Beanie Babies: the Sensation that Swept the Nation
Stuffed animals have always been popular toys, but one in particular came to define the 1990s: Beanie Babies. During the later half of the decade, Beanie Baby collecting became an obsession, and individual toys could sell for hundreds of dollars. Ty Inc., the company behind the toy, encouraged the fad by releasing only small batches of each new design, so that people would rush to buy any new design as soon as possible. In 1999, the company announced that they would stop making Beanie Babies entirely and the bubble burst, leaving collections suddenly worthless.
The first line of Beanie Babies came out in 1993. Initially, the toys were unsuccessful. Beanie Babies were deliberately understuffed, making them floppy and easy to pose. Ty Inc. did this to make the toys look more realistic, but to many people it just made them look cheap. By early 1995, the toys were so unsuccessful that some toy stores refused to carry them at all! That would change dramatically by the end of that year.
The earliest Beanie Baby collectors were a group of four women in Chicago who wanted to accumulate a complete set. In the middle of 1995, Ty Inc. decided to change the color of a newly released Beanie Baby, Peanut the Elephant, going from royal blue to baby blue. The women were determined to collect both versions. However, the original Peanut had only been out for a few months, and Beanie Babies were so unpopular that only a few thousand had been shipped to stores. Those stores suddenly began getting phone calls asking if they carried the original Peanut. From there, other people saw the struggle to get hold of Peanut, assumed that the toys were valuable because people were spending so much effort trying to find them, and began collecting themselves. By the end of the year, the craze was in full swing.
Ty Warner, the CEO of Ty Inc., encouraged the fad. He continued to release small batches of the toys, even after toy companies came to his door begging for larger shipments. He also made sure that not all Beanie Babies were equally rare. Some designs became common, and he released them regularly, while other designs were limited edition and some were nearly impossible to find. Rare Beanie Babies were valued at hundreds of dollars on the second-hand market, although the price in stores stayed the same.
Like in most fads, most of the people who invested in Beanie Babies did not get rich doing so. But in the midst of it all, the possibilities seemed endless. Stories circulated of people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the toys, assuming that they would only get more valuable. A divorcing couple in Las Vegas made headlines with a picture of them on the courtroom floor dividing up their Beanie Baby collection. Seemingly everyone knew someone who was collecting, even if they weren't doing so themselves. In 1997 at the height of the craze, it seemed like the future was made of Beanie Babies.
Of course, the bubble did burst. In 1999, Ty Inc. announced that they would stop making Beanie Babies completely. There would be no more new models to collect. The announcement spelled the end of the craze. With no more new designs coming out, serious collectors turned their attention to other things and within months the value of Beanie Babies had plummeted, leaving many people out a few hundred dollars and a few completely bankrupt. When Ty Inc. re-started the Beanie Babies line a few months into 2000 due to customer demand, the toys sold well, but they did not revive the craze. The Beanie Baby moment was over.