What the Hell Happened: Barney Gets a New Look

With Mattel’s announcement last month that they’d be relaunching the Barney franchise, everyone’s favorite purple dinosaur made his return, perhaps by unpopular demand. Since the show’s conclusion in 2010, Barney and his colorful friends have been mostly absent from the airwaves, and maybe for a good reason. In the upcoming reboot, Barney sports a shiny, new, 3D-animated look, reminiscent of other modern remakes such as “My Little Pony.” The thought of Barney’s revival has left fans polarized, with some outraged at the destruction of their childhood nostalgia and others excited about Barney’s alleged surgical reconstruction. To quote the lovable fossil, “Everybody grows, and that’s a very good thing we all do!” Maybe it’s time we all outgrew Barney.

The community is not afraid to speak out: One Twitter user assured the dinosaur, “We do not love you. And I desperately hope you do not love me,” calling this Barney redesign a “creature of nightmares.” The new look is unsettling, seeming to be the marriage of a glossy, cold exterior with an already awkward design. “This isn’t the real Barney,” another Twitter user said.

The outrage does not only come from Barney’s apparent buccal fat removal, but his new look makes him feel stripped of all his original character. Part of what fans adored about Barney was his off-putting yet fuzzy exterior. The live-action quality of the show made it not always pleasant to look at, but still made him appear warm and friendly to young audiences. The new style speaks more to a rubber toy than a loving dinosaur.

Still, some fans disagree, loving the new redesign for its modernity and removal of the proverbial roughness around Barney’s edges; his imperfections, for better or for worse, have been erased. One Twitter user claims that “Barney had a glow up.” Another insists that “Nah Barney looks better” with his updated look. For the most part, though, this remains a controversial opinion.

Overall, Barney’s redesign reflects a current trend of remaking and revamping old franchises, as companies like Mattel refuse to let past favorites die. Yet, past success does not indicate future reward. Most — if not all — of these characters’ impacts rely on the time and context of their original release. Such a dramatic redesign nullifies even the potential pull of nostalgia that Mattel is attempting to capitalize on, begging the question, who asked for a Barney remake? Certainly, the ’90s kids who grew up with Barney will not be tuning in or showing it to their children, if the millennial social media reaction is any gauge. Perhaps Barney, like his dinosaur kin, should stay extinct. We all know how Jurassic Park went.

—Staff Writer Aiden J. Bowers can be reached at aiden.bowers@thecrimson.com.