Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Beanie Babies: Reigning Toy Craze Champion

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SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Beanie Babies: Reigning Toy Craze Champion · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Hello again, guys. Up next on our playlist is our
0:03
Speaker 1: episode on beanie Babies. They may have actually upstaged Cabbage
0:07
Speaker 1: Patch Kids because of the craze for beanie babies stretched
0:11
Speaker 1: way beyond Christmas. There was a divorce case that saw
0:14
Speaker 1: the couple having to divide up their beanie babies on
0:17
Speaker 1: the floor of the courtroom. We talk about that. Don't
0:19
Speaker 1: worry anyway, Enjoy this episode on beanie Babies.
0:27
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:37
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
0:39
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're feeling fairly festive.
0:44
Speaker 1: And this is stuff you should know. That's right the
0:48
Speaker 1: episode before the Christmas episode.
0:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is become a I guess tradition to do
0:57
Speaker 2: a classic toy.
0:58
Speaker 1: When do we start that, I'd say more custom than tradition.
1:02
Speaker 1: All right, I'm sorry, Christmas, I'm feeling contrary. It is
1:08
Speaker 1: definitely a tradition.
1:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's because you're about to shut it down for
1:11
Speaker 2: a month, so you don't care you're burning bridges exactly.
1:15
Speaker 1: I won't see you until like twenty twenty four.
1:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, like chuckle, forget anything that happens today.
1:20
Speaker 1: By then, I'm trying to think of what our first
1:23
Speaker 1: toy one was. It was a handful of years ago.
1:26
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but it was slinky maybe no, No,
1:30
Speaker 1: I mean we've done toy ones, just not around Christmas.
1:32
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of the first toy Christmas E one.
1:36
Speaker 1: I can't. I'm drawing a blank right now. So this
1:38
Speaker 1: is like high quality podcasting we're doing right now.
1:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, good pick this year.
1:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks. I don't know what made me think of
1:47
Speaker 1: beanie babies, but I did, and I think it turned
1:50
Speaker 1: out to be a good one too, because it had
1:52
Speaker 1: nothing to do with Christmas. Really, yeah, Christmas pops up
1:56
Speaker 1: at one part. But it's a toy and it's a
2:00
Speaker 1: really interesting toy because beanie babies, for those of you
2:03
Speaker 1: who don't know if you were born after the nineties,
2:07
Speaker 1: were probably well, i'll just say The Financial Times called
2:12
Speaker 1: it potentially the greatest market bubble of all times. Yeah,
2:18
Speaker 1: I mean that's really saying something, because there's been some
2:20
Speaker 1: market bubbles, but the beanie baby craze of the mid
2:24
Speaker 1: to late nineties probably topped them all. It was just
2:28
Speaker 1: that crazy. I mean, we've talked about some crazy stuff
2:31
Speaker 1: that people have done for toys before, people elbowing one
2:34
Speaker 1: another for a cabbage Patch kid. That's peanuts compared to
2:37
Speaker 1: what people did for beanie babies.
2:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't know anything about this either, because that
2:42
Speaker 2: was sort of the end of college and then my
2:46
Speaker 2: New York New Jersey years, and I just I knew
2:49
Speaker 2: that beanie babies were a thing, but I was not
2:51
Speaker 2: participating in the economy in that way at that point.
2:56
Speaker 1: So you didn't You didn't known a single one, Oh,
2:58
Speaker 1: of course not. I didn't, No, I totally didn't. But
3:02
Speaker 1: the thing is is we were in the minority in America,
3:05
Speaker 1: something like sixty two or sixty three percent owned at
3:09
Speaker 1: least one beanie baby at the height of this bubble.
3:12
Speaker 2: Think about that. That honestly was one of the most
3:15
Speaker 2: shocking stats in this whole thing.
3:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's like six point three people out of every
3:19
Speaker 1: ten people.
3:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing when you're talking about a little kid's toy.
3:26
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that was the thing. It wasn't kids that
3:28
Speaker 1: fueled this craze. It was almost exclusively adults. Because the
3:32
Speaker 1: reason the market bubble grew was because there became this
3:34
Speaker 1: idea that beanie babies were valuable, that they had an
3:40
Speaker 1: inherent value greater than the face value that you would
3:44
Speaker 1: pay for them at the retail store.
3:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, which was true for a while.
3:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was. We'll get into all that,
3:52
Speaker 1: but let's start from the beginning, shall we.
3:54
Speaker 2: All Right, Well, you can't talk beanie babies without talking
3:58
Speaker 2: about the gentleman who starts R. Did it all? I
4:01
Speaker 2: do remember seeing the letters t Y on beanie baby packaging,
4:07
Speaker 2: so I wasn't completely head in the sand, sure, but
4:11
Speaker 2: I did not know that t Y was the guy's name.
4:14
Speaker 2: It was Ty Warner, who was born in the mid
4:17
Speaker 2: nineteen forties in Lagrange, Chicago suburb Lagrange, Illinois. And he
4:23
Speaker 2: had a pretty not great childhood, it seems like, is
4:26
Speaker 2: that fair to say?
4:27
Speaker 1: Yeah? From everything I've heard, Yeah.
4:29
Speaker 2: Had a mother who suffered from mental illness which was
4:32
Speaker 2: not treated, which is even worse. Didn't have a great
4:36
Speaker 2: relationship with his dad. His parents got divorced when he
4:39
Speaker 2: was in his thirties, but he went to college at
4:42
Speaker 2: Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where he learned his love of
4:47
Speaker 2: treading the boards.
4:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, kalum theater, right exactly. But he did he
4:54
Speaker 1: got into acting, and it kind of either he was
4:57
Speaker 1: already like a theater kid at heart, or at turn
5:00
Speaker 1: him into a theater kid, because he ended up taking
5:02
Speaker 1: that way of living or that way of looking at
5:07
Speaker 1: the world or being in the world with him essentially
5:10
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life.
5:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, he seemed fairly flamboyant.
5:15
Speaker 1: He was flamboyant. There's a really off sighted story about
5:19
Speaker 1: him showing up when he became a salesman for the
5:24
Speaker 1: toy company that his father worked for. He would show
5:27
Speaker 1: up to these sales calls in a Rolls Royce wearing
5:31
Speaker 1: a floorlink fur coat and a cane and a hat. Amazing,
5:35
Speaker 1: essentially like Kramer when he accidentally's wearing the Technicolor dream
5:38
Speaker 1: coat and ends up with that big Jamir Kuai hat.
5:41
Speaker 2: And a cane.
5:43
Speaker 1: That's essentially what Ty Warner showed up to these sales
5:47
Speaker 1: meetings looking like in the early sixties, and apparently it
5:50
Speaker 1: worked because he said that his premise was if he
5:54
Speaker 1: showed up to a sales meeting looking like that, people
5:57
Speaker 1: would say, I want to see what's in that guy's
5:59
Speaker 1: brief case?
6:01
Speaker 2: Yeah?
6:03
Speaker 1: Or do you Yeah? It depends on the kind of
6:05
Speaker 1: party you're in.
6:06
Speaker 2: For Yeah, he was a really good salesperson. Apparently he
6:11
Speaker 2: thought a lot of himself though, And in nineteen eighty
6:15
Speaker 2: he worked for this company, I guess what, for like
6:17
Speaker 2: eighteen years, because he got the job in nineteen sixty two.
