Five years ago, Barney the purple dinosaur was a dominant feature on the children's television landscape, as famous as as Big Bird and as popular as the Rugrats.

Preschool children incessantly nagged their Barney-hating parents to buy them sing-along videotapes or tickets to the dinosaur's stage shows. Toy stores overflowed with stuffed animals, miniature playhouses and other merchandise that featured Barney and his prehistoric friends, Baby Bop and B.J.

But in recent years Barney has become an endangered species, eclipsed by the likes of Clifford the Big Red Dog and Dora the Explorer. Barney's new owners plan to change that with an advertising and promotional push aimed at a new generation of 2-year-olds that have never met the garish-colored, joy-spreading T-Rex.

Hit Entertainment of London, which purchased Barney's Lyrick Studios for $275 million last year, will begin broadcasting 20 new "Barney and Friends" episodes on PBS in September, the first new episodes in two and a half years. The programs will be backed by a first-ever television advertising campaign — a $6 million effort that begins Sept. 1 — along with a wave of promotions, a line of 16 new toys (like "Move 'N Groove Dance Mat Barney") from Fisher-Price and a 70-city nationwide stage tour starting in January.

With the marketing assault, Hit Entertainment hopes to restore some if not all of Barney's audience and cash-making powers. At his peak, in the 1996-1997 season, Barney was the No. 1 children's show on PBS with an average of 2.08 million preschool viewers, PBS said. By this April, that number was 1.07 million children, PBS said. Nielsen Ratings said Barney was the No. 6 children's show on PBS in April.

In 1998, Barney brought in $750 million in retail sales of licensed merchandise, but the next year, the last year for which numbers are available, the total had fallen to $550 million, according to License! Magazine, a New York trade magazine. Barney, which started as a character in videotapes 15 years ago, will have to overcome an intimidating set of marketing challenges. There is simply much more to watch than a few years ago, with Nickelodeon, Noggin, Cartoon Network, Toon Disney and numerous other choices for children, not to mention PBS's increased number of shows for preschoolers.

"The competition is fierce and it's reflective of the power youth have on marketing overall," said Jonathan Goldmacher, general manager of Kid Connection in New York, a unit of the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency that specializes in youth marketing.

Barney also needs to improve his image with parents, a problem that became so bad last decade that he was regularly lambasted in the media, and even sparked the creation of Web sites like "The Jihad to Destroy Barney."

"One of the keys to the success of `Sesame Street' is that it could be viewed on a lot of different levels — there's enough in there to entertain parents," said Marty Brochstein, executive editor of The Licensing Letter, a trade publication in New York. "Barney never had that. He was always unabashedly aimed at his target audience, which are not the parents. And at a certain point, the parents just couldn't watch it."

That is why Hit Entertainment's strategy with the advertising campaign is to get across the benefits of Barney to parents. The very things that grate on the adults are what make Barney educational for children. Barney speaks directly to preschoolers through the use of time-tested techniques like a sweet voice and repetition, said Sue Beddingfield, Hit's senior vice president for United States marketing. The show teaches children roughly 1 to 3 years old about things like sharing, responsibility and caring.

Chris Steele, general manager of Adair-Greene in Atlanta, the agency that created the Barney ad campaign, said the problem was that Hit's research showed that while many mothers had heard of Barney, they did not understand his benefits for children.

"Kids loved him no matter what," Mr. Steele said, "but moms needed to understand him better."

The campaign uses an emotional approach to help that understanding. The television spot uses no voiceovers or music, just natural sound, and opens on children banging pots and pans as the line, "This is a symphony" scrolls across the screen. As children scribble on paper, "This is a masterpiece" appears on the screen. The last screen shows children running to hug Barney, and the line that comes on the screen says: "This is a beloved friend."

"We're hoping people will say `Oh my God, I can't believe this is a spot for Barney,' " Mr. Steele said. "We're hoping a tear wells up in the eye."

