Beanie Babies – A Piece of History

One could say the story of the Beanie Babies begins seven years before the first beanies,  even see the light of day. In 1986 the company Ty Inc is established in Illinois in the USA. The founder is a man named Ty Warner and one can believe he was a man on a mission. The story has it that the beanie baby father was already a high powered toy sales man after working for another toy company, Dakin, for several years.

The Ty Inc company releases a few different collections before the beanie babies enter the scene in the year of 1993. Nothing would be the same again for the marketing genius of Ty Warner. The legend speaks of the Original Nine, a famous group of beanies that are forever enshrined in the history of toys and collectibles. They were Legs the Frog, Flash the Dolphin, Patti the Platypus, Spot the Dog, Patti the Platypus, Chocolate the Moose, Pinchers the Lobster, Splash the Whale and Cubbie the Bear (originally named Brownie the Bear). They are all first shown to the world at the New York Toy Fair of that year.

In the following two years the Beanie Babies go from a local Chicago thing to being a nationwide talk of the town. Ty continues his strategy of selling only directly to small gift and collectible stores. This is later seen as an important part of create the enormous myth around these lovely little creatures. So called experts expect forecast that the Christmas of 1995 will be beginning of the end for the Beanie Babies, but the following year proves the utterly wrong and nothing could be further from the truth.

In the year of 1996 sales grow tenfold! Stores are screaming for more beanie babies and Ty is working hard to keep up with the demand. The legend has it that he even has to lease large airplanes to get all the beanies out to the stores in time for the Easter rush. Ty continues to tightly control the whole business and the website ty.com is launched creating a place in cyberspace where Beanie Baby trades can take place. Here also for the first time one can actually follow the retiring of the different characters, another part that contributes to the big craze around these toys.

The rest as they say, is history. Sales surpass 250 million dollars in 1996, Ty is interviewed in People Magazine and Forbes Magazine. Beanies Babies become one of the the largest crazes in toy history and with the step from just mouth-to-mouth into traditional advertising in 1996 they become unstoppable across the globe.