6:20
Speaker 2: So that's a nice long run. But at least the
6:23
Speaker 2: way his former boss told it, guy named Harold Nazamian,
6:27
Speaker 2: who was the CEO, basically accused him of moonlighting on
6:33
Speaker 2: the company and using their you know, sales list in
6:37
Speaker 2: his personal personal relationships with people as a salesperson to
6:41
Speaker 2: sell his own stuff while he was working as a
6:45
Speaker 2: sales manager for this company, and so he got fired.
6:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, on those sales calls he would be like, yeah,
6:50
Speaker 1: I've got these great daycin products, but also I want
6:53
Speaker 1: to show you these too, So he was not only
6:56
Speaker 1: using company contexts, he was using company time too. It's
6:59
Speaker 1: about as bad a thing you can do as a salesman, essentially.
7:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it wasn't long after that that the Beanie
7:05
Speaker 2: baby came along.
7:06
Speaker 1: No, that was so it was nineteen eighty when he
7:10
Speaker 1: lost the job. He apparently moved to Rome. He went
7:13
Speaker 1: to go visit some friends and ended up living there
7:15
Speaker 1: for a few years and when he came back, he
7:19
Speaker 1: was inspired to keep going in the toy industry. I
7:23
Speaker 1: guess it kind of got under his skin. And he'd
7:25
Speaker 1: seen some toy cats there in Rome, he said, and
7:29
Speaker 1: he was inspired to create not beanie babies at first,
7:32
Speaker 1: but his first plush toys, which was a line of
7:35
Speaker 1: cats laying down, pretty fluffy. They looked they were fully stuffed,
7:42
Speaker 1: which is a big difference between them and beanie babies.
7:44
Speaker 1: And then for every cat, there was a Himalayan version
7:48
Speaker 1: of it. And they were pretty cute little cats. But
7:51
Speaker 1: the thing that he did that I think really kind
7:53
Speaker 1: of helped sell these things because they were like a
7:56
Speaker 1: modest successive scene it described as that he gave them
8:00
Speaker 1: names they were in They weren't just some stuffed cat.
8:03
Speaker 1: This was Smoky, this was Peaches. Like these these cats
8:07
Speaker 1: were individuals. They had an identity and that made them
8:11
Speaker 1: that much more lovable.
8:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were larger. They were about seventeen inches.
8:16
Speaker 2: They larger than beanie babies would be. They would cost
8:19
Speaker 2: more than beanie babies at twenty bucks. And like you said,
8:22
Speaker 2: they were stuffed, but not stuffed with the you know,
8:26
Speaker 2: kind of genius of the I don't know about genius.
8:28
Speaker 2: That's probably stretching that word. Sure, let's just say the
8:32
Speaker 2: fairly smart thing that he did with beanie babies was
8:35
Speaker 2: he stuffed them with beads like a like a what's
8:39
Speaker 2: it called the bean bag chair, Yeah, pretty much, and
8:43
Speaker 2: didn't overstuff it so you could move them around and
8:45
Speaker 2: pose them and they could, you know, droop over your
8:48
Speaker 2: shoulder and stuff like that, not like a regular sort
8:50
Speaker 2: of fully stuffed whatever. They stuffed those things with whatever
8:54
Speaker 2: weird chemical stuffing.
8:58
Speaker 1: Oh, like the little styri foam pellets or the event
9:02
Speaker 1: tyrofoam fiber that's kind of like a yeah, fibers.
9:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean those are the cheapest ones that you
9:09
Speaker 2: would get as like a prize at an amusement bark. Yes,
9:12
Speaker 2: that literal styrophoam balls.
9:15
Speaker 1: Right, And that was a big That was a big
9:17
Speaker 1: deal about his beanie babies because they were high quality.
9:21
Speaker 1: They were very well made from the outset. He was
9:25
Speaker 1: all up the bottom of the South Korean manufacturers he
9:29
Speaker 1: had partnered with to make these things. He was really
9:32
Speaker 1: involved in the design and manufacturing process, so these were
9:36
Speaker 1: really high quality dolls. But he made a very conscious
9:40
Speaker 1: decision to sell beanie babies at five bucks a pop,
9:44
Speaker 1: which he said that that was the kids could typically
9:49
Speaker 1: buy that with their allowance money, because, as we'll forget
9:52
Speaker 1: multiple times throughout this episode, these were originally meant for
9:55
Speaker 1: kids to buy the Beanie Babies were. So that was
9:58
Speaker 1: a really big deal because he came out he was
10:00
Speaker 1: one of the first people to come out with a
10:01
Speaker 1: high quality toy at a price point of something you
10:05
Speaker 1: would get at like the County Fair something as a prize,
10:08
Speaker 1: but instead it was a good, good quality plush toy.
10:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And so this was nineteen ninety three for
10:16
Speaker 2: the actual launch of the Beanie Baby, which launched with
10:19
Speaker 2: Brownie the bear yep and Pinchers the Lobster, and like
10:24
Speaker 2: a Cabbage Patch kid, it came with a date of birth.
10:26
Speaker 2: He used the name like he you know, originally did
10:29
Speaker 2: with those fully stuffed cats or kiddies. I guess fully
10:33
Speaker 2: stuffed cat sounds gross. It's like ad t reduction including
10:37
Speaker 2: the date of birth. And then also another key was
10:40
Speaker 2: this little short poem and their little heart shaped tag
10:44
Speaker 2: turned out to be a bit of marketing genius. It
10:46
Speaker 2: was just just an extra little something to make it
10:49
Speaker 2: different to appeal to a kid because you gotta. Even
10:52
Speaker 2: if it ended up being a thing that adults tried
10:54
Speaker 2: to collect because you know, they thought it was valuable,
10:57
Speaker 2: it never would have gotten there if he hadn't have
10:59
Speaker 2: made a toy that kids really love to begin with.
11:02
Speaker 1: Right Also, I mean, he wasn't the first to do that.
11:04
Speaker 1: This was a good ten years after the Cabbage Patch
11:07
Speaker 1: kids and their adoption papers and all that stuff, But
11:09
Speaker 1: it's still it is a good marketing technique, for sure,
11:12
Speaker 1: and it did work. But the thing that made beanie
11:15
Speaker 1: babies really kind of take off was multifold. Part of
11:20
Speaker 1: it was his marketing scheme. He had a really brilliant idea,
11:26
Speaker 1: which was only certain kinds of stores could carry beanie babies,
11:31
Speaker 1: and you actually had to be a licensed beanie baby
11:34
Speaker 1: retailer to sell beanie babies legally or legitimately. And those
11:38
Speaker 1: stores were like Hallmark stores, locally owned gift stores, hospital
11:44
Speaker 1: gift shops, like small stores. So that right off the
11:49
Speaker 1: bat canceled any chance of anyone I saw it described
11:53
Speaker 1: it going into like a big box store like a
11:56
Speaker 1: Walmart or something and seeing a bargain bin of beanie
11:59
Speaker 1: babies lumped together for fifty percent off. So the fact
12:03
Speaker 1: that that didn't that possibility didn't exist. Someone couldn't see
12:06
Speaker 1: that automatically made it. They were just higher status than
12:10
Speaker 1: they otherwise would have been because he made enough to
12:13
Speaker 1: sell to huge retailers like that. He decided deliberately not
12:18
Speaker 1: to do that for that reason.
12:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, super smart. I mean, if you can create a
12:23
Speaker 2: scarcity and the illusion that what you're peddling is like
12:29
Speaker 2: limited and collectible, yeah, then you're going to do pretty well.
