0:00

Hi i'm kevin no i'm not kevin what's the line line hi

0:03

i'm jack hi i'm jack and

0:06

i'm kevin this is good company in the car i gotta.

0:09

Music.

0:20

Be honest with you i'm kind of surprised you didn't

0:23

get caught up in this whoa today's today's episode

0:26

that you did not buy into this at all this is

0:29

this wasn't a thing for you oh what did

0:32

you think i was talking about i was like oh what is he talking about

0:35

the oh well because probably because at that point in my life i was i'm doing

0:40

air quotes people an adult and it really didn't i didn't but it was an adult

0:45

phenomenon oh no no i understand that but i wasn't spending time where they

0:51

were sold okay so the only people that i knew that had

0:54

them i knew i knew several people who got

0:57

them as gifts simply because of like i knew a friend who really liked one of

1:03

the appeals was if you were like into soccer you'd get the soccer theme well

1:06

but i was thinking more like sharks like i remember somebody got a shark one

1:09

and there was a guy at work who got a his his nickname was flash and he got the flash.

1:16

Yeah the flash dolphin yeah okay flash

1:19

the dolphin flash of course we're talking about beanie babies people that's

1:22

today's episode and i'd seen um because i

1:25

mean these things come in waves like of course everybody

1:28

talks about the cabbage patch but before the cabbage patch there

1:31

was something it's just that by the 80s things were just nuts

1:34

crazy yeah so trendy super trendy hard to find the power rangers you couldn't

1:40

find a power ranger to save your life that right was there a similar question

1:43

for that and then there was something there for a while zuzu pets and And they

1:47

were like these little robot hamsters that have little motorized rats that went around.

1:54

And they were called Zuzu pets. That's ringing a bell. You could find all of

1:58

the accessories you couldn't find. You couldn't find the actual Zuzus.

2:02

Yeah, yeah. Because there was a guy at work. He's like, if you see them anywhere, buy them.

2:07

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Pokemon and all that stuff.

2:11

We'll talk about Beanie Babies. Because I remember when this happened,

2:15

the secretary at work, she got into it. And i remember and even pam our beloved pam was a

2:19

little bit of a beanie baby this is exactly when you say beanie

2:22

buddies you think of pam no no no no i that's what

2:26

i think of i think of people at work who have a beanie baby or two or like a

2:31

dog or cat or something on their desk with their shit yeah i don't think of

2:35

i don't know anybody who collected collected them she had a collection and i

2:40

remember pinchers the lobster and she was really proud that she got it and she

2:43

had maybe 15 or 20 of them there. And this, this was like at the height of Beanie Mania. So, but,

2:50

Let's just, we'll start. Okay, we're going to start. Beanie Babies were once

2:53

one of the most sought-after toys in the world. They were small, plush toys.

2:58

Most of our listeners are going to know what Beanie Babies are.

3:00

Some of the younger ones might not. But they were small, plush toys.

3:03

They were about five inches across. They were intentionally understuffed, which made them more poseable.

3:09

It seems counterintuitive, but they were floppier.

3:12

They had these soft plastic pellets in them, and they were very poseable.

3:16

And that's the thing, though. It's really funny because nobody ever says this.

3:19

When I remember Beanie Babies at the beginning, that was because they were bean bags.

3:26

Yeah. They were bean bags, but they were shaped in the shape of little animals,

3:31

so they were called Beanie Babies.

3:33

But in none of the stuff that I looked at or the research, did I ever hear Beanie

3:40

Babies being compared to bean bags. Bean bags.

3:42

Because it felt like a bean bag. Okay, go ahead. well the

3:46

trading frenzy for the toys started 1993 was

3:49

the year they were released and within two years

3:53

90 1993 the first nine

3:55

came out and within two years the five dollar beanie babies were selling for

4:00

thousands of dollars now wait just just to clarify this people you could you

4:05

to buy a beanie baby new it was still five dollars started out at five so you

4:11

could go into and not Not all the big stores carried them. Oh,

4:15

we're going to get to that. Okay. We'll talk about it. So only certain stores carried them, but they were only $5.

4:21

And then I think they went up to $5.99. Yeah, but a very accurate or appropriate

4:28

price, a very, very appropriate price.

4:30

So let's go back and learn a little about Ty Warner. He is the creator of the

4:35

Beanie Baby, and it made him a very wealthy man.

4:38

He was born on September 3rd, 1944 in Chicago, and he grew up in LaGrange.

4:43

In a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

4:46

Can you believe it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So his father, Harold,

4:49

was a jeweler and a toy salesman, and his mother, Georgia, was a pianist.

4:53

He has a much younger sister, Joyce, and he was named after a baseball player. Jewish.

4:57

They have to be. They have to be. Right? Yeah, they have to be.

4:59

He was named after a baseball player, Ty Cobb. Aw.

5:02

Warner attended Kalamazoo College, but he dropped out after a year.

5:06

He moved to Los Angeles. He wanted to be an actor originally,

5:09

and he had very little success with that, So he returned to Chicago after five

5:13

years. Because he's kind of plain looking. He's not unattractive. He's not good looking. When you see pictures of him later,

5:18

it's like he's got a lot of plastic surgery.

5:21

He's a very plain looking man. So he began working for the plush toy maker Dakin

5:26

as a salesman, the same company where his father worked.

5:29

He was described by a former co-worker as possessing uncanny instincts as a

5:34

salesman to retail shops, knowing which items would be most successful. Wow.

5:40

In 1980, he was fired by Dakin because he was reportedly selling his own products

5:46

alongside the established ones to established customers.

5:50

So just, I love, this is very funny to me. That means you're an Avon salesperson. Yeah.

