At the height of his fame he was everywhere – on the Billboard charts, on merchandise that flew off shelves, on TV screens of practically every home that had a little kid in it. Forbes magazine ranked the oversized purple dinosaur third behind Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey on the world’s list of top-earners in 1993, after he amassed an $84 million (then R252m) fortune for the team that created him. To three-year-olds, Barney was the bomb – but for every adoring toddler belting out I Love You, You Love Me was an adult whose skin was crawling. Barney hatred swept the world and the character with the dopey demeanour, silly giggling and inane exclamations like “super-dee-duper!” was, to some, evil incarnate.

Source: Forbes October 14, 2022 20:37 UTC