“Barney & Friends” was a mainstay of daytime television in the early 1990s, making a star out of the title character: a purple anthropomorphic T. rex who extolled the virtues of love, kindness and ...

What made Barney, the purple dinosaur and nineties kids’-TV sensation, so infuriatingly loathsome? Was it his doofy voice and inane giggle, coming at you like a low-watt Pillsbury Doughboy? His ...