Stuff You Should Know - Beanie Babies: Reigning Toy Craze Champion

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

The world has seen a lot of weird investment bubbles in its time, but few of them rival the fever that gripped the world in the 90s after Beanie Babies took off. Let’s visit this strange chapter in toy history together.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, people! If you want to come see us live next year, your very first chance to do it is going to be Seattle Washington on January 24th at the Paramount Theater, isn't that right? Yeah, and then the following day, the very next day, we're going all the way down to Portland, Oregon for another show on the 25th at Revolution Hall.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too and we're feeling fairly festive. And this is stuff you should know. That's right. The episode before the Christmas episode. Yeah, which is, uh, uh, become a a, I guess, tradition to do a classic toy. When did we start that? I'd say more custom than tradition. All right.

I'm sorry. Christmas custom. I'm feeling contrary. It is definitely a tradition. Yeah, that's because you're about to shut it down for a month, so you don't care. You're burning bridges. Exactly. I won't see you until like 2024

Yeah, like chuckle chuckle forget anything that happens today by then I'm trying to think of what our first toy one was It was a handful of years ago. I don't remember but it was Slinky maybe no, no, I mean we've done toy ones. It's not around Christmas I'm trying to think of the first toy Christmasy one. I can't I'm drawing a blank right now. So this is like high quality podcasting. We're doing right now Well, good pick this year. Yeah, thanks. I don't know what made me think of beanie babies But I did and I think it turned out to be a good one too because it had nothing to do with Christmas really

Yeah Christmas pops up at one part And I think it turned out to be a good one too because it had nothing to do with Christmas really. Yeah. Christmas pops up at one part, but it's a toy and it's a really interesting toy because beanie babies for those of you who don't know if you were born after the 90s were probably well, I'll just say the financial times called it, potentially the greatest market bubble of all times. Yeah. I mean, that's really saying something because there's been some market bubbles, but the beanie baby craze of the mid to late 90s probably topped them all. It was just that crazy.

I mean, we've talked about some crazy stuff that people have done for toys before, people elbowing one another for a cabbage patch kid That's peanuts compared to what people did for beanie babies Yeah, I didn't know anything about this either because that was sort of the end of college and then my New York New Jersey years and I just I knew that beanie babies were a thing, but I was not participating In the economy in that way at that point. So, but I was not participating in the economy in that way at that point. So you didn't, you didn't know the single one?

Oh, of course not. I didn't either. No, I totally didn't. But the thing is, is we were in the minority in America, something like 62 or 63 percent owned at least one beanie baby at the height of this, this bubble. Think about that. Yeah, that, that honestly was one of the most shocking stats in this whole thing. Yeah, that's like 6.3 people out of every 10 people.

Yeah, that's amazing when you're talking about a little kids toy. Yeah, well that was the thing. It wasn't kids that fueled this craze. It was almost exclusively adults because the reason a market bubble grew is because there became this idea that beanie babies were valuable, that they had an inherent value greater than the face value that you would pay for them at the retail store. Yeah, which was true for a while. Yeah, it was.

It was. We'll get into all that. Let's start from the beginning shall we All right, well you can't talk be any babies without talking about the gentleman who started it all I do remember seeing the letters T.Y. Mm-hmm on Beanie baby packaging so I wasn't completely head in the sand But I did not know that T.Y. was the guy's name. It was Ty Warner who was born in the mid-1940s in LaGrange Chicago suburb LaGrange, Illinois and

He had a pretty not great childhood. It seems like is that fair to say? Yeah, from from everything I've heard Yeah, I had a had a mother who suffered from mental illness, which was not treated, which is even worse. I had a, didn't have a great relationship with his dad. His parents got divorced when he was in his thirties, but he went to college at Kalamazoo, college in Michigan, where he learned his love of treading the boards. Yeah, Kalamazoo. That makes theater. Right, exactly. But he did, he got into acting and it kind of, either he was already like a theater kid at heart or it turned him into a theater kid because he ended up taking that way of living

or that way of looking at the world or being in the world with him, essentially for the rest of his life. Yeah, he seemed fairly flamboyant. He was flamboyant. There's a really off-sighted story about him showing up when he became a salesman for the toy company that his father worked for.

He would show up to these sales calls in a Rolls Royce, wearing a floor-length fur coat, and a cane, and a hat. Amazing. Essentially like Kramer when he accidentally is wearing the Technicolor Dreamcoat and ends up with that big, Jemiracoy hat and a cane. Yeah.