5:57

And you're going door to door, Avon calling, but I've got.

6:00

My own perfume line here. Look here, try this that I made for myself.

6:04

That's literally what he did and it got him kind of started and all that.

6:08

So after spending, after he was fired, he went to Italy to visit friends.

6:13

He went to Italy? He was only supposed to be there for a few weeks.

6:16

It ended up being three years. And think about, okay, so think about this.

6:21

I just got fired from my job. I didn't graduate from college.

6:24

I just got fired from my job. And I'm going to go move to Italy and live for three years. I don't know what

6:28

he lived off then. Well, because in my research, he did menial jobs.

6:33

Just did whatever. He had waiter, waitress. He was a janitor,

6:35

mop, waiter, waitress. You know what I mean. Okay.

6:38

Sweeping floors, that kind of stuff. He just, whatever he had to do to make

6:42

a couple of bucks. After three years, he returned to Chicago.

6:45

In 1986. Yeah, I graduated from high school, in case anybody cares to know.

6:49

He mortgaged his home and invested his life savings and a bequest from his father

6:54

into founding Ty Incorporated.

6:57

Warner started out selling these stuffed toy cats, which were inspired by a

7:02

plush toy line he had seen in Italy.

7:05

We looked and we looked. We could not find this cat.

7:08

Coward coward there was some pictures somewhere that i

7:12

saw but those were his a screen grab of

7:14

one but that was the one that he designed there were his cats i could not find

7:17

whatever the cat was that was the inspiration a line of stuffed cats in italy

7:21

and they would look so lifelike but warner wanted to make it so that and they

7:26

were understuffed and that if he walked into the room if somebody thought it

7:29

was a real cat he knew he had done it right he would walk in holding this his cat in his arms.

7:33

And when people thought it was real, then he knew he had done what he had hoped to do.

7:39

So then he began experimenting with smaller stuffed animals with brighter,

7:43

more vibrant colors, I think trying to appeal to younger people.

7:47

And he released his first nine Beanie Babies in 1993.

7:51

This is Lena Trivedi, who played a major role in the Beanie Baby rise and fall.

7:57

She joined the company in 1992. She got shafted by Ty eventually.

8:02

Here she is talking about his creative process. He was sort of trying to contemplate

8:07

in his own design and creative process, you know, should these eyes be green

8:12

or should they be blue? What do you think? So at first there was pushback from sellers. He was taking this to mom and pop

8:18

shops, but they didn't think these $5 toys were going to sell.

8:22

But he thought the appeal would would be that they were so cheap that they would

8:25

be, that would be one of the very reasons they would be popular.

8:29

He didn't want to sell to Toys R Us. He didn't want to go through Kmart.

8:32

He wanted a mystique to it. Do you remember when toy stores weren't all chains?

8:36

Yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah. There would be a toy shop in Easton. That's where you went.

8:40

I remember as a little kid living in Florida in Bellevue that there was a little

8:45

toy shop. That's where I got all my Micronuts. And it was not a chain.

8:49

It was not a chain toy store. There was one in Easton. And I remember the stuffed,

8:54

I'm doing air quotes, the stuffed animal section. And it had like funky animals. Like, you know, parrots and, you know,

9:00

things like that. And that's where Beanie Babies showed up.

9:02

And I remember them, this was before Beanie Babies, but I remember when they

9:07

used to have like these kind of like, not trees.

9:11

I know that I'm using the word tree. Yeah, but a stand.

9:13

But they had a stand and then they would just be stuffed full of these different stuffed animals.

9:17

And he took that and ran with it.

9:21

Years later, once this took off, Toys R Us begged him for Beanie Babies and

9:26

he wouldn't do it. Well, because. Because? The mystique of the mom and pop shop.

9:29

Right. Toys R Us and what was the other big toy store chain?

9:33

Can't remember right now, but they wanted it too. There's another big national

9:36

chain. KB Toys? KB Toys. Yeah. They were offering him millions and he said no.

9:41

He immediately started tweaking the Beanie Babies.

9:44

So if he released, say it was a horse Beanie Baby, he would then modify it.

9:49

He'd make a couple thousand of that one. Then he'd put like a little blaze on their forehead or the next one would have a different color mane.

9:55

But he would make them very small batches that he would

9:57

change them and then he would retire them

10:01

well wait this is where the money

10:04

stuff comes into play the very first

10:08

beanie babies i think the very very first one was a bear of some sort i think

10:12

it was called brownie but that's beside the point the very very very first beanie

10:15

babies those are actually of some value only because Because I'm not,

10:25

I'm not getting too, I'm not getting too deep into it.

10:27

Those are of some value. The exact same way, the very first Barbie doll or the

10:34

very first, whatever, because it was the very first.

10:37

That was the, that is why they became a value as we get into this story.

10:42

So he's, what he's doing is making these things collectible.

10:45

If you've got the, the, we'll get the very first one that he did.

10:49

Did peanuts the elephant came out and it was in a royal deep royal blue color

10:53

he made two thousand of them then he shifted to a lighter blue and then they

10:58

made tens of thousands of them then all of a sudden those dark blue elephants

11:02

are worth thousands and thousands of dollars because they're not available and

11:05

there's only a handful of them that are in the marketplace.

11:08

He's just taken off, and he's over $5,000 now. Isn't that cute?

11:13

Would you rather have a new car or peanut the elephant?

11:17

So, peanuts the elephant went from being $5 to being $5,000 almost overnight

11:23

amongst the collectors. And this, yes, stress that. This is the aftermarket.

11:27

Aftermarket. Ty had no control over the aftermarket. They were being sold in

11:31

the toy stores for $5 apiece.

