|
Beanie Baby
A Beanie Baby is a stuffed animal filled
with plastic pellets, or "beans," rather than
stuffing (see PVC). A Beanie Baby is thus a form of bean
bag.
The original Beanie Babies were created
by Ty Warner through his company Ty Inc. Ty claimed rightful
ownership of the name and of all of the designs of their
various "beanies." There have been imitations
by other companies that jumped onto the idea of creating
beanbag-like stuffed animals, however, including one imitator
who even produced a tie-dyed bear (reminiscent of Ty's
"Garcia"), as well as parodies such as the "Meanie
Babies".
The official Beanie Babies were mostly
in the shape of animals, such as dogs, cats, pigs, hippos,
and others and were all brightly colored and stylized.
Each Baby came with his or her own name, a birthday date,
and a simple poem describing their personality. For example,
the poem of Bongo the monkey went:
Bongo the monkey lives in a tree
He's the happiest monkey you'll ever see
In his spare time he plays the guitar
One of these days he will be a big star!
This information was all contained on a red, heart-shaped
"book" tag usually affixed to the animal's ear.
As the years went on hundreds of different
Beanie Babies were created, often resorting to more obscure
animals such as aardvarks or chameleons in the process.
One popular "series" within the Beanie Baby
menagerie was the use of teddy bear-shaped Beanies, the
basic pattern of which was repeatedly re-used, but with
different colors and names. The bear model was frequently
used for commemorative purposes, and special bears such
as a Fourth of July model and even a Diana, Princess of
Wales commemorative were created. HI0 Starting in late
1996, a faddish craze of collecting Beanie Babies began.
In a buying frenzy reminiscent of the Cabbage Patch Kid
mania of the early 1980s, several speculators purchased
these collectibles en masse in hopes of making a fortune
years later from being able to sell rare specimens.
Ty fed the frenzy by systematically "retiring"
various designs of Beanie Babies and ceasing their production.
Estimates of the number of each Beanie Baby that would
survive years into the future were much lower than the
reality, however, and much like the Cabbage Patch Kid
phenomenon, so many people had similar plans that very
few people profited from the craze.
Like the Internet stocks of the period, this was a recent
example of an economic bubble.
|