That's essentially what Ty Warner showed up to these, these sales meetings looking like in the early 60s. And apparently it worked because he said that his premise was, if he showed up to a sales meeting looking like that, people would say, I want to see what's in that guy's brief case. Yeah. Or do you? Yeah. It depends on the kind of party you're in for.

Yeah, he was a really good salesperson, apparently. He thought a lot of himself though, and in 1980, he worked for this company, I guess, for like 18 years, because he got the job in 1962. So, that's a nice long run, but his, at least the way his former boss told it, got name Harold Nazamian, who was the CEO, basically accused him of moon lighting on the company and using their sales list in his personal relationships with people as a salesperson to sell his own stuff while he was working as a sales manager for this company. So he got fired.

Yeah, I'm those sales calls. He would be like, yeah, I've got these great daykin products, but also I want to show you these too. So he was not only using company context, he was be like, yeah, I've got these great Daikin products, but also I want to show you these too. So he was not only using company context, he was using company time too. It's about as bad a thing you can do as a salesman, essentially. Yeah.

And it wasn't long after that, the Beanie Baby came along. No, that was, so it was 1980 when he lost the job. He apparently moved to Rome. He went to go visit some friends and ended up living there for a few years. And when he came back, he was inspired to keep going in the toy industry. I guess it kind of got under his skin. And he'd seen some toy cats there in Rome, he said. And he was inspired to create not beanie babies at first, but his first-plush toys, which was a line of cats laying down.

Pretty fluffy, they looked, they were fully stuffed, which is a big difference between them and beanie babies. And then for every cat, there was a Himalayan version of it. And they were pretty cute little cats, but the thing that he did that I think really kind of helped Sell these things because they were like a modest success of seeing it described as That he gave them names. They were in they weren't just some stuff cat. This was smoky. This was peaches Like these these cats were

Individuals they they had an identity and that made them that much more lovable Yeah, and they were larger. They were about 17 inches. They larger than beanie babies would be. They would cost more than beanie babies at 20 bucks. And like you said, they were stuff, but not stuffed with the kind of genius of the, I don't know about genius. That's probably stretching that word. Sure.

Let's just say the fairly smart thing that he did with beanie babies, was he stuffed them with beads like a, what's it called? The Pellacabine back chair. Yeah, pretty much. And didn't over stuff it, so you could move them around and pose them and they could, you know, droop over your shoulder and stuff like that, not like a regular sort of fully stuffed, whatever they stuffed those things with, whatever weird, chemical stuffing. Oh, like the little Styrofoam pellets?

Or the styrofoam fiber that's kind of like, yeah, fibers. Yeah, I mean, those are the cheapest ones that you would get as a prize at an amusement park. Yes, that literal Styrofoam balls. Right. And that was a big that was a big deal about his beanie babies because they were high quality. They were very well made from the outset. He was all up the bottom of the South Korean manufacturers. He had partnered with to make these things. He was really involved in the design and manufacturing process.

So these were really high quality dolls, but he made a very conscious decision to sell beanie babies at five bucks a pop, which he said that was the... Kids could typically buy that with their allowance money, because as we'll forget multiple times throughout the episode, these were originally meant for kids to buy the beanie babies were. that with their allowance money. Because as we'll forget multiple times throughout this episode, these were originally meant for kids to buy the Bini babies were.

So that was a really big deal because he came out, he was one of the first people to come out with a high quality toy at a price point of something you would get at like the County Fair or something as a prize, but instead it was a good quality plush toy. Yeah, exactly. And so this was 1993 for the actual launch of the Beanie Baby, which launched with Brownie the Bear, and Pinter's the Lobster.

And like a cabbage patch kid, it came with a date of birth. He used the name like he originally did with those fully stuffed cats, or kiddies, I guess, fully stuffed cats, sounds gross. It's like a turduckin. Including the date of birth and then also another key was this little short poem and their little heart-shaped tag turned out to be a bit of marketing genius. It was just an extra little something to make it different to appeal to a kid because you got to, even if it ended up being a thing that adults try to collect because you know they thought it was valuable. It never would have gotten there if he hadn't have made a toy that kids really love to begin with.