11:33

And again, back to the way the man's idea, he didn't, something about it didn't

11:38

sit well with him and he kept tweaking and tweaking and changing,

11:40

which is why it went from one color to another.

11:43

Well, yeah. I mean, he knew what he was doing. You know what I mean?

11:45

I think I'm going to say, I'm going to say my little philosophy on this is,

11:50

is that he was in, he was being a perfectionist in his own right.

11:54

And he didn't realize he was making collectibles. And he saw what he did.

11:58

And there it went from there. I don't think he went into the business going, I'm going to make a million dollars

12:02

if I keep keep changing this and changing that. I think he saw the difference.

12:06

Oh, and then he ran with it. Okay. I thought it was a little,

12:09

I'm a little more of a cynic. I thought it was more calculated than that.

12:12

I think he figured it out and was like, Oh, I'm not making any of this.

12:16

I'm not making any money from these aftermarket sales. Right.

12:19

So I've got, if I can create hysteria for the words out there.

12:21

Exactly. That's what I think. That was the tip of the iceberg.

12:24

That was the first beanie baby to show what was to come. So

12:27

the company's financial records have never been made public but

12:30

by 1995 they reportedly made 28

12:33

million in sales and again okay no

12:38

it's fine five dollars a bear right five or a beanie baby right so and at this

12:44

point there were 50 different ones eight million that's a drop in the bucket

12:49

drop in the bucket at five dollars a pop now there were

12:54

other items in the Beanie Baby range. There were some that were slightly bigger.

12:58

They even had, I think there was some accessories. I think they even made clothes

13:02

for them. Did they do that at this point? I think that was later. That was late. They started doing those things.

13:07

This all padded on, this is all icing onto what the stuff was. Yeah.

13:10

They got, they got that once the fad was starting to slow down in a couple of

13:13

years, they started making different sizes to try to revitalize it here.

13:16

We're just still straight up $5 Beanie Baby and there are 50 of them at this point.

13:21

So now it's 1995, and about 14% of American households have access to the intranet.

13:27

Trivedi and her brother were both very interested in it, and she convinced Ty

13:31

Warner that they should use the internet to sell the Beanie Babies,

13:35

and she is credited with developing the first seller-to-consumer website for

13:39

the internet, and it was for the Beanie Babies. So this was a perfect storm of the internet and the Beanie Baby craze coming together.

13:46

It was a perfect storm, and here we go. So by mid-1995, the company warehouse

13:52

in Chicago was shipping out 15,000 orders a day.

13:55

At this point, every six months, Ty would retire Beanie Babies from their lineup.

14:00

Frequently, it might be one of the more poorly selling Beanie Babies,

14:03

and that would drive up demand. So if, you know, Pauly the Polar Bear wasn't doing too well,

14:08

he's going to be retired next month. All of a sudden, he sells. He sells out, right?

14:11

Just to clarify, Kevin is making up the name. Yeah. He has no clue.

14:15

As I noticed earlier, I was like, that's not one of them. One of them. Yeah.

14:18

I should have looked up the name. It doesn't matter. But your point is he was

14:23

doing this to drive it up. Yeah. And conversely, he would take one that was already rare and popular and

14:30

he would retire that as well. And it would create a frenzy for that, which would, again, would get the aftermarket sales going.

14:36

He wouldn't really benefit from it, but it would just keep the Beanie Baby phenomenon of collecting going.

14:41

This is when things really start to take off and you get these pandemonium scenes

14:45

from stores. People are, it was reminiscent of the cabbage patch dolls. Yes, yes.

14:50

Scrambling over each other to get them. So without using big chain stores or

14:55

any advertising, there was a mystique to these babies.

14:58

There are stories of people spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for a

15:02

couple of dozen of the scarce ones. And then the counterfeiting started.

15:07

Right. These are all counterfeit Beanie Babies.

15:11

And some of them are so well-made.

15:15

So the epicenter of Beanie Mania was in the Midwest, primarily Chicago, where Ty Warner is from.

15:20

And those were the stores first got Beanie Babies and Wisconsin.

15:24

So now by 1996, revenue jumped from $25 million in 1995 to $250 million in 1996.

15:33

That is a tenfold increase. increase

15:36

250 million dollars

15:39

in sales in a year and five dollars five dollars

15:42

a pop think about that 250 from

15:47

a five dollar bean bag yep they're very cheap to make cannot stress this enough

15:52

they are extremely cheap i pointed out to you i don't i know i said this to

15:56

you that they kept coming out with different types of bears there was a snow

16:01

bear and a brown bear and a black bear and a peach bear. They used the bear motif a lot.

16:04

It was the exact same pattern. Just different color.

16:08

The only difference was it was a different fabric and different eyes.

16:10

The Princess Dye Bear was that. It's the exact same one. We'll get to the Princess Dye one. Okay.

16:15

So now Trivedi, who was the, she joined in 1992, made so many good moves for Warner.

16:22

She eventually, we don't know the story from the thing we watched,

16:25

but she does not get treated well by him. And she and her brother eventually leave.

16:29

Right. Because they're like, we made you a million there. Yes.

16:32

And they're like, give us at least $200,000 a year and he wouldn't do it.

16:36

It was something perfectly reasonable. I think they've done very well for themselves.

16:38

But she has been in almost, because there's documentaries and podcasts and TV shows.

16:46

She is in all of them because she's willing to talk. Good for her. She is willing to talk.

16:50

Well, she now suggests in 1996 to personalize the beanies to give each one of

16:55

them a poem and Warner was like, you know what? I like it. Give me 86 poems Monday morning. This was Friday night.

17:01

So she and her brother spend the weekend and they do it. If you read the poem

17:06

for Ziggy the Zebra, he's a soccer referee.

