BJ & the Radical Rumblebutts is a cancelled animated spin-off for Barney & Friends. It would’ve starred the rather unfortunately-named BJ and would’ve presumably made him the leader of the Rumblebutts. No, seriously. His name was “BJ”–luckily for him, everyone on the planet was too busy ruthlessly making fun of his pal Barney to notice him, I guess. Or maybe they just didn’t want to fuck around with a giant dinosaur who was bold enough to wear a baseball cap sideways. Even in the 90s, that was considered hardcore.
Still, he was called “BJ” at the end of the day. I know he must’ve suffered. Perhaps that’s why he was going to seek out comrades with names even more ridiculous than his own, and a team of radical dudes apparently known as the “Rumblebutts” would’ve been a good place to start. I have to assume they had butts of the radical variety. The “logic” behind the series–if we can even call it that–was concern from executives that their target demographic was growing out of Barney too quickly. Once owning a Barney plush toy was viewed by a child’s peers as worthy of ridicule, the market for toy sales began to shrink quickly. The audience for Barney & Friends went from being ages 3-8 on average to 2-4. After you turned 5, you were just too hip for the singing dinosaur who had weirdly human teeth, apparently.
But not too hip for the yellow Bart Simpson one, at least according to marketing research. “Studies”–or more likely just corporate guesswork–found that boys remained attached to BJ even after they “aged out of” his more popular purple costar. So it made perfect sense–and by “perfect sense” I mean “who the fuck would think this was a good idea?”–to give BJ his own spin-off, one aimed at “big kids” and with skateboards and…skateboards. And…also skateboards. Maybe burping. Burping on skateboards. Look, not much is known about this thing, okay? Don’t have a rumblecow, man!
There were scripts written, supposedly. It got along far enough into development for an animation studio to get attached. The problem was finding a distributor, a network interested in broadcasting their goldmine of an idea to the masses. But those snooty, snobbish, soulless executives didn’t know a brilliant pitch when they heard one. All they heard was “Barney the Dinosaur” and “big kids” in the same sentence, and then promptly laughed everyone present out of the room. Also, they probably laughed harder once they heard “BJ” mentioned by name enough times to get why it was funny.
Alas, we may never know what a “Rumblebutt” is, or just how flatulent their title potentially implies they are (“Sheesh! You boys sure know how to put the ‘Rumble’ in Rumblebutt!”). I have, however, lived long enough for my generation to go from hating Barney on a professional level to non-ironically producing YouTube videos celebrating and chronicling his legacy. I never thought I’d see the day. I wish someone could’ve told me this back when I was ten years old and being interrogated by my babysitter over why I went to see Barney’s Great Adventure: The Movie in theaters (true story, by the way).
Have a foolish day, y’all!