Right. Also I mean he wasn't the first to do that. This was a good 10 years after the cabbage patch kids and their adoption papers and all that stuff, but it's still it is a good marketing technique for sure And it did work. But the thing that made beanie babies really kind of take off was multi-fold. Part of it was his marketing scheme. He had a really brilliant idea, which was only certain kinds of stores could carry beanie babies. And you actually had to be a licensed beanie baby retailer to sell beanie babies legally or legitimately. And those stores were like hallmarked

stores, locally owned gift stores, hospital gift shops, like small stores. So that right off the bat, canceled any chance of anyone I saw it described it going into like a big box store like a Walmart or something and seeing a bargain bin of beanie babies just lumped together for 50% off. So the fact that that didn't that that possibility didn't exist, someone couldn't see that automatically made it. They were just higher status than they otherwise would have been because he had he made enough to sell to huge retailers like that.

He's he decided deliberately not to do that for that reason. Yeah, super smart. I mean, if you can create a scarcity and the illusion that what you're peddling is like limited and collectible. Yeah, then you're're gonna do pretty well. And that's what he did, but not only by limiting the amount of stores that could be sold in, but he also limited the number of toys that these stores could even buy. Like that hallmark store, once they really took off, couldn't be like, hey, we're gonna dedicate half our store to these things now, because they're selling like hotcakes. So he would dole them out

and limited numbers to the stores stores and each of those stores only had certain products like you know you might have spot the dog and squeal or the pig at one store or chocolate the mousse and flash the dolphin at another. And that creates a situation then where kids are like, I got a you, like completing the collection as a classic kids toy scam. For sure. Yeah, collect all the things. Exactly. And so you would have to go around town to multiple stores in your town to get the ones that were available. And because they were allowed only by limited amounts, frequently those things were sold out. So the idea that these things were scarce, collectors items was manufactured out of the

gate by Ty Warner and his marketing skim. I almost said scam, but scheme, I think, is a better way to put it. Yeah, the other big thing is that this coincided with the rise of the internet There's a great Scene in the movie. There's a movie that's out now. I think an Apple original called the beany bubble. Yeah, I haven't seen it Did you watch it? Now the reviews aren't kind I may watch it because I love Zach Gallifanakis, who plays Time Warner and Elizabeth Banks is in the movie, is a sort of a tinley veiled version of his former business partner and Romantic partner, I think, Patricia Roach.

But in the movie, in the trailer, I saw today Zach said, because they started a website, and they were an early website in those years, Zach... that california or i guess time Warner says uh... we broke the internet thing that's a lot of the good line because of the internet was so new and i was like i guess you know the thing yeah apparently so that he had an employee named leena travedi and she was a coder and this is like nineteen ninety three ninety four and she convinced high-ornor to create a

Beanie Babies website because they were getting calls and letters and stuff like that from people saying like this is my checklist is this accurate am I missing any and they thought well let's just put like a central place where all of the Beanie Babies can be listed and it can be a place where everybody who likes Beanie Babies can come and and learn and get excited about beanie babies and buy beanie babies. Because starting in 1995, they started selling beanie babies on this website. And that was the same year that Amazon and eBay launched.

So they were one of the first e-commerce sites on the internet, too. Yeah, which is amazing. The movie has a character named Maya, who was, again thinly veiled version of Lena Travedi, which I'm curious why they didn't just use their real names. They they touted this as loosely based on on Zach Bisonets book. And that they that some of it was fictitious. I think to keep from getting sued. I get the impression that tie-warner is not shy about suing people. Well, which is interesting because he played tie-warner in the movie like that's the only name that wasn't changed. Yeah, I don't I don't know why they did it, but they definitely did it. Well judging from the trailer it seems that both the

Banks character and the Maya character are kind of one of the threads of the movies as it was seemingly in real life, was that there were at least a couple of women in the organization that had a lot to do with their growth and the sort of story is that he never gave them enough credit and that seems to play out in the movie. Oh yeah. Like, if you read any like corporate write um, corporate write-ups, like, like, press releases or the very rare interviews he's given, like, it sounds like the whole thing was a, just

him, just him. Yeah. And in part, it was largely him because he owned the company from the outset, always has, he's never sh- he's never sold one share, he didn't take it public. It's been a privately owned company, buy him 100% as far as I know from the outset. So he definitely, you know, really was the driving force in this, but he had helped that is largely unacknowledged publicly that. It's a good thing that Zach Bisonette came along and also the people who made that the movie based on Zach Bisonette's book to kind of shine a spotlight on the other people

of this particularly women who helped him. Yeah, Zach and Zach. That's right. The two Zachs on the Zach attack against Ty Warren. The other thing that he did to sort of drive this, I mean, I guess we can call it a false scarcity, is he was very secret about the company. He didn't want people outside the company knowing like when they were going to launch a new kind of toy, how many they were making. In 1995, he started retiring models, and then adding other ones, and he would just all of a sudden drop like, you know this