17:09

So then if you're trying to buy a gift for someone who plays soccer,

17:13

then all of a sudden this zebra is the thing to get.

17:17

To show you how kind of bad these are, here's the one for Ziggy the Zebra.

17:25

Ziggy likes soccer. He's a referee. free.

17:28

That's the way he watches the games for free. The other beanies don't think it's fair.

17:34

But Ziggy the zebra doesn't care. Right. Instead of having a birth date on the

17:38

poem, he would say the beanie baby was made.

17:40

Well, I think it was just a date. I don't remember.

17:44

But part of the sales tactics at this point was attaching popular things to

17:51

the beanie babies so that that would increase the sale of that beanie baby.

17:56

Using Ziggy as an example, soccer people,

18:01

kids who played soccer, soccer moms, they would buy

18:04

each other these presents these ziggy ziggy the

18:06

zebra because he plays fucker yeah so and

18:09

each one does different sports or each one has a different like or dislike or

18:14

whatever so now we kick it up yet another notch and in 1997 ty warner secures

18:19

a deal with mcdonald's for a hundred million dollars to supply the newly designed

18:24

teeny beanie babies and happy meals i can an extra comment on this.

18:29

Real Thai beanie babies in a mini size to toss, tuck, or just plain love.

18:34

So the supply of beanie babies was supposed to last for five weeks and it lasted one.

18:39

People were going nuts. They were getting in line. You were allowed to buy five

18:43

happy meals for this promotion. Each people would buy the happy meals, pull out the beanie babies,

18:48

get back in line, throw out the food and just get right back in line.

18:51

And then McDonald's got smart and said, well, you don't have to buy a whole Happy Meal.

18:56

The toy is two bucks, or I think it was a dollar and a nine dollar,

18:59

but you have to make a purchase.

19:01

So if you wanted to buy five Beanie Babies, you had to buy five different things.

19:07

So if you buy a Diet Coke and a Beanie Baby. There was the audio of that guy

19:10

saying, and he's like, all right, another fry.

19:12

So this is kind of interesting to me. As you all, good company in the car people

19:17

know, I am a big fan of the McDonald's drive-thru. And I remember going,

19:22

like, I remember the ad saying, you know, Friday, teeny, beanie, beanie, whatever.

19:26

And me going through the drive-thru lane at a McDonald's to just buy my normal drink.

19:34

Diet soda stuff you know whatever yeah exactly and

19:38

i said oh i said something about the beanie

19:40

babies and i can remember to this day the woman they're

19:43

all gone oh she's over it she

19:46

was over there and this was the first day so

19:51

now i know this is mentioned in one of the other

19:54

documentaries that i saw but the the the

19:57

the die hard crazy people who were obsessed with

20:00

this would literally literally stock the store stock

20:03

s-t-a-l-k right the stores so they

20:07

knew they knew that the store on first street was

20:10

out so they'd go to the store on main street and

20:13

if they would till they run out and then they would go to the store on pine street

20:16

and these people would just go from store to store they would call

20:18

and they would make a relationship with the store owner when is yourself bribing people

20:22

they would bribe them yeah and and people were investing in

20:25

these things it's like this is my students my son's college education

20:28

because of the aftermarket prices so

20:31

we get to it aftermarket is that the right aftermarket yes

20:34

secondary market secondary i like secondary better but

20:37

yeah okay it was estimated at this time that one in every

20:40

three homes in america had a teeny beanie baby in

20:42

it so at this point the parents had actually taken over the collection beanie

20:46

babies and teeny beanie babies weren't for kids anymore and the.

20:49

Collectors were hoarding them and who were the collectors a

20:52

lot of housewives they were housewives mostly housewives

20:56

yeah there is a documentary about a father-daughter duo a father father-daughter

21:03

duo who have a beanie baby beanie ma you say beanie baby enough times it's gonna

21:08

get screwed up beanie baby collection that they have that the man oh the people in north carolina.

21:14

Yeah, they're in North Carolina. Yeah, and he says they have $152,000 invested

21:19

just in the Beanie Babies. That does not include shipping costs or any of that other kind of stuff.

21:25

They bought these in the early 2000s after the bubble. They didn't buy these at premium.

21:29

They have every Beanie Baby ever made. Correct, because they were Beanie Baby

21:32

fans, and they weren't doing it for trying to make money.

21:36

Speculating. They literally like the Beanie Babies.

21:39

So now we have eBay, and the internet is growing like crazy,

21:43

And we have Beanie Baby listings that range from $5 to $12,000.

21:49

And I think they even went higher than that eventually.

21:51

When it was announced that Kiwi the Toucan was going to be retired,

21:55

it increased site traffic on eBay by 3,500% in May 1997.

22:02

I missed that statistic. Yeah.

22:05

That year, there was $500 million worth of Beanie Babies sold on eBay.

22:09

Bay and these dum-dums the these

22:12

people who would buy the aftermarket beanie

22:16

babies and they would again i know

22:19

i've said it the beanie babies are five dollars a piece yeah one of these things

22:23

about these people who were doing this nobody was selling them everybody was

22:27

hoarding them and there were some people who were smart enough like get out

22:30

while the getting is good but there is so many people didn't and that's what

22:33

was creating this phenomenon at this point we meet Janine.

22:36

She's from Newark, Delaware, and she has written a song called Beanie Rap.

22:40

And we get this little clip of her. She's playing her song. She's reading the

22:45

lyrics because they've been reprinted in a crossword puzzle magazine.

22:48

She's playing her original recording. She's singing over on top of it.

22:52

She's not even keeping up with herself. She's lip syncing to her own song.

22:56

She's talking about how the words just flowed from her fingers.

