[anamax]

> I still don't really buy that it was "laborious effort."

Having read accounts of said effort, I wonder what you think qualifies as laborious. They did days of testing with groups of kids.

> And I don't think the song is popular because of some fantastic musical merits.

And no one said that it has fantastic musical merits. Instead, they say that it has fantastic kid music merits.

That's a hard market to crack. Lots of people try to write Barney, but few actually pull it off.

There are lots of songs that could have become the standard. That one did, by design and labor.