Marty moose what did I call him something the most chocolate moose Chocolate moose is gone. Let's say and and if they're being baby people out there like no chocolate moose never left I'm just using that as an example That's a good idea But they would just announce that on the website and all of a sudden people like oh my god They've retired the moose and you know people are driving around and trying to find them in those stores before they're all gone. Yeah, that was a deliberate thing to do as well to create the further scarcity, like legitimate scarcity, but apparently he fell into that backwards or he stumbled into it because

we said that he was really involved in the design after these things would launch. He would like C1 and be like, that's two orange. I want it more red. And all of a sudden, I saw Pinchy, the lobster would be a much deeper red. Well, they'd stop producing the orangeish red one and the beanie baby collectors would go bonkers trying to find the other one.

He started to notice that. And so he created real scarcity by deliberately retiring. So I'm just out of the blue. People would go scramble to find them. And then retailers, most importantly, would start stockpiling everything that he had, that they could sell, say, the orange pinchy.

Yeah, he was also smart enough to realize that the cabbage patch kids, like when that bubble burst, it just kind of all went away. And so he would do things like, hey, Hallmark, if you want to order these beanie babies, you've got to also order some of this other stuff that I'm selling.

It's not as nearly as popular, but he tried to increase revenues sort of across the company so he wasn't all in on the beanie baby. Right. I say we take a break and come back and talk about how McDonald's factors into this. What do you think? McWa?

Yeah. Lately I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or aluminium. How about the one on borderline disorder? Better yet worth more than that one before. Oh, how about the one on borderline disorder? Better yet worth more than heard that one before, but it was so nice I learned it's why I said everybody listen up. Oh, it's just a job to roll.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, I'm Maya Shankar, and I'm a scientist who studies human behavior. Many of us have experienced a moment in our lives that changes everything. A moment that instantly divides our life into a before and an after. On my podcast, a slight change of plans, I talked to people about how they've navigated exactly these moments. I also talked to experts on the science of change about how we can live happier, healthier lives. These momentary experiences of all, they tend to, through their challenges to your belief system, help us be more resilient.

Because as we all know, the only constant is change. So let's make the most of it. Listen to a slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think stuff is fun with Josh and Josh, so it should not. Okay, Chuck, so we said McDonald's factors into this. Like any great American economic bubble story, McDonald's is going to play some role in it whatsoever, somehow, so we said McDonald's factors into this. Like any great American economic bubble story, McDonald's is gonna play some role in it whatsoever,

somehow, some way. And McDonald's is the one that basically said, if you are just kinda out there on the margins and don't really know what's going on in this beanie baby collector world growing under your very nose, this McDonald's happy meal promotion is going to just blow the doors

off of any illusions that beanie babies are not a cultural force to be reckoned with. Yeah, over a couple of years, I think they had two versions in 97 and 98, where there were hundreds of millions of teeny babies. These were even smaller obviously because it was, you know, to fit into a happy meal. Yeah, teeny beanies. Yeah, what does a teeny babies? It works too. I like teeny babies.

I like teeny babies too. Teeny beanies. And, you know, even if your thing is already popular, all of a sudden, if hundreds of millions of these things are going out in happy meals, and, you know, the most popular, you know, fast food restaurant chain in the world, then it's gonna just skyrocket

this thing even further and that's exactly what it did. Yeah, the 1998 one, the second one that they did where you could get teeny beanies in a happy meal. The first weekend of that promotion, McDonald's saw the highest increase in sales in its corporate history. And it never sold more in any weekend than the history of McDonald's than it did at the beginning of that second Beanybabies promotion. And people were ordering as many happy meals as they were allowed to order and telling the McDonald's workers

just keep the food. I just want the Beanyanie babies. McDonald's had to set up rules like individual franchises, had their own rules. It was really patchwork where you could say, get five happy meals per order or per visit. And you had to have a two hour waiting period in between visits. So people would like to just go from McDonald's and McDonald's and then just go on like a circuit

to get as many of the beanie babies as they possibly could. People were tackling like delivery people showing up with the boxes of the new beanie babies. It was nuts. What people did just for the McDonald's version of the beanie babies. Yeah, that McDonald's record. That even counts passing the great McRibb feast of 92. The previous record older. The McRibs back right now, I saw I've been meaning to go get one. Talk about false scarcity. Yeah, same thing, for sure. I mean, they could put that on their menu at any time, right?