23:01

She's a heavier, older woman, and she's next to her figurine collection.

23:06

And, well, here she is. I wrote a song.

23:09

It's a Beanie Rap. And the words just flowed through my fingers as I typed them into a computer.

23:16

Um, people have told me it's catchy. Oh, yeah. Let me tell you a story about a tiny tie. Since I created these bees that make me hot.

23:27

Little beans in their bodies and cute little faces.

23:29

And you get to dance. You go to all kinds of places.

23:32

Muggling bees upstairs. It's no lie. And it all ain't a call on a guy named Ties.

23:37

Beanie wrap. It's a beanie wrap.

23:41

It's a beanie wrap. I'm all tied up.

23:45

One of the great lyricists of our time. Well, you know, and I don't,

23:49

it probably didn't make her any money.

23:51

No, it didn't. At the time, it gave her a little bit of weird fame.

23:54

And, you know, because I know that there's, if you go Beanie Rap,

23:59

if you look that up, there's stuff. There's lots of postings and stuff about that.

24:03

Ty Warner had absolutely no control over the secondary market.

24:06

And that's where the gatekeepers of the Beanie Baby world come in and start

24:10

dictating what Beanie Babies are worth based solely on their own opinion,

24:15

not the real market value. Say that again.

24:19

They're just telling you how much it's worth. So these people are writing price

24:23

guide books and there's absolutely nothing to gauge these prices on other than, oh, we're going to 300.

24:33

I will tell you how much it's worth. Yeah, exactly. So at this point,

24:36

Beanie Babies have accounted for more than 6% of the total sales on eBay.

24:40

This is a little exploitative. In October of 1997, they released a Beanie Baby.

24:46

It was a bear with a rose on it. Purple.

24:48

Purple bear because it's royal, commemorating the death of Princess Di.

24:52

And it was a limited edition release and shop owners could only get 12 a piece.

24:58

And mayhem ensued. They were easily selling for $2,000 almost immediately.

25:04

So now collector fairs are springing up all over the country and the media hype

25:08

around these helped Beanie Baby collectors start publishing Beanie Baby catalogs. Media hype.

25:15

Just lent more credibility to the value guides. And guess who was putting on all the value guides?

25:20

People that were selling Beanie Babies for the most part. So this is where they

25:24

would say, it's worth this much now. It'll be worth that much a year from now. And a lot of them were like,

25:29

in 2009, this Beanie Baby is going to be worth $30,000.

25:33

Said Beanie Baby is worth $4. These people, if that didn't come out clear. So these people are writing these

25:40

books saying this is how much these bears are going to cost.

25:42

And they have it in accumulated states.

25:45

Stats so that you this one's

25:48

worth 200 now but in 10 years it

25:51

will be worth and it was the way they said it so matter-of-factly and

25:54

they had nothing to base this on it's like it's some value it's a it's a bean

25:58

yeah well they had no authority to do this they were just saying this is what

26:03

we we're telling you how much it's worth somebody bought into it people bought

26:06

into it and they were telling him hold on to these things because 10 years from

26:10

now and anybody who knows anything

26:12

about market economics and they're not there's

26:15

no way these things are ubiquitous it's the only well the

26:18

only thing is is it's it's creating that buzz or

26:21

creating that yeah what is it called when that when you force the market uh

26:25

hype no no no there was a thing place that you would go to buy video games and

26:30

you could take them back and turn them back in and the people bought their own

26:34

stock and they inflate oh oh that that oh that gear no that's not it game Game... GameStop.

26:40

GameStop. GameStop. GameStop ended up creating this rush on their stuff,

26:45

and they ended up making a lot of money. I think they got in a lot of trouble for it. They did. They did.

26:48

And then the stock was worth, at one point, like 30 times what it was normally

26:51

worth. Then it crashed again, but people took the money and ran.

26:54

Well, I mean, that's how come the stock market just scares the living shit out of me.

26:58

But this is one of those things where people were inflating the price of these

27:01

items to the point that people thought, I've got...

27:06

$200,000 worth of bean bags. And I'm not selling them for anything.

27:09

And I'm not selling them. And one woman said, I was offered $100,000.

27:12

And I said, no, there are people to this day who still have tens of thousands

27:16

of credit card debt because of this Beanie Baby thing. That woman,

27:19

that woman, that's so funny that you brought that up. I don't know the woman's

27:23

name. I would love to give her credit. I don't know the woman's name. In another documentary on the Beanie Baby madness

27:29

or whatever it's called, there's this woman sitting in her plush home and she's

27:33

like, I was offered $100,000 and I turned Turned it down.

27:37

She is in a couple of other documentaries.

27:40

And I am like, she's getting off on the publicity at this point.

27:45

But there is, because after this, I made a joke at Kevin. I'm like,

27:50

there isn't anything in this house I couldn't put a price on.

27:53

And he goes, oh, what about the dog? And I was like, I don't know.

27:57

Give me enough money. I'd sell you my dog. I said, you'd sell the puss for 20,000.

28:02

You got mad at me. No, I said.

28:05

What must you think of me? What must you think of me? I said, 20 million?

28:10

There's a woman who is continuing to this day to value Beanie Babies. She'll do it at $25 a pop.

28:15

Right. She's made like $10 million over her career doing this. Well.

28:18

So now it's 1998, and we have migrated to the sports world, particularly,

28:23

specifically, baseball games.

28:26

Collectors were lured by the promise of giveaways. Nearly 20 of the 30 Major

28:30

League Baseball franchises participated in Beanie Mania and they were giving

28:36

them away at games and it's in full swing. In 1998, Ty Warner Incorporated generated $1.4 billion in revenue.

