is what Barney looked like, and the "I love you" song. Couldn't tell you who any of the characters were or any plots. I think I'd moved on by the time long-term TV memories were forming.
posted by lwb at 1:06 PM on August 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I watched Barney circa age 5, and agree that it just aimed too low to be worth reminiscing about -- young kids liked it, but everyone else loathed it. By age 7 or so me and my friends were all about Power Rangers, and Barney was already the subject of ridicule. Encountering the remnants of anti-Barney humor in our first forays online certainly didn't help.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:16 PM on August 13, 2015

Response by poster: Ohhhhh yeah. I hadn't even considered that Barney's audience would have been too young to form memories. That would explain a lot. (My own memory goes back pretty far.)
posted by Metroid Baby at 1:17 PM on August 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I'm 25, and I don't really have any memories of watching Barney and Friends, but I do have pretty clear memories of being mocked for it. Older kids were pretty brutal about it; I remember a song that started, "Barney's dead! Barney's dead! We blew off his purple head!" There was definitely pressure to be on the Barney hate-train by age 5, and I can't say that inspired much nostalgia.

I think the only piece of Barney and Friends-related nostalgia that I've seen is this meme, which was pretty widely circulated among How I Met Your Mother fans.
posted by lemonadeheretic at 1:28 PM on August 13, 2015

I'm 29, and remember watching it pretty well and always really liked it even though I was a little older than the target audience. I sing the "I love you, you love me" song to my 4 year old now :)
posted by Sara_NOT_Sarah at 1:44 PM on August 13, 2015

I have taught a lot of early 20s college students over the past few years, but none of them have exhibited any Barney nostalgia. Some Arthur, Rugrats, etc...

I have however noticed a lot of them nostalgically obsessed with Hey Arnold! which surprised me (I'm a decade older and watched the show, but never really grabbed onto it).
posted by actionpact at 3:04 PM on August 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm also in my late twenties. I definitely watched Barney with my little sister, and I totally liked it (I remember checking out Barney on VHS from the library/Blockbuster), but it is true that no one ever talks about Barney. Weird. Lots of nostalgia for, as you mention, Sesame Street - also Hey Arnold and Power Rangers, though those are shows for older kids.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 3:39 PM on August 13, 2015

Best answer: Late 20's here. I've watched Barney as a toddler, but have no memories about its premise or its characters other than Barney and that triceratops. I distinctly remember having a Barney backpack in kindergarten, and I definitely know the opening and closing songs.

I'm running with the "too young to remember" notion, but strangely enough, I don't have memories of Sesame Street skits even though I've watched it for sure as a young kid (and tried to dress up as Big Bird once), and I can identify the main characters. (To be fair, my childhood memories are pretty fuzzy.)
posted by curagea at 4:06 PM on August 13, 2015

I don't think I've ever heard twentysomethings bring up Barney. Ever.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:35 PM on August 13, 2015

Late 20s, only context in which Barney comes up for me is the occasional remembrance of the clean up song, which I know I've ended up using with children.
posted by yasaman at 5:59 PM on August 13, 2015

Found it, Wretch729!

"I want to be a computational fluid dynamics engineer..."
posted by betafilter at 7:29 PM on August 13, 2015 [3 favorites]

You know, it occurs to me that I am old enough to be nostalgic for Shining Time Station, but not for those fucking Thomas trains.
posted by maryr at 8:30 PM on August 13, 2015

betafilter I love you forever. Looks like it was a Boeing promo from Bill Nye, not station-specific. Gunna go update the AskMe. Yay!
posted by Wretch729 at 10:15 PM on August 13, 2015

Best answer: From my college-age kid... "It's so covered in jokes now that when I hear "Barney", I don't think about the show, I think of the first joke I can remember about it."

(We were never *really* a Barney-watching home - I hated it with a passion - but the oldest kids watched it some at daycare.)
posted by stormyteal at 10:16 PM on August 13, 2015

Best answer: My younger sister lived Barney and she's personally nostalgic about it (she's 24). We have fond memories of the movie-length tapes we used to watch together, and know all the songs-- but there definitely isn't the same fondness (in terms of group acknowledgment and... hipness) as there is for something like Sesame Street.
posted by easter queen at 10:23 PM on August 13, 2015

I'm 27 and I've never been in a conversation with anyone that involved reminiscing about specific episodes or even segments from Barney (despite still being able to recall a number of them myself). And this is coming from someone who, as a five-year-old, went to a JCPenney in order to stand in a big long line just so I could give "Barney" a hug (while wearing a totally sweet Barney sweatshirt, obviously, which now that I think about it was probably an iron-on decorated with puff paint). It wasn't until probably the first grade that I realized anti-Barney humor existed. And it was really violent! "Barney's dead / Barney's dead / We shot Barney in the head / With a great big punch and a kick from me to you / Won't you say you hate me too?" Also, you can sub the first three lines with: "I hate you / You hate me / Let's hang Barney from a tree." What I do remember is that I never really internalized the anti-Barney messages, and was perfectly happy to go home after school and get my Barney on without a care in the world.
posted by blixapuff at 6:30 AM on August 14, 2015

I lived Barney, but also PBS and OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting). I can definitely remember my childhood neighbors and schoolmates hating on Barney, singing parody barney songs. I think there is a childlike tendency to hate on childlike things (as soon as we see others do it? Or as soon as we see it's intended audience) which is exacerbated by the ultra-colorful and exaggerated nature of the show.
posted by shenkerism at 3:13 PM on August 14, 2015

31. I was technically too old for Barney, but my weird next door neighbor was really into watching him during the first two seasons or so, and I have some pleasant memories of sharing that with her (while eating macaroni elbows with margarine? memory is a strange thing) despite the fact that I knew it was supposed to be "uncool."

The other day I put some on for my daughter, expecting the same, inoffensive blandness. Instead of Barney and Baby Bop it was Barney with a grating non-Barney voice and some other irritatingly-voiced dinosaur. So I guess that I'm, personally, a little bit nostalgic for old Barney. It wasn't good. But it was also not all that bad.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 3:38 PM on August 14, 2015