The commercials will air on adult programs like "Oprah" and its ads will appear in parenting and women's service magazines. Even the decision to make new episodes had the parents in mind, Ms. Beddingfield said. The new episodes feature a new set and the show's fifth cast. "The new set is a park setting that is much more natural and realistic, and I think therefore relevant — not that kids notice the difference, but the moms notice the difference."

Hit's efforts will go a long way towards determining whether Barney will join the ranks of long-lasting children's characters like Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse, or end up in the back bins like so many Alfs and Smurfs. Analysts say Barney is here to stay.

"Barney is the sort of brand that just won't die," said Steven Ekstract, publisher of License! Magazine and the father of three. "Kids love it."

Mr. Siegel said, "Barney has a lot of timeless qualities — a sweetness, naïveté and accessibility to small children that speaks to its longevity."

Barney also has PBS. The network is the premiere vehicle for children's programming, said Mr. Goldmacher, of Saatchi & Saatchi's Kid Connection, and its educational bent extends an unofficial seal of approval to shows. Barney has been on PBS for a decade.

"The good news is Barney finds a new audience — a new crop of 3- and 4-year olds — every three and four years," said John F. Wilson, co-chief programming executive at PBS. "I think everything Barney does shows he is an established show and character."

The Taxonomy of Barney

Evidence of Convergence in Hominid Evolution

by Edward C. Theriot, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Arthur E. Bogan, Freshwater Molluscan Research, Sewell, New Jersey Earle E. Spamer, Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

[This is an abbreviated version of the original article. The full text appears in AIR 1:1, January/February 1995.]

[School groups can hear and see a presentation based on this lecture. To arrange one, please telephone Edward Theriot or Earle Sapamer at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The number is 215-299-1000.]

According to National Geographic, hominids evolved first on the African continent, radiating to occupy the other continents during the past tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Current opinions put forth by anthropologists indicate that several genera and species evolved, of which only Homo exists today. The only evidence on which these suppositions are based are skeletal remains, preserved mostly as fragments. Cladistic studies of the characteristics of the bone fragments have led scientists to derive the evolutionary relationships between these different hominid animals.

However, from field evidence and empirical observations, we have discovered a previously unrecognized form of hominid, alive today, which is presumably globally distributed. It is certainly found in North America, where we first observed it. Its external morphology is completely unlike hominid morphology, for which reason it has been until now overlooked. Its discovery has immediate and far-reaching implications on understanding hominid evolution.

Materials and Methods

In February 1994, we observed on television an animal which was there identified as a dinosaur, Barney. Its behavioral characteristics suggested that it was dissimilar to the diverse dinosaurian faunas that are so well documented. Even accounting for the probability that some dinosaurs were socially closely organized, and that some even may have been warm-blooded, Barney’s animated attitude, communication skills, and worshipful relationship with juvenile specimens of Homo, all pointed to an unrecognized aspect of reptile form and function.

To test the hypothesis that Barney is a reptile descended from the true dinosaurs, we went into the field in order to capture and study a living specimen. This we accomplished with remark-able ease, as Barney was advertised to be appearing at a local shopping mall. In a secure area, we established an observation post, which met the immediate need for controlled docu-mentation of Barney’s external physical characteristics.

Additional instrumentation was required to determine the internal structure of Barney. We elected not to sacrifice the specimen, as we believed that this would have had a negative impact on the associated fauna (the juvenile specimens of Homo). Mostly non-invasive procedures were designed to obtain our data. A wide-field X-ray emitter was built to obtain images of the skeletal structure of Barney. Unexposed X-ray film plates were hung decora-tively on the wall near where Barney was expected to show itself; they were not noticed by any of the human subjects, nor by mall security. The X-ray emitter had only short exposure times, thus we believe that the human subjects in proximity to Barney were in no danger greater than were the residents of Chernoble.

Observations

X-ray photographs of Barney have provided our most astounding observations (Fig. 1). The skeleton is not that of a reptile, but it is clearly hominid both in morphometry and distribution of osteological elements. In fact, it is indistinguishable from the skeleton of Homo. The pelvic structure is mammalian; there are heterodont teeth with a dental formula precisely that of Homo; there are five digits on each of the extremities; and there are no vertebrae beyond the coccyx of the vertebral column, leaving the tail without skeletal support. However, the presence of a coelom, or body cavity, separating the skeleton from the dermal structure, makes Barney very unlike mammals and reptiles.