28:45

That year, they produced a Beanie Baby that was only for Ty Warner employees

28:48

that had a dollar sign on its chest that signified the first year of a billion plus in sales.

28:54

Sadly, it would be the only year of a billion plus in sales.

28:58

Yeah, but after that, I mean, you know.

29:01

So now it's estimated that at least 64% of all Americans owned at least one

29:06

Beanie Baby. I was part of the 36% that didn't. Okay, now this is horrible.

29:12

Well, it's not horrible. It's kind of funny. You know I have a lot,

29:14

as we look in the room, I have a lot of shit in my house.

29:17

I got all kinds of weird. Do you have a Beanie Baby?

29:20

I'm thinking really hard. I don't think I do. I told you, I remember them being in the office.

29:26

And I think at one point I was in a store and bought one for somebody. But it was fine. Right.

29:33

Because I think it was a camel. Yeah. But anyway, that's beside the point.

29:37

Because I actually came and looked. Did you?

29:39

But I know in the past that in one of my purges, I've been like,

29:43

oh, I don't want this, and I want this, and I don't want this. Yeah, you might have thrown it out. Right.

29:45

And you still see them in, you'll see them in thrift stores.

29:49

You'll see them in the clear plastic boxes. That one guy said things we do not buy.

29:55

Beanie Babies is at the top of the list. That was recently. Yes.

29:58

So Beanie Babies are so valuable at this point, seemingly valuable,

30:02

that there's a couple in Las Vegas who had a divorce, and there's a very famous

30:05

photo of them splitting up their Beanie Baby collection.

30:08

They're on the floor in the courtroom and they're pulling them apart and there's

30:12

150 Beanie Babies on the floor.

30:14

Well, at the time, I'm not giving them an out, but at the time,

30:19

that Beanie Baby collection. Collection had a value of like a hundred thousand

30:25

dollars one hundred fifty thousand dollars or that was the whatever yeah

30:28

so that is why it turned into this horrible

30:31

court it's ridiculous the photo of them it's just absurd for all eternity i

30:35

don't know their names that nobody it's that's not but it's so funny though

30:39

to think that for all eternity those people are going to be known as that's

30:42

what they're known as that couple yeah that couple that year ty warner made

30:46

the forbes billionaires list with an estimated fortune of $5 billion.

30:50

But the writing was on the wall, and the hype driving the Beanie Baby craze was reaching a peak.

30:55

This is antiques collectible expert Harry Rinker.

30:58

He went on to be known as the Beanie Meanie because he was one of the first

31:02

people to point out the unsustainability of this craze.

31:06

And this is what he said, what Ty Warner counted on was people wouldn't buy just one.

31:10

They would buy as many as they could get, any one of them and hoard them.

31:14

But after three years or four years, people got tired of hoarding them and they

31:18

started dumping them on the secondary market.

31:21

That prompted the secondary market to start to collapse.

31:24

So even at the height of the Beanie Baby bubble, Rinker warned against investing in the toys.

31:29

His vocal pessimism gave him the nickname Beanie Meanie, but his caution applies to all collectibles.

31:35

He said, I always looked for economic trends that applied to my And one of them

31:41

was that you can't make money out of nothing. So Rinker said.

31:54

He continues. Increase so rather than focusing on a collectible object's

32:13

monetary value rinker advocates focusing on

32:16

the memories and emotional value that the object holds

32:19

a true collector he dies with his stuff rinker said it's never about the money

32:25

so all of these speculators and they went on to call them beanie gamblers they

32:29

were called beanie gamblers all these speculators weren't true collectors they

32:32

were in for a fast buck now that woman who turned down the hundred thousand dollars,

32:37

she's a true collector she's a true collector she's a true collector I no I

32:40

think she says she didn't she was thought I think she thought she was gonna get more,

32:45

than $100,000. That's how I took it. See, I was trying to say something nice

32:48

about it. No, I think she was like, can you believe it? I turned him down.

32:51

I think that was still when prices were still going up.

32:55

So now it's 1999 and Ty is going to try his biggest gamble yet.

33:00

He has announced that at the end of 1999, all Beanie Babies would be halted from production.

33:05

He makes this announcement. The internet loses their shit. So then,

33:09

being who he is, he gets a 1-900 number and you can spend 50 cents to call and

33:15

put in a vote saying whether you want the Beanie Babies. Eat the Baby Babies.

33:18

So you have to pay. He made something like $50 million off of that phone line.

33:22

And actually, that announcement that he was going to stop making them kind of

33:28

started the major tide against him.

33:31

Right. They were seeing how manipulative it was. They were finally seeing this manipulation.

33:35

Now, just to point out, there is a documentary out there called Bankrupt for Beanies.

33:40

And it is about a man who did who speculated

33:44

on beanie babies and the story of how

33:47

he had to get his he got his family involved in this

33:49

so this guy had five kids and he

33:53

thought he could use beanie babies as

33:56

an investment to put his five children through

33:59

college and he was really methodical about it yes and he

34:02

was having his kids get in line pretending they didn't

34:05

know owe each other right because in his mind this was

34:08

a no you couldn't fail safe yeah fail

34:11

safe there you go yeah i'm losing my words anyway so

34:14

he is now hoping you know

34:17

he's divorced the kids are all like yeah the baby's

34:21

dad you know they're all kind of embarrassed about it they're a little embarrassed about

34:23

but then again it's like well you know i've heard of more stupid

34:27

get rich quick schemes so but

34:30

this but his story isn't isn't on its own kevin

34:34

said earlier like there are people who are still trying to pay off

34:36

credit card debt because of this 25 years later yeah 25 years later so 25 years

34:42

they're still paying credit card yeah damn yeah you know the there this was

34:45

uh this was beyond the the logic or it was just this wave of hysterical like

34:53

hysteria just you've heard about What about the tulip there?