Totally. For sure. You know that the fat cats at McDonald's corporate are eating McRibs every day of the year. Yeah. And the employee lounge is just stocked with them. Right. But all this that's going on, Chuck, is underscores a larger cultural thing. And that is that people are buying these beanie babies, not just because they think they're

the cutest thing on two legs, but because it has become largely widely accepted that they are a sound investment if you wanna diversify your portfolio or more often was the case, make your entire portfolio just beanie babies. Yeah, you know, this was by the, like you said, the cabbage patch kids that are already coming on, everyone has already known at this point

about the, you know the Star Wars collectibles and baseball cards and trading cards. So the idea, I think there are certain people out there after all those things happened that are always sort of looking for that next thing as a sort of alternative investment. If I can buy 50 beanie babies and put them in a box and just sit on them and that'll put my kids through college one day. Yeah. And that's, you know, a lot of people did stuff like that. I think you mentioned eBay had launched very soon afterward.

They launched in 95 and in 1997, this is the other most staggering set of the show to me. And the 6% of all of eBay was Beanie Baby Sales. Yeah. In that nuts, so the secondary market really did grow up and there really was like a huge market for Beanie babies that say had been retired and one that you had bought for $5 and kept in the package, you could sell for hundreds of dollars on eBay, legitimately in the mid to late 90s. Yeah.

So it really was happening. Like it wasn't like everybody was just hoping beyond hope that their beanie babies were going to increase in value. They were increasing value before their very eyes. So people who weren't sucked into it were like, this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. And if there's ever been an economic bubble, this is it. And yet, people were buying these things for long-term investing. They were buying them, hanging on to them for 20 years or 30 years from now.

The people who were actually trading in the moment are the ones who might have made money off of it. But that's pretty much the only people who did. Yeah, for sure. It also created a sort of an industry around it. You found some examples of people that made a lot of money just in the ancillary, beanie baby market by doing things like writing books about stuff, this woman Peggy Gallagher, she was a paralegal.

She made 200 grand on a book that she self published called the beanie baby phenomenon and then started making I imagine a pretty good deal of money as an official well not official but as just an experience beanie authenticator another woman named Mary Beth soba Luski she was an IBM Systems Engineer and she just made sort of the go-to list, like the Bible basically of Beanie Baby pricing and made a lot of money off that and also started putting out a magazine. Yeah. Was it a monthly?

Yeah, so it was based around the price list. Like, did you ever collect or rebeck its monthly for baseball cards? No. It's just a big price list. Like, did you ever collect or rebackets monthly for baseball cards? It's just a big price list. No, but I knew about it. Okay, it was basically that, but for Bini babies, it was called Mary Beth's Beanbag World. They sold 650,000 copies a month at its peak for six bucks a pop.

So that's almost $3 million a run per issue. Yeah. For Bini babies price guides, right? But she really went to town with it it wasn't it wasn't you know just based on nothing they she and her her assistance like called dealers beanie baby dealers to find out what their prices were what was selling really fast what you got what you got what you got right right they were following eBay prices like they were it was a legitimate Olivia put it was the gold standard priceless for a reason.

Yeah. You know? So, and Mary Beth Sobalowski is another woman who was often overlooked for the contribution she made to the beanie baby mania, because in addition to creating the gold standard priceless, she was one of the original self-described Chicago suburban soccer moms who started trading beanie babies in the first place. And apparently, they're fervor in trading beanie babies in suburban Chicago actually kicked off the national trend of collecting and trading beanie babies. And they essentially created the secondary market. There was a HBO documentary a couple of years ago. I think called Beanie Mania that really does a good job of shining a light on them and

their role and contribution to the whole thing, too. So we've had a documentary, now a feature film. Yes. Broadway? Broadway's next, and then James Mischner is coming back to life to write an epic novel about it That'd be pretty amazing Speaking of amazing there are also some amazing stories about just how kind of crazy things got

And many different ways one of which is a 1999 divorce case in Las Vegas, where this couple was divorcing, and they had a lot of combined assets in the form of beanie babies that they thought were worth a lot, and they may have been worth a lot of money, their collection. And there's a very great picture if you look it up on the internet, just type in Vegas, beanie baby Baby divorce couple. And they brought all these Beanie babies in on the floor and the judge said, like choosing a team at recess, you just go one at a time and each of you pick out a Beanie baby that you're gonna keep for yourself.