12:34
Speaker 2: And that's what he did. But not only by limiting
12:36
Speaker 2: the amount of stores that could be sold in, but
12:38
Speaker 2: he also limited the number of toys that these stores
12:41
Speaker 2: could even buy, Like that Hallmark store once they you know,
12:45
Speaker 2: really talk took off, couldn't be like, hey, we're going
12:47
Speaker 2: to dedicate half our store to these things now because
12:50
Speaker 2: they're selling like hotcakes. So he would dole them out
12:53
Speaker 2: and limited numbers to the stores, and each of those
12:56
Speaker 2: stores only had certain products, like you know, you might
13:00
Speaker 2: have Spot the Dog and Squealer the Pig at one store,
13:03
Speaker 2: or Chocolate the Moose and Flash the Dolphin at another.
13:07
Speaker 2: And that creates a situation then where kids are like,
13:11
Speaker 2: well I got a you know, like completing the collection
13:15
Speaker 2: as a classic kids toy scam.
13:19
Speaker 1: For sure, Yeah, collect exactly. And so you would have
13:24
Speaker 1: to go around town to multiple stores in your town
13:27
Speaker 1: to get the ones that were available, and because they
13:30
Speaker 1: were allowed only by limited amounts, frequently those things were
13:34
Speaker 1: sold out. So the idea that these things were scarce
13:37
Speaker 1: collector's items was manufactured out of the gate by Ty
13:42
Speaker 1: Warner and his marketing skit. I almost said scam, but scheme,
13:46
Speaker 1: I think is a better way to put Yeah.
13:49
Speaker 2: The other big thing is that this coincided with the
13:52
Speaker 2: rise of the Internet. There's a great scene in the movie.
13:58
Speaker 2: There's a movie that's out now, I think an Apple
14:01
Speaker 2: original called The Beanie Bubble.
14:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, I haven't seen it, right, did you watch it now?
14:07
Speaker 2: The reviews aren't kind. I may watch it because I
14:11
Speaker 2: love Zach Galifanakis, who plays Ty Warner and Elizabeth Banks
14:15
Speaker 2: is in the movie is a sort of a thinly
14:18
Speaker 2: veiled version of his former business partner and romantic partner,
14:23
Speaker 2: I think, Patricia Roach. But in the movie, in the
14:27
Speaker 2: trailer I saw today, Zach said, because you know, they
14:30
Speaker 2: started a website and they were, you know, an early
14:32
Speaker 2: website in those years. Yeah, Zach galifant Or I guess
14:35
Speaker 2: Tyme Warner says, we broke the Internet thing. I thought
14:40
Speaker 2: it was a pretty good line because the Internet was
14:42
Speaker 2: so new. It him just like, I guess you know
14:43
Speaker 2: there's a thing.
14:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, apparently. So he had an employee named Lena Trevetti,
14:48
Speaker 1: and she was a coder and this is like nineteen
14:51
Speaker 1: ninety three ninety four, and she convinced ty Warner to
14:54
Speaker 1: create a beanie baby's website because they were getting calls
14:58
Speaker 1: and letters and stuff like that from people saying like,
15:01
Speaker 1: this is my checklist? Is this accurate? Am I missing
15:03
Speaker 1: any And they thought, well, let's just put like a
15:05
Speaker 1: central place where all of the beanie babies can be listed,
15:08
Speaker 1: and it can be a place where everybody who likes
15:10
Speaker 1: beanie babies can come and learn and get excited about
15:14
Speaker 1: beanie babies and buy beanie babies. Because starting in nineteen
15:18
Speaker 1: ninety five, they started selling beanie babies on this website
15:22
Speaker 1: and that was the same year that Amazon and eBay launched,
15:25
Speaker 1: so they were one of the first e commerce sites
15:28
Speaker 1: on the Internet too.
15:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is amazing. The movie has a character named Maya,
15:34
Speaker 2: who is again a thinly veiled version of Lena Trevetti,
15:37
Speaker 2: which I'm curious why they didn't just use their real names.
15:41
Speaker 1: They touted this as loosely based on Zach Bisonette's book,
15:50
Speaker 1: and that some of it was fictitious, I think to
15:53
Speaker 1: keep from getting sued. I get the impression that Ky
15:56
Speaker 1: Warner is not shy about suing people well.
16:00
Speaker 2: Which is interesting because he played Ty Warner in the movie. Like,
16:03
Speaker 2: that's the only name that wasn't changed.
16:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know why they did it, but they
16:07
Speaker 1: definitely did it well.
16:09
Speaker 2: Judging from the trailer, it seems that both the Bank's
16:12
Speaker 2: character and the Maya character are kind of One of
16:16
Speaker 2: the threads of the movies, as it was seemingly in
16:19
Speaker 2: real life, was that there were at least a couple
16:21
Speaker 2: of women in the organization that had a lot to
16:24
Speaker 2: do with their growth in the sort of story is
16:27
Speaker 2: that he never gave them enough credit, and that seems
16:30
Speaker 2: to play out in the movie.
16:31
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he Like if you read any corporate write ups,
16:35
Speaker 1: like press releases or the very rare interviews he's given,
16:40
Speaker 1: like it sounds like the whole thing was just him,
16:42
Speaker 1: just him. Yeah, And in part it was largely him
16:46
Speaker 1: because he owned the company from the outset, always has
16:49
Speaker 1: he's never sold one share. He didn't take it public.
16:52
Speaker 1: It's been a privately owned company by him one hundred
16:55
Speaker 1: percent as far as I know from the outset. So
16:59
Speaker 1: he definitely, you know, really was the driving force in this,
17:02
Speaker 1: but he had help that is largely unacknowledged publicly. That. Yeah,
17:06
Speaker 1: it's a good thing that Zach Bisonette came along, and
17:09
Speaker 1: also the people who made that the movie based on
17:11
Speaker 1: Zach Bisonette's book to kind of shine a spotlight on
17:15
Speaker 1: the other people of this, particularly women who helped him.
17:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, Zach and Zach, that's right.
17:22
Speaker 1: The two Zach's on the Zach attack against Ty Warrens.
17:27
Speaker 2: The other thing that he did to sort of you know,
17:30
Speaker 2: drive this, I mean, I guess we can call it
17:33
Speaker 2: a fall scarcity is he had He was very secret
17:36
Speaker 2: about the company. He didn't want people outside the company knowing,
17:40
Speaker 2: like when they were going to launch a new kind
17:42
Speaker 2: of toy, how many they were making. Right in nineteen
17:46
Speaker 2: ninety five, he started retiring models that was huge and
17:49
Speaker 2: then adding other ones. And he would just all of
17:52
Speaker 2: a sudden drop like you know, this Marty Moose what
17:55
Speaker 2: I call him something, the Moose, Chocolate Moose, chocolate moose
17:59
Speaker 2: is gone, say, and if they're being baby people out
18:02
Speaker 2: there like, no, chocolate moose never left. I'm just using
18:05
Speaker 2: that as an example.
18:06
Speaker 1: That's a good idea.
18:07
Speaker 2: But they would just announce that on the website, and
18:09
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, people are like, oh my god,
18:11
Speaker 2: they've retired the moose, and you know, people are driving
18:14
Speaker 2: around and trying to find them in those stores before
18:16
Speaker 2: they're all gone.
18:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a deliberate thing to do as well
18:21
Speaker 1: to create the further scarcity, like legitimate scarcity. But apparently
18:25
Speaker 1: he fell into that backwards or he stumbled into it,
18:29
Speaker 1: because we said that he was really involved in the design.