34:56

There was the tulip, the tulip craze. It was in Amsterdam in the 1600s,

35:00

1630s. And tulip bulbs were all the craze. And they were selling for a thousand

35:06

times what they were worth. It was a beanie baby craze similar to, hold on.

35:10

Okay. Tulip mania occurred during the early to mid 1600s in Holland when tulip

35:16

bulbs were very fashionable and they were known to be kind of fragile and speculation.

35:21

If you were wealthy at all, you had to have the next one that came out and it drove it up.

35:25

And it was like the price of tulip bulbs was thousands of times what it was.

35:30

And the market crashed spectacularly overnight.

35:32

And a bunch of people were left with tulip bulbs that were worthless.

35:36

And it's the same thing that happened with beanie babies right now then

35:39

of course the beanie baby craze kind of

35:42

came to an end so to speak and one of

35:44

the next ones that came through were furbies okay yes

35:47

by the early 2000s beanie baby thing was dying

35:50

out they were everywhere and younger kids were now getting into furbies and

35:53

pokemon kids kids at this point kids had almost stopped like it was all adults

35:57

sales declined rapidly in the early 2000s by 90 and by 2004 ty warner claimed

36:04

losses of 39 million for the first time in nine years.

36:08

But don't feel sorry for old Todd.

36:11

No, he's worth $5 billion still. He moved on to hotels, and I believe he owns

36:16

a lot of Four Seasons, and there's a couple other high-end hotels,

36:21

and he owns numerous ones of them.

36:23

He is a hotel mogul at this point.

36:26

So now there are collectors all over the country in the early 2000s with collections

36:30

that are worth a fraction of what they paid for.

36:32

We coined a new phrase, is the rise and fall of the Beanie Gamblers because

36:37

the speculative craze just bottomed out and crashed.

36:42

So that's a perfect name for them. They were the Beanie Gamblers.

36:46

Some of them won. Most of them were left high and dry.

36:49

And by 2009, Ty Warner tried introducing the Beanie Boos, which are slightly

36:55

reimagined Beanie Babies with larger eyes, but he couldn't capture fighting in a bottle twice.

37:00

They are cute. cute i mean but but see i'm looking

37:03

at it in terms of it's a little stuffed animal it's cute

37:06

there are little girls or little kids who are going to

37:09

be like oh that's so cute i gotta have mania the beanie mania would

37:11

never be repeated but anyway the furby mania now when the furby mania hit i

37:18

went down with that shit oh you did oh good lord yes i think at one point the

37:25

grand The grand total of Furby's total is easily 10 or 11. You went 10?

37:31

Not, well, yes, but mom got one new, but I kept picking them up.

37:37

People get sick and bored with them and almost immediately they

37:40

were in thrift stores what does a furby do it the first

37:44

furbies were these little robots about the size of an

37:46

ostrich egg and they talked a weird language and

37:49

the concept was that if you gave it enough attention and you played with it

37:54

enough it would learn english and that it could talk in a very simple manner

37:59

i remember reading about did you know what do you know how they learn did you

38:02

learn it's staged computer yeah yeah it was just as the longer it was turned

38:05

on the words would activate So I would literally carry,

38:09

I had one that I kind of carried, not carry around,

38:11

but I had, and every time I got the chance, I played with it and I just stick

38:14

my finger in its mouth to feed it. And it'd be like, oh, stop.

38:19

Did you know about the trickery with the time? Did you know that?

38:24

If I could have got a Furby that was a little more exciting than they are,

38:27

I would have continued playing with him. I would lose patience because I wanted the Furby to do more and I didn't have

38:33

the time. Like, okay, fine. Yeah. Yeah. So several different ones, and then there was a new Furby.

38:40

Again, the Furby craze. There was a Furby craze, and then they had a new Furby

38:44

out about, I'd say five, ten. You know what?

38:47

We should just do a Furby episode because you have first-hand account with it.

38:50

No, no, no, because it's not nearly as deep. Oh, it's not as crazy?

38:54

I just mean like people standing in lines, blah, blah, blah.

38:58

Yeah, I kind of remember that. It's just like that kind of thing. The Beanie Baby thing is kind of unique in the history of movies.

39:03

Mania collections correct now what little

39:06

uh research i did so one of

39:08

the one of the side effects of the beanie babe

39:12

beanie baby mania is that it all it

39:14

started a lot of crime so there is

39:17

actually a police report on record i believe in

39:21

new york city that says i had

39:24

one customer told me her car was broken into because she

39:26

had a retired beanie baby sitting on the dashboard the thieves

39:29

didn't touch the radio yeah so that's pretty funny several

39:32

stories are being told will be told

39:35

in any of these documentaries or any of the things you see where children

39:39

are in line to buy baby babies because they want a beanie baby right and because

39:43

the new ones would come out and there are stories and old ladies women would

39:49

walk out with handfuls of them and a child would leave the shop empty-handed

39:53

crying because someone else's grandma carried home a bag bulging with the

39:58

latest me a lot of these shops put put limits

40:01

you can only buy two or three you can only buy and i

40:04

think the normal number was five because it got to a higher number yeah

40:07

like certain ones like he was talking about the princess die when only 12 would

40:11

go to a retailer so they there are people now who still maintain that that princess

40:17

die beanie baby is worth five eight ten thousand dollars no one's they could

40:22

say it's worth that much but no one's buying them but yeah there's a.

40:25

Ton of them on eBay, they still want thousands for them and nobody's buying them. Exactly.

40:28

Like I was saying earlier at the very beginning, the only ones that are really

40:32

worth any true money are the very, very first ones. The very first nine that came out.