External morphology

Analysis

The external morphology of Barney belies its mammalian affinity. Evolutionarily this suggests some selective advantage, to have the external form of a dinosaurian reptile and the internal structure and abilities of a hominid mammal. This view is supported by Barney’s observed ecological niche and behavioral characteristics, where it is always in association with juvenile hominids. The association seems to be one of co-dependence, and we present conjecture that Barney has evolved into the niche occupied by juvenile hominids, who by their own nature occupy a very protected part of hominid social structure, thus Barney would effectively ensure its survival by integrating itself into this environment.

This still does not explain the taxonomic relationship of Barney to other vertebrates. To examine this, we compared various physical characters of Barney with the characters of other mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish. We selected characters based on their affinities across the spectrum of vertebrates. We added or discarded characters until we achieved the results we believed, then stopped. Barney was compared to humans, whales, ornithischian and saurischian dinosaurs, and birds. In the cladistic diagrams our outgroups are live and dead salmon. We compared Barney to the outgroups of live and dead salmon. We correctly predicted that Barney was very unlike a live salmon, but we were very surprised to find that the tree comparing Barney to a dead salmon (Fig. 2) was more parsimonious even than the tree which grouped Barney with the dinosaurs.

A dead salmon with hominids

The remarkable similarity of Barney to dead salmon emphasizes the distinctly non-reptilian characters. In each, the dermal covering is fuzz, a coelom is present, and an oral display character is present and independent from the dentition. This last character is of particular note. In Barney, the oral display (see Fig. 1) appears to serve no active function. There is no similar feature among the reptiles. This non-functional display is similar to the terminal sexual display character of the salmon. However, since Barney appears not to be in a reproductive mode, we have compared the oral display to one of territorial demarkation. We have observed similar means of territorial display in hominids (Fig. 3), which again reinforces Barney’s affinity to the Hominidae rather than the Reptilia.

Example of territorial display in hominids.

Implications for Evolution

We have demonstrated that Barney is most similar to humans. Yet it is more like a dead salmon than even the dinosaurs to which group it purports to belong! We interpret this to be a case of convergence in evolution, where the ancestral Barney has evolved to occupy the same ecological niche as that now containing juvenile hominids.

This poses significant questions to the interpretation of the fossil record. Non-skeletal materials are rarely preserved as fossils. It is therefore likely that the only part of the Barney animal to be found as a fossil is its skeleton, and we raise the question of misidentification of fossil remains. The criteria hitherto used to identify the skeletons of early humans and their precursors are non-indicative. If a skeleton of a proto-human cannot be distinguished from that of Barney, there is a likelihood that some of the skeletal specimens of early hominids—"Lucy" for example—may in fact be the skeleton of a Barney ancestor.

Conclusion

Barney is not a dinosaur. It is a hitherto unknown member of the Family Hominidae, which we name Pretendosaurus barneyi (from the Latin, pretendo, meaning "allege, simulate, pretend, or pretender," and saurus, "lizard"). Its fossil record is presently unknown, but we infer from our data that it may extend to the Early Paleolithic Era. A complete reexamination of fossils said to be ancestors of humans is called for. The cultural cliché of coexistence of dinosaurs and humans, so richly represented in film (e.g. King Kong and The Flintstones), similarly may benefit from reexamination in light of the evidence seen in Barney, from which some significant sociological and anthropological conclusions may be derived.

That Barney can be sighted today in numerous places is a sure indication of a widespread occurrence of the Barney animal, perhaps even coextensive with humans. Its certain identification may be complicated by morphological changes during its life cycle. It is possible that the development of the fuzzy epidermis, and the coelom separating it from the skeleton, are characters which form at sexual maturity. The juvenile stage may be exhibited solely by an immature hominid form, which presents very serious questions as to the correct identification of human children.

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