18:32
Speaker 1: After these things would launch, he would like see one
18:36
Speaker 1: and be like, that's too orange. I want it more red,
18:38
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden I saw a pinchy. The
18:40
Speaker 1: lobster would be a much deeper red. Well, they'd stop
18:44
Speaker 1: producing the orangish red one, and these beanie baby collectors
18:48
Speaker 1: would go bonkers trying to find the other one. He
18:50
Speaker 1: started to notice that, and so he created real scarcity
18:54
Speaker 1: by deliberately retiring some just out of the blue. People
18:58
Speaker 1: would go scramble to find them, and then retailers, most
19:01
Speaker 1: importantly would start stockpiling everything that he had that they
19:06
Speaker 1: could sell, say the orange Pinchy.
19:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. He was also smart enough to to realize that
19:13
Speaker 2: the Cabbage Patch kids, like when they when that bubble burst,
19:17
Speaker 2: it just kind of all went away, and so he
19:20
Speaker 2: would do things like, hey, Hallmark, if you want to
19:22
Speaker 2: order these beanie babies, you gotta also order some of
19:25
Speaker 2: this other stuff that I'm selling. It's not as nearly
19:28
Speaker 2: as popular, but he tried to increase revenue sort of
19:31
Speaker 2: across the company, So he wasn't all in on the beanie.
19:34
Speaker 1: Baby, right. I say we take a break and come
19:37
Speaker 1: back and talk about how McDonald's factors into this.
19:39
Speaker 2: What do you think, Mick?
19:41
Speaker 1: What?
19:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, lately I've been learning some stuff.
19:45
Speaker 3: About in Samnia or Alumnia. How about the one on
19:52
Speaker 3: border like disorder that order order that one be born.
19:57
Speaker 3: But it was so nice eldest who shot shot.
20:29
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck. So we said McDonald's factors into this. Like
20:32
Speaker 1: any great American economic bubble story, McDonald's is going to
20:35
Speaker 1: play some role in it whatsoever, somehow, some way. And
20:40
Speaker 1: McDonald's is the one that basically said if you are
20:44
Speaker 1: just kind of out there on the margins, and don't
20:46
Speaker 1: really know what's going on in this beanie baby collector
20:48
Speaker 1: world growing under your very nose. This McDonald's happy Meal
20:53
Speaker 1: promotion is going to just blow the doors off of
20:56
Speaker 1: any illusions that beanie babies are not a cultural force
21:00
Speaker 1: to be reckoned with.
21:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. Over a couple of years, I think they had
21:04
Speaker 2: two versions in ninety seven and ninety eight where they
21:07
Speaker 2: there were hundreds of millions of teeny babies. These even
21:12
Speaker 2: smaller obviously because it was, you know, to fit into
21:15
Speaker 2: a happy meal.
21:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, teeny beanies.
21:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I say, teeny babies.
21:19
Speaker 1: It works too.
21:20
Speaker 2: I like teeny babies. I like teeny babies too, teeny beanies.
21:24
Speaker 2: H And you know, even if your thing is already popular,
21:27
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, if hundreds of millions of these
21:30
Speaker 2: things are going out in Happy meals and you know,
21:33
Speaker 2: the most popular, you know, fast food restaurant chain in
21:35
Speaker 2: the world, then it's gonna just skyrocket this thing even further.
21:39
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what it did.
21:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, the nineteen ninety eight one, the second one that
21:44
Speaker 1: they did where you could get teeny beanies in a
21:46
Speaker 1: happy meal. The first weekend of that promotion, McDonald saw
21:52
Speaker 1: the highest increase in sales in its corporate history. It
21:56
Speaker 1: had never sold more in any weekend in the history
21:59
Speaker 1: of McDonald's than it did at the beginning of that
22:02
Speaker 1: second Beanie Baby's promotion, and people were ordering as many
22:07
Speaker 1: Happy Meals as they were allowed to order and telling
22:09
Speaker 1: the McDonald's workers just keep the food, I just want
22:11
Speaker 1: the Beanie babies. McDonald's had to set up rules like
22:14
Speaker 1: individual franchises had their own rules. It was really patchwork
22:18
Speaker 1: where you could say, get five Happy Meals per order
22:22
Speaker 1: or per visit, and you had to have a two
22:25
Speaker 1: hour waiting period in between visits. So people would like
22:28
Speaker 1: just go for McDonald's and McDonald's and then just go
22:30
Speaker 1: on like a circuit to get as many of the
22:32
Speaker 1: Beanie Babies as they possibly could. People were tackling like
22:36
Speaker 1: delivery people showing up with the boxes of the new
22:39
Speaker 1: Beanie Babies. It was nuts what people did just for
22:43
Speaker 1: the McDonald's version of the Beanie Babies.
22:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, that McDonald's record. That even counts passing the Great
22:51
Speaker 2: McRib Feast of ninety two, the previous record holder.
22:56
Speaker 1: The mcrib's back Right now, I saw I've been meaning
22:59
Speaker 1: to go get one.
23:00
Speaker 2: Talk about false scarcity.
23:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, same thing for sure.
23:03
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean they could put that on their
23:04
Speaker 2: menu at any time, right.
23:05
Speaker 1: Totally for sure. You know that the fat cats at
23:08
Speaker 1: McDonald's Corporate are eating mcribs every day of the year.
23:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the employee lounge is just stocked with them. Right.
23:16
Speaker 1: But all this that's going on, Chuck is underscores a
23:21
Speaker 1: larger cultural thing, and that is that people are buying
23:26
Speaker 1: these beanie babies not just because they think they're the
23:28
Speaker 1: cutest thing on two legs, but because it has become
23:32
Speaker 1: largely widely accepted that they are a sound investment if
23:38
Speaker 1: you want to diversify your portfolio, or more often was
23:41
Speaker 1: the case, make your entire portfolio just beanie babies.
23:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know this was by the like you said,
23:48
Speaker 2: the cabbage Patch kids had already come and gone. Everyone
23:51
Speaker 2: has already known at this point about the you know,
23:53
Speaker 2: Star Wars collectibles and baseball cards and trading cards. So
23:58
Speaker 2: the idea, I think there are certain people out there,
24:01
Speaker 2: after all those things happened, that are always sort of
24:04
Speaker 2: looking for that next thing as a you know, sort
24:07
Speaker 2: of alternative investment. If I can, you know, buy fifty
24:11
Speaker 2: beanie babies and put them in a box and just
24:14
Speaker 2: sit on them and that'll put my kids through college
24:16
Speaker 2: one day. Yeah, and that's you know a lot of
24:19
Speaker 2: people did stuff like that. I think you mentioned eBay
24:22
Speaker 2: had launched very soon afterward. They launched ninety five, and
24:26
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety seven, this is the other most staggering
24:29
Speaker 2: set of the show to me, six percent of all
24:34
Speaker 2: of eBay was beanie baby sales.
24:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that nuts. So the secondary market really did
24:40
Speaker 1: grow up, and there really was like a huge market
24:45
Speaker 1: for beanie babies that say had been retired, and one
24:48
Speaker 1: that you had bought for five dollars and kept in
24:50
Speaker 1: the package, you could sell for hundreds of dollars on
24:54
Speaker 1: eBay legitimately in the in the mid to late nineties.
24:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this really.
24:59
Speaker 1: Was like it wasn't like everybody was just hoping beyond
25:04
Speaker 1: hope that their beanie babies were going to increase in value.
25:06
Speaker 1: They were increasing value before their very eyes. So people
25:11
Speaker 1: who weren't sucked into it were like, this is the
25:13
Speaker 1: dumbest thing I've ever seen. And if there's ever been
25:16
Speaker 1: an economic bubble, this is it. And yet people were
25:20
Speaker 1: buying these things for like long term investing. They were
25:23
Speaker 1: buying them hanging on to them for twenty years or
25:26
Speaker 1: thirty years from now. The people who were actually trading
25:30
Speaker 1: in the moment are the ones who might have made
25:33
Speaker 1: money off of it. But that's pretty much the only
25:35
Speaker 1: people who did.
25:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. It also created a sort of an
25:40
Speaker 2: industry around it. You found some examples of people that
25:44
Speaker 2: made a lot of money just in the ancillary beanie
25:47
Speaker 2: baby market by doing things like writing books about stuff.
25:50
Speaker 2: This woman, Peggy Gallagher, she was a paralegal. She made
25:54
Speaker 2: two hundred grand on a book that she self published
25:57
Speaker 2: called the Beanie Baby Phenomenon, and then started I imagine,
26:01
Speaker 2: a pretty good deal of money as an official, well
26:03
Speaker 2: not official, but as just an experienced beanie authenticator. Another
26:08
Speaker 2: woman named Mary Beth Sobaluski, she was an IBM systems engineer,
26:14
Speaker 2: and she just made sort of the go to list,
26:17
Speaker 2: like the Bible basically of beanie baby pricing and made
26:23
Speaker 2: a lot of money off that, and also started putting
26:26
Speaker 2: out a magazine. Yeah, was it a monthly?
26:29
Speaker 1: Yes, it was based around the price list, Like did
26:31
Speaker 1: you ever collect or read Beckett's Monthly for baseball cards?
26:35
Speaker 1: It's just a big price.
26:36
Speaker 2: But I knew about it.
26:37
Speaker 1: Okay, it's basically that, but for beanie babies it's called
26:39
Speaker 1: Mary Bethy Beanbag World. They sold six hundred and fifty
26:43
Speaker 1: thousand copies a month at its peak for six bucks
26:46
Speaker 1: a pop. So it's almost three million dollars a run
26:49
Speaker 1: per issue. Yeah, for beanie Baby's price guides. Right, But
26:53
Speaker 1: she really went to town with it. It wasn't you know,
26:56
Speaker 1: just based on nothing. She and her asistance like called dealers,
27:02
Speaker 1: beanie baby dealers to find out what their prices were,
27:04
Speaker 1: what was selling really fast? They were right, right, They
27:08
Speaker 1: were following eBay prices like they were. It was a
27:11
Speaker 1: legitimate Olivia putt. It was the gold standard price list
27:14
Speaker 1: for a reason, you know. So and Mary Mary Beth
27:19
Speaker 1: Sobuleuski is another woman who was often overlooked for the
27:25
Speaker 1: contributions she made to the beanie baby mania, because, in
27:29
Speaker 1: addition to creating the gold standard price list, she was
27:32
Speaker 1: one of the original self described Chicago suburban soccer moms
27:38
Speaker 1: who started trading beanie babies in the first place, and
27:42
Speaker 1: apparently their fervor in trading beanie babies in suburban Chicago
27:46
Speaker 1: actually kicked off the national trend of collecting and trading
27:50
Speaker 1: beanie babies and and they essentially created the secondary market.
27:54
Speaker 1: There's an HBO documentary a couple of years ago, I
27:56
Speaker 1: think called Beanie beating Mania that really does a good
27:59
Speaker 1: job was shining a light on them and their role
28:02
Speaker 1: and contribution to the whole thing too.
28:05
Speaker 2: So we've had a documentary now, a feature film.
28:10
Speaker 1: Yes, and Broadway Broadways next and then James Missioner is
28:15
Speaker 1: coming back to life to write an epic novel about it.
28:19
Speaker 2: That'd be pretty amazing. Speaking of amazing, there are also
28:22
Speaker 2: some amazing stories about just how kind of crazy thing
28:27
Speaker 2: scott in many different ways, one of which is a
28:31
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine divorce case in Las Vegas where this
28:36
Speaker 2: couple was divorcing and they had a lot of combined
28:39
Speaker 2: assets in the form of beanie babies that they thought,
28:42
Speaker 2: you know, we're worth a lot and they may have
28:44
Speaker 2: been worth a lot of money their collection, and they
28:47
Speaker 2: there's a very great picture if you look it up
28:49
Speaker 2: on the internet, just type in you know, like Vegas
28:51
Speaker 2: beanie baby divorced couple and they brought all these beanie
28:55
Speaker 2: babies in on the floor and the judge said, like
28:59
Speaker 2: choosing a team recess, you just go one at a time,
29:02
Speaker 2: and each of you pick out a beanie baby that
29:04
Speaker 2: you're going to keep for yourself, and it's just a
29:06
Speaker 2: very kind of funny looking photo.
29:08
Speaker 1: It is until you read, like some of the quotes
29:12
Speaker 1: from the woman involved in the divorce case, the wife
29:15
Speaker 1: who was like this, it was really, you know, demoralizing
29:19
Speaker 1: and degrading to have to be forced to do that.
29:22
Speaker 1: She was really upset that the judge made her and
29:25
Speaker 1: her ex husband do that, but it really, yes, she was.
29:28
Speaker 1: She was not happy about it at all. But it
29:31
Speaker 1: was like the whole thing was worth five grand, I
29:34
Speaker 1: think they said. But that was five grand at the time,
29:36
Speaker 1: and people were speculating on beanie babies, so I think
29:38
Speaker 1: could have been worth a million dollars that pile of
29:41
Speaker 1: beanie babies, which is why they went to the trouble
29:43
Speaker 1: of selecting them like that, one at a time.
29:47
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I guess everyone's entitled to
29:49
Speaker 2: their own opinion. It's her life, but degrading.
29:53
Speaker 1: I don't think she used the word degrading, but it
29:55
Speaker 1: was it was along those lines I'm paraphrasing.
29:57
Speaker 2: Okay, I would have felt more silly unless he like
30:01
Speaker 2: tied them both up and made them do it with
30:02
Speaker 2: their mouth or something that's degrading. Yeah.
30:06
Speaker 1: No, when they picked a beanie baby, they had to
30:08
Speaker 1: pick it up with their chin and hand it to
30:10
Speaker 1: their ex to say whether it was okay, if they
30:13
Speaker 1: kept or nothing, then they had to hand it back
30:15
Speaker 1: all without using their hands.
30:17
Speaker 2: Right or that? What was the thing you do? Or
30:19
Speaker 2: you would pass something with your neck?
30:22
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about. Oh okay, they did that,
30:25
Speaker 1: but with the beanie babies they selected Okay, what did
30:28
Speaker 1: people used to pass that one? Like the orange? I
30:30
Speaker 1: think is what it was?
30:31
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yah, that's right. I can't remember when
30:32
Speaker 2: you're a kid, it's I think the whole point of
30:34
Speaker 2: that game was like, oh look how close we are?
30:37
Speaker 2: Exactly right.
30:39
Speaker 1: It was like spin the bottle, but with an orange
30:41
Speaker 1: and necks and chance and no bottle.
30:46
Speaker 2: There was a guy in California named Chris Robinson Senior.
30:50
Speaker 2: I don't think any relation to the other Chris Robinson,
30:54
Speaker 2: and he bought twenty thousand beanie babies, not twenty thousand
30:59
Speaker 2: dollars worth, actual beanie babies, spending one hundred grand or so.
31:04
Speaker 2: And he was one of those guys. It was like,
31:06
Speaker 2: this is going to put my five kids through college.
31:08
Speaker 2: One day, and one of his kids, Chris Junior of
31:12
Speaker 2: the Black Crows, I guess, made a documentary called Bankrupted
31:16
Speaker 2: by Beanies about, like, I guess, how dumb he thought
31:20
Speaker 2: his dad was for spending that much money, like emptying
31:23
Speaker 2: their bank account because he thought it was a good investment.
31:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like it's a very short documentary. It's like
31:27
Speaker 1: eight to twelve minutes. I can't remember which one, and
31:29
Speaker 1: it's mostly it's just him interviewing his family members about
31:32
Speaker 1: this period in their family's history and dumb. Yeah, it
31:36
Speaker 1: was like the dad is definitely like, you know, it
31:39
Speaker 1: was not a good idea, but he's still holding out
31:44
Speaker 1: hope that you know, at some point sometime down the road.
31:47
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they still have them, like they're the background
31:49
Speaker 1: in all of the the shots, like the interviews. It's
31:54
Speaker 1: pretty it's cute. It's not like, you know, condemnation or
31:57
Speaker 1: anything like that, but it's just it's worth the eight
32:01
Speaker 1: to twelve minutes that you'll spend watching it.
32:03
Speaker 2: I think, all right, well to go check that out.
32:06
Speaker 1: The Dad's like, this documentary is very degrading, right, I'm paraphrasing.
32:12
Speaker 2: There were a lot of cases. You know, there were
32:14
Speaker 2: people indicted in court for counterfeiting these things, you know,
32:20
Speaker 2: pos that were never delivered and distributors kept the money.
32:24
Speaker 2: The craze was so bad there was actual crime, like
32:27
Speaker 2: people breaking in and stealing beanie babies. This one case
32:31
Speaker 2: of a seventy seven year old guy in Chicago named
32:34
Speaker 2: Ben Perry was charged with stealing close to thirteen hundred
32:38
Speaker 2: beanie babies. There was a PI that found him, a
32:42
Speaker 2: TIE incorporated private eye. In fact, they found him moving
32:45
Speaker 2: stuff out of a storage locker, moving these toys in
32:47
Speaker 2: and out, and I'm not sure, like he said that
32:51
Speaker 2: they weren't stolen, yet he gave them up and donated
32:54
Speaker 2: them to a charity Like that seems very fishy to me.
32:57
Speaker 1: He apparently bought them for dirt cheap at a produce market,
33:02
Speaker 1: like a farmer's market, and he swore he didn't know
33:06
Speaker 1: that they were stolen, even though they were in boxes
33:10
Speaker 1: labeled TIE like they were shipping boxes stolen out of
33:12
Speaker 1: the warehouse. But he got off finally, but it became
33:15
Speaker 1: clear to him that he didn't steal them, but that
33:17
Speaker 1: they were stolen. So he just you know, donated.
33:20
Speaker 2: Him so he didn't get in trouble.
33:22
Speaker 1: No, but apparently he loved all the limelight that was
33:26
Speaker 1: cast on him by the press during this the time
33:30
Speaker 1: that he was in court as the beanie baby bandit.
33:32
Speaker 1: He apparently ate it up so he got something.
33:36
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm going out in style exactly.
33:39
Speaker 1: There was another one. A murder is frequently linked to
33:42
Speaker 1: beanie babies, even though it's kind of a stretch if
33:45
Speaker 1: you start to stretch beneath the surface. But a man
33:48
Speaker 1: named Jeffrey White murdered another man, Harry Simmons, in West Virginia,
33:55
Speaker 1: supposedly over a dispute over who owned some beanie babies,
33:59
Speaker 1: although really what happened was Harry Simmons and Jeffrey White
34:02
Speaker 1: used to work together, and I think Jeffrey White was
34:04
Speaker 1: stealing or loafing or something like that, and Harry Simmons
34:07
Speaker 1: got him fired. So Jeffrey White, who had borrowed beanie
34:11
Speaker 1: babies from him hadn't given him back, killed Harry Simmons.
34:15
Speaker 2: We understand you've been loafing, exactly.
34:18
Speaker 1: Is that true? Uh?
34:21
Speaker 2: Yeah? Is that a crime?
34:23
Speaker 1: If you got time to lean, you got time to
34:25
Speaker 1: clean son.
34:26
Speaker 2: Oh man, should we take a break on that note? Yeah, sure,
34:30
Speaker 2: all right, We'll be right back and wrap up the
34:33
Speaker 2: story of the beanie Baby.
34:35
Speaker 3: Lately, I've been learning some stuff about insoa Alumnia.
34:42
Speaker 2: How about the one on border like disorder?
34:47
Speaker 1: Yer Warner heard that one.
34:49
Speaker 3: Be warm, but it was so nice. Odes why.
34:55
Speaker 2: Body listen?
35:13
Speaker 1: Fine shot shot.
35:21
Speaker 2: All right. We called this a bubble, like any sort
35:25
Speaker 2: of collectible or real estate bubble or financial bubble, because
35:28
Speaker 2: they eventually burst, and the beanie baby really followed the
35:34
Speaker 2: I was about to say, rise and follow the Internet.
35:36
Speaker 2: The Internet clearly never fell, but the big dot com
35:40
Speaker 2: boom was what helped the beanie baby along and also
35:44
Speaker 2: helped kill it a little bit. Although you know, beanie
35:48
Speaker 2: babies were bound to I think they were bound to
35:51
Speaker 2: go away one way or another. Anytime it's something, it's
35:54
Speaker 2: something like this. August nineteen ninety nine, the website said,
35:59
Speaker 2: or we're stopping the operation. We're not going to make
36:02
Speaker 2: any more of these. At this point, three hundred and
36:05
Speaker 2: twenty five different beanie babies. At the end of the year,
36:08
Speaker 2: some people thought, no, this is we know that tie
36:11
Speaker 2: guy by now, this is just a stunt to get
36:14
Speaker 2: people to buy more of his stuff. But it you
36:17
Speaker 2: know it kind of worked as enthusiast and collectors were like,
36:20
Speaker 2: all right, this is our last chance to go and
36:21
Speaker 2: get what's out there to complete, to complete our collections.
36:24
Speaker 1: Right. I didn't read the books ech Bisonette's book, but
36:28
Speaker 1: I bred a review of it that they mentioned. The
36:31
Speaker 1: way that he puts it, this was, this was, in fact,
36:35
Speaker 1: one hundred percent a stunt to kind of juice the
36:37
Speaker 1: beanie baby the beanie baby market. Again. Yeah, and it
36:43
Speaker 1: did work, but in the short term, and he basically
36:46
Speaker 1: says ty Warner killed his creation by carrying out this
36:52
Speaker 1: stunt because on Christmas Eve, here's where Christmas pops up,
36:57
Speaker 1: as we said at the beginning Christmas Eve nineteen ninety
37:00
Speaker 1: right before the turn of the millennium, or no, I
37:02
Speaker 1: guess that was a year later, he said, Ty Warner
37:06
Speaker 1: a ounced on the website. I changed my mind. I'll
37:09
Speaker 1: leave it up to you guys to vote whether we
37:11
Speaker 1: should keep making beanie babies or not. And in his credit,
37:15
Speaker 1: you had to pay fifty cents to vote, but each
37:18
Speaker 1: fifty vote went to the Elizabeth Klazer Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation,
37:25
Speaker 1: So that was something. But ninety one percent of people
37:27
Speaker 1: said yes, we want to keep Beanie Babies going.
37:31
Speaker 2: Of course he did.
37:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the company said, oh, well that's great. We
37:35
Speaker 1: just so happened to have a whole new line of
37:36
Speaker 1: them ready to go. So here you go, everybody, Beanie
37:39
Speaker 1: Babies for all. And it was met with some craziness,
37:45
Speaker 1: but nothing like it used to be. And very shortly
37:48
Speaker 1: after that, the whole thing started to fizzle out rather quickly.
37:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seemed like this sort of the last hurrah.
37:55
Speaker 2: I don't know if Ty Warner saw the writing on
37:58
Speaker 2: the wall and wanted one more sort of big sales crunch.
38:03
Speaker 2: I mean, if that's how we planned it, and then
38:05
Speaker 2: that was pretty smart, because that's, you know, that's what happened.
38:07
Speaker 2: They had a huge sales jump, even though brief they
38:11
Speaker 2: sold about eight hundred million dollars in two thousand. I mean,
38:15
Speaker 2: that's seven years later. I think Beanie Babies lasted a
38:19
Speaker 2: lot longer than I would have expected them to. It
38:23
Speaker 2: seems to me like it would have been like a
38:24
Speaker 2: two year flash in the pan. But they were around
38:27
Speaker 2: for a while. Yeah.
38:28
Speaker 1: I saw that they were still going until about two
38:31
Speaker 1: thousand and two, so that's yeah, that's a good long
38:33
Speaker 1: almost a decade of a craze, of a bubble. But
38:39
Speaker 1: at the end of it all, people started to realize, like,
38:41
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, everybody has these things. This clubby
38:45
Speaker 1: Bear that I had to pay for the privilege of
38:48
Speaker 1: buying to be part of the club, everybody has that,
38:52
Speaker 1: or everyone has the Princess Die beanie baby bear, the
38:56
Speaker 1: special limited edition beanie baby they released in all her
39:00
Speaker 1: Princess Die after she died. They made it sound like
39:04
Speaker 1: this was like the scarcest beanie baby, yet there were
39:06
Speaker 1: there was like a hundred million of them out there,
39:08
Speaker 1: So people started to realize, like, these things aren't aren't
39:11
Speaker 1: scarce at all. There's a glut of them, and these
39:14
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of dollars worth of the beanie babies
39:17
Speaker 1: that I have set aside are are worthless and and
39:21
Speaker 1: that was a huge blow to a lot of people.
39:23
Speaker 1: At the same time, I think it was also freeing
39:26
Speaker 1: because it's you'll just come across stories of people who
39:30
Speaker 1: basically spent all of their free time tracking down beanie babies.
39:33
Speaker 1: It was an obsession that they couldn't quit, and so
39:37
Speaker 1: they were. They were out a bunch of money and
39:40
Speaker 1: time and wasted years, but they were free finally when
39:44
Speaker 1: the market finally crashed.
39:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like bitcoin.
39:49
Speaker 1: I've seen it. I've seen it very closely compared to
39:52
Speaker 1: bitcoin in at least one article.
39:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I know people who are sort of
39:58
Speaker 2: obsessively hours hours a day trading cryptocurrency, and it's it
40:05
Speaker 2: seems exhausting to me.
40:06
Speaker 1: And it's the same thing. If you ever see a
40:08
Speaker 1: bubble coming along, that's not a long term thing. If
40:11
Speaker 1: something suddenly just jumps in value and it's shocking and
40:16
Speaker 1: people are writing like crazy articles about it, buy it
40:19
Speaker 1: and then sell it during that. Don't hang on to
40:22
Speaker 1: it long term. Same thing with bitcoin. Like a lot
40:25
Speaker 1: of people made a lot of money by buying bitcoin
40:28
Speaker 1: cheap and then selling it at its peak. It's people
40:30
Speaker 1: who hung on to it as a long term investment
40:32
Speaker 1: that are now like I lost my shirt, you know. Yeah,
40:35
Speaker 1: So it's the same thing with Beanie. But it's the
40:37
Speaker 1: same thing with any economic bubble. You have to know
40:39
Speaker 1: when to get out at just the right time, or
40:41
Speaker 1: you can sit on the sidelines and be like, you
40:43
Speaker 1: guys are chumps.
40:44
Speaker 2: Right. Well, who certainly wasn't a jump was Tie because
40:49
Speaker 2: he and I feel like I can just call him
40:51
Speaker 2: tie because that was so his brandy.
40:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
40:56
Speaker 2: No one knows exactly what kind of dough he made
40:58
Speaker 2: on these because, like you said earlier, he never you know,
41:02
Speaker 2: became a he never launched an ipo and didn't have
41:05
Speaker 2: to disclose stuff publicly. But he is and was a
41:09
Speaker 2: man with some ego because in nineteen ninety eight there
41:13
Speaker 2: were some questions about, you know, beanie babies, did they
41:16
Speaker 2: really sell as much? Was it the top toy seller
41:18
Speaker 2: in the world, And he himself took out a full
41:21
Speaker 2: page Wall Street Journal ad saying that he made seven
41:25
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars in profits and nineteen ninety seven alone,
41:30
Speaker 2: which is I don't know if that numbers true, but
41:32
Speaker 2: if it's seven hundred million just in profits in one year,
41:35
Speaker 2: then that's remarkable.
41:36
Speaker 1: That would have made tie ink more profitable than Hasbro
41:41
Speaker 1: and Mattel together that year.
41:44
Speaker 2: This is just from everything they sold, exactly. Yeah, just in.
41:47
Speaker 1: Profits, right, that's what that taking out that ad in
41:50
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal is what you'd call today a flex flex.
41:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean he's still a legit billionaire. It's
41:59
Speaker 2: sort of gone up and down. According to Forbes as
42:01
Speaker 2: far as his net worth goes two thousand and two,
42:04
Speaker 2: supposedly at six billion two thousand and nine down to
42:07
Speaker 2: three point two twenty twenty three. Forbes says he's worth
42:11
Speaker 2: about five point seven but it's you know, he still
42:14
Speaker 2: has that company, but he also diversified. He got into
42:17
Speaker 2: real estate, notably as a hotelier, and he owns the
42:23
Speaker 2: I think still closed Four Seasons Hotel, New York still closed.
42:28
Speaker 1: What's it closed for?
42:30
Speaker 2: It depends on who you ask. I think he claimed
42:33
Speaker 2: it was renovations, but other people said it was a
42:35
Speaker 2: dispute with the Four Seasons brand. But I think it's
42:40
Speaker 2: supposed to reopen and sometime next year.
42:42
Speaker 1: Yeah. I saw he had a dispute with the Four
42:44
Speaker 1: Seasons brand over upkeep fees, like what he basically needed
42:48
Speaker 1: to spend to keep the thing up to four season standards.
42:51
Speaker 2: Yeah.
42:52
Speaker 1: I also saw that that was the first hotel to
42:55
Speaker 1: open to first responders and doctors and nurses who were
43:00
Speaker 1: working on the front lines of the COVID pandemic, so
43:01
Speaker 1: that they had a place to stay you wouldn't have
43:04
Speaker 1: to go home and infect their families, which I thought
43:06
Speaker 1: was pretty cool.
43:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess we can talk about that
43:09
Speaker 2: a little bit in a broader sense, because Warner is
43:14
Speaker 2: someone who like has has been notably charitable as far
43:19
Speaker 2: as like front facing sort of putting stuff out there,
43:25
Speaker 2: kind of stuff like the Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation
43:29
Speaker 2: when he donated you know, the fifty cents for those
43:31
Speaker 2: votes and stuff like that. Because he got in trouble
43:34
Speaker 2: at one point for tax well not tax fraud, but
43:38
Speaker 2: what do you call it? Tax evasion? And as part
43:41
Speaker 2: of his sentence, one of which was a couple years probation,
43:45
Speaker 2: five hundred hours of community service, and one hundred thousand
43:49
Speaker 2: dollars fine. On the criminal side, he paid over fifty
43:52
Speaker 2: three million dollars in civil penalties. But part of the
43:56
Speaker 2: argument was like, hey, you know, as far as this
43:59
Speaker 2: defense goes, like this is really charitable. He's donated millions
44:02
Speaker 2: of dollars to the Children's Hunger Fund and the Andre
44:05
Speaker 2: Agassy Foundation, and like I said, a lot of really
44:08
Speaker 2: public facing, like large donations. But prosecutors are like, that's
44:13
Speaker 2: a pittance of what this guy's worth, right, And just
44:16
Speaker 2: because he gives a little bit of money and makes
44:17
Speaker 2: a big deal about it doesn't mean he didn't break
44:19
Speaker 2: the law.
44:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, the judge in the case though, was like, yeah
44:23
Speaker 1: he did, but again I'm pretty impressed with his charitable work.
44:26
Speaker 1: So he got off easy. He could have gone to
44:28
Speaker 1: prison for four years. Instead he got off with one
44:31
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars fine, five hundred hours of community service,
44:34
Speaker 1: and two years probation. And it was for just the
44:37
Speaker 1: dumbest thing. He had a Swiss bank account that no
44:40
Speaker 1: one knew about but him that had like one hundred
44:43
Speaker 1: million dollars in it. This guy was a billionaire three
44:46
Speaker 1: times over at his poorest point. There's just no reason
44:50
Speaker 1: to have done that, and he did, and he got
44:52
Speaker 1: caught doing it, and so he called it the greatest mistake.
44:56
Speaker 2: Of his life. Besides besides that pumping dump scheme.
45:02
Speaker 1: At the turn of the millennium.
45:05
Speaker 2: So they kept making stuff stuff ease. In fact, as
45:09
Speaker 2: a company in two thousand and four, they started licensing
45:12
Speaker 2: deals or getting involved with you know, licensing other people's
45:15
Speaker 2: stuff like Garfield and some Disney stuff. There was something
45:20
Speaker 2: called Beanie Booze that came out in two thousand and nine.
45:23
Speaker 2: Those were kind of that were yeah, they did okay,
45:26
Speaker 2: I mean nothing obviously went like the Beanie Baby, but
45:28
Speaker 2: nothing ever has probably sure, But he still is out
45:32
Speaker 2: there making money selling stuff, and he doesn't seem to
45:36
Speaker 2: be slowing down. I think, how is he now seventy
45:40
Speaker 2: what three? I think seventy nine years old?
45:43
Speaker 1: Seventy nine I was pretty close, give or take six years.
45:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he's still trying to market himself and his
45:50
Speaker 2: toy company. I think it was a little dismissive of
45:52
Speaker 2: the movie. Like everybody who's ever had a movie made
45:55
Speaker 2: about themselves, they always say like, yeah, ten percent of
45:58
Speaker 2: that thing is true, But I think they also secretly
46:01
Speaker 2: kind of liked that they've made a movie about them. Sure,
46:04
Speaker 2: that kind of thing.
46:04
Speaker 1: Right for sure. There's also that secondary market. Chuck is
46:08
Speaker 1: still around and people are trading on that that myth
46:14
Speaker 1: that some people still have that beanie babies are really valuable.
46:18
Speaker 1: And so if you go onto eBay and start searching
46:20
Speaker 1: beanie babies, you'll find some for like a dollar, some
46:23
Speaker 1: I think for less than a dollar, and then you
46:25
Speaker 1: can turn around and find the exact same ones for
46:27
Speaker 1: sale for twenty five thousand dollars or sixty thousand dollars
46:31
Speaker 1: or something like that. And I was reading a I
46:34
Speaker 1: think tie collector dot com article where they were basically
46:38
Speaker 1: saying like, we're pretty sure this is either money laundering
46:42
Speaker 1: that's going on, or it's some sort of scam where
46:45
Speaker 1: these people are trying to beef up like the the
46:48
Speaker 1: market value of these things or the secondary market artificially,
46:52
Speaker 1: or it's just a straight up scam where like you
46:55
Speaker 1: pay them or they buy from you and say, oh
46:58
Speaker 1: I overpaid, pay me back in a gift card, which
47:01
Speaker 1: is another thing in addition to selling at the height
47:03
Speaker 1: of a bubble. Never do business with somebody who demands
47:07
Speaker 1: to be paid in gift cards. Something fishy is going
47:11
Speaker 1: on right there. That's my other word of advice around
47:14
Speaker 1: this Christmas time.
47:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, is it not like a babysitter or something?
47:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, even still, I'd be like, what's your angle, babysitter.
47:24
Speaker 2: The one thing that cracked me up, though, was that
47:26
Speaker 2: when the movie came out and he kind of which
47:28
Speaker 2: was just recently I think this summer or last summer
47:31
Speaker 2: or whatever, he said, you know, I really wanted I
47:35
Speaker 2: would have preferred somebody like Warren Batty or Daniel s
47:38
Speaker 2: Lewis to have played me. Yeah, I'm like when this
47:40
Speaker 2: was going on, he was in his forties. Warren Batty
47:43
Speaker 2: is eighty nine years old.
47:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's aged.
47:46
Speaker 2: Daniel Lee Lewis is sixty six. They're not even close
47:48
Speaker 2: in age. He's twenty six, twenty three years younger than
47:52
Speaker 2: Warren Batty. Like, this guy's all over the blaze.
47:54
Speaker 1: Well, his thing with Daniel day Lewis is that he
47:56
Speaker 1: really did beat somebody to death with a bowling pin once.
47:59
Speaker 1: So he thought Daniel day Lewis could really bring that
48:01
Speaker 1: to life on screen like he did, and there will
48:04
Speaker 1: be blood. Oh boy, you got anything else?
48:08
Speaker 2: I got nothing else?
48:09
Speaker 1: Have you forgotten all the mean things I've said to
48:11
Speaker 1: you of this episode?
48:13
Speaker 2: I don't even know what you're talking about.
48:14
Speaker 1: Great, Well, since Chuck doesn't know what I'm talking about everybody,
48:17
Speaker 1: that means that it's time for listener mail.
48:21
Speaker 2: You know, we're going to forego listener mail this week.
48:23
Speaker 2: It's late in the air, and we would just like
48:25
Speaker 2: to remind everybody we're going to say our official Christmas
48:28
Speaker 2: s greetings on our Christmas episode. But we've got some
48:32
Speaker 2: great live shows coming up next year. We're doing our
48:35
Speaker 2: Pacific Northwest Swing and as we do every year in
48:38
Speaker 2: see almost every year in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco
48:42
Speaker 2: at Sketch Fest, and we went to some bigger theaters
48:45
Speaker 2: this time in Seattle especially, so we would love to
48:49
Speaker 2: see everybody and for you to fill those places up
48:52
Speaker 2: Start twenty twenty four off right, just go to our website,
48:55
Speaker 2: stuff Youshould Do dot com and click on the tour
48:58
Speaker 2: page and buy tickets from legitimate sources. Please do not
49:03
Speaker 2: go to scalper sites. You might think it's the real site,
49:06
Speaker 2: but if the tickets are more than like forty bucks
49:08
Speaker 2: or something, then it's not a real site.
49:10
Speaker 1: Or if they want to be paid in gift cards,
49:12
Speaker 1: not a real ticket seller.
49:15
Speaker 2: That's right. But we hope to see everybody in January late.
49:18
Speaker 1: J Absolutely and in the meantime, everybody. If you want
49:21
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you can send us
49:23
Speaker 1: an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
49:27
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
49:33
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
49:36
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.