40:35

And even those, it's what you can get for them. Yeah.

40:39

The average price for a Princess Di Beanie Baby ranges on eBay somewhere between

40:45

$12,000 and a couple hundred dollars, but...

40:48

No sales of that height. None of them were sold.

40:52

None of them were selling. You can pick one up for probably about $10 at a shop, like a fancier shop.

40:59

But you could see them in thrift stores for a buck or two. Yeah,

41:01

and that one thrift store said, the one guy at the collectible store,

41:04

he's like, we won't even buy them. Right. It's like, yeah, they're like records, old LP collections, worthless.

41:10

The Canadian border had a problem with, when you think about the Canadian border

41:15

and you you think about drugs, that's an easier border to get through with drugs.

41:18

But actually, the Beanie Babies were going through the Canadian border using

41:23

the same tactic as drug smugglers.

41:27

They had to have ways to try to determine.

41:30

People were smuggling Beanie Babies in similar places where they hid drugs,

41:33

such as hidden compartments and the spare tire holders. Death by Beanie.

41:37

So there are at least two deaths directly attributed to Beanie Babies.

41:43

One is a security guard there's a little the story's a

41:46

little murky but the security guard got shot

41:49

but he knew the guy there was some money involved something something

41:52

but it had something to do with beanie babies they wanted the beanie babies

41:55

so that makes sense we're talking billions of dollars right and another one

41:59

was somebody trying to break into a store to steal them and they got and they

42:03

got killed the numerous records of boxes of beanie babies absconding from the

42:10

store right And no one would know what happened to them. Of course.

42:12

Ty Warner had to change the boxes so that the delivery people would not get attacked.

42:17

Right. Because if they, you know, the boxes used to have the big T-Y on the

42:21

side, a little heart. Yeah. And they had to change the boxes.

42:24

Plain packaging so you wouldn't know what it was. P.S. The delivery guys were

42:27

getting attacked in the mall. How about that truck that turned over on the interstate? That's the one that

42:32

totally cracks me up. These were the mini beanie baby.

42:37

Teeny beanies. Baby beanie. Whatever. Teeny beanies. Get it straight.

42:40

So, in Atlanta, a tractor trailer carrying them, a box flipped or fell out of

42:49

the back of the tractor trailer, and there were many Beanie Babies all over the highway in Atlanta,

42:55

which caused a major backup because people were stopping their cars,

42:59

getting out of their cars on the highway to pick up these Beanie Babies off the road.

43:07

Boat i there i would do that for a

43:10

live animal yeah i cannot imagine i i

43:13

could i suppose if i saw something that i

43:16

thought looked cool i would i don't know that i

43:18

could not imagine getting out of my car on

43:22

95 to try to pick up a toy at this point even the children are like my mom's

43:26

acting like an idiot i you know she wanted me to go out there and i'm like i'm

43:29

not doing it mom i'm not there's that one when interview the kid he's like i

43:33

wasn't gonna do my mom was like go get some So I grabbed one that was right

43:36

near the car. She's like, that's all you got? So...

43:39

So there was a beanie forger as we

43:43

talked earlier each of the beanie babies had specific

43:46

details about it that made each one even even

43:49

the same like you know how they have multiple printings of a book these toys

43:54

were being remade and reproduced and whatever well as we were talking about

43:57

earlier the clown or not i'm so sorry not the clown the elephant peanuts we

44:03

originally came Came out in a dark blue and it was later replaced with a softer color blue.

44:08

People bought the softer color blue and dyed them so they could resell them

44:16

for the higher price of being one of the original ones.

44:19

There was a woman named Lou, Lou Vaina, who is, she sent, she had a peanut beanie

44:25

baby that something, for some reason she needed it fixed.

44:29

And there was a beanie repair shop in Warrington, Virginia, a self-described beanie doctor.

44:36

It makes me, it's just so ridiculous. It's a beanbag.

44:41

Anyway, she examined it suspiciously with the crusty coat of polyester plush

44:46

and realized something was seriously wrong. The blue dye came right off, recalls Verna, who discovered that the toy was

44:54

a much less valuable light blue peanut dipped in dark blue dye.

44:59

I felt terrible telling that collector that she got a rotten peanut.

45:04

Oh, it kills me. But, you know, that's so funny that this is when bad people come out.

45:10

They're going to screw you because they think you're going to spend this much

45:13

money and they're going to screw you over. Okay, so it's really funny. Kevin, actually, this was a subject matter that

45:18

Kevin has been discussing for a couple of years. I mean, it kept coming up.

45:24

We never got around to it. Yeah, Beanie Mania came out. It was a movie last

45:28

year. It's on Amazon or whatever. You still have to pay for it, but it's really good. But there is a movie coming

45:33

out called The Beanie Bubble Movie, and it stars Zach Galifianakis as Ty Warner

45:39

and Elizabeth Banks as, I don't know the woman's name.

45:42

There were a couple of different women in Ty's life, which Ty did not treat very well, by the way.

45:47

No, but it's the woman we mentioned earlier. Yes. So it's very interesting that

45:52

Kevin was like, you know, we still haven't done the one on the peony babies.

45:55

And I was like, now's the perfect time to do it. So if you have beady babies

45:59

and you love them, good for you. Hopefully you didn't pay a shit ton of money for them because they're not worth anything.

46:04

They're not. They're not. No, they're not. But you know, it's speculation.

46:08

As I look around my room, Phil, there's vintage Play-Doh pumper number nine.

46:15

I wonder, is there any chance at all that there's a peanut original edition sky blue?

46:20

I say there might be. Let's go look. Thanks for listening.

46:25

Music.