And it's just a very kind of funny looking photo. It is, and until you read some of the quotes from the woman involved in the divorce case, the wife, who was like, it was really demoralizing and degrading to have to be forced to do that. She was really upset that the judge made her and her ex-husband do that. But, yes, she was. She was not happy about it at all. But the whole thing was worth five grand, I think they said, but that was five grand at the time. And people were speculating on beanie babies. So the thing could

have been worth a million dollars that pile of beanie babies, which is why they went to the trouble of selecting them like that one at a time. I don't know. I mean, I guess everyone's entitled to their own opinion. It's her life, but degrading. I don't think she used the word degrading, but it was along those lines, I'm paraphrasing. Okay, I would have felt more silly, unless he like tied them both up and made them do it with their mouth or something. That's degrading.

No, when they picked a beanie baby, they had to pick it up with their chin and hand it to their ex to say whether it was okay if they kept your nut and then they had to hand it back all without using their hands. Right, what was the thing you do where you would pass something with your neck? That's what I'm talking about. Oh, okay. They did that but with the beanie babies they selected. Okay, what did people use to pass though? Like an orange I think is what it was?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not sure. I can't remember what movie. But when you're a kid, I think the whole point of that game was like Look out close. We are exactly right It was like spin the bottle but with an orange and next In jans and no bottle right There was a guy in California named Chris Robinson senior. I don't think any relation to the other Chris Robinson and He bought to 20,000 beanie babies, not $20,000 worth, 20,000 actual beanie babies, spending 100 grand or so.

And he was one of those guys. It was like, this is going to put my five kids through college one day. And one of his kids, Chris Jr., of the black Cros, I guess, made a documentary called Banker Up to Buy Beanie's about, I guess, how dumb he thought his dad was for spending that much money, like emptying their bank account because he thought it was a good investment. Yeah, it's a very short documentary. It's like eight to 12 minutes. I can't remember which one. Mostly, it's just him interviewing his family members about this period in their family's

history. And it dumb. Yeah. It was like, the dad is definitely like, you know, it was not a good idea, but he's still holding out hope that, you know, at some point, sometime down the road, oh yeah, they still have them, like they're the background in all of the, the, the shots, like the interviews. It's pretty, it's cute. It's not like, you know, condemnation or anything like that,

but it's worth the eight to 12 minutes that you'll spend watching it, I think. All right, well, let's go check that out. The dad's like, this documentary is very degrading. Right, I'm paraphrasing. There were a lot of cases, you know, there were people indicted in court for counterfeiting these things. I'm paraphrasing. There were a lot of cases. There were people indicted in court for counterfeiting these things.

POs that were never delivered and distributors kept them money. The craze was so bad, there was actual crime, like people breaking in and stealing beanie babies. This one case of a 77 year old guy in Chicago named Ben Perry was charged with stealing close to 1300 beanie babies. There was a PI that found him a tie incorporated private eye. In fact, they found him moving stuff out of a storage locker, moving these toys in and out. And I'm not sure. Like he said that they weren't stolen yet. He gave them up and donated them to a charity.

Like that seems very fishing to me. He apparently bought them for dirt cheap at a produce market, like a farmer's market. And he swore he didn't know that they were stolen, even though they were in boxes labeled tie. Like they were shipping boxes stolen out of the warehouse. But he got off finally, but it became clear to him that he didn't steal them, but that they were stolen.

So he just donated them. So he didn't get in trouble. No, but apparently he loved all of the limelight that was cast on him by the press during this, this, the time that he was in court as the beanie baby band. He apparently aided up. So he got some time to know he's like i'm going out and start exactly there's another one a murder is frequently linked to beanie babies even though it's kind of a stretch if you start to stretch beneath the

service but uh... a man named jeffrey white murdered uh... another man harry simmonds in west Another man, Harry Simmons in West Virginia, supposedly over a dispute over who owned some beanie babies, although really what happened was Harry Simmons and Jeffrey White used to work together, and I think Jeffrey White was stealing or loafing or something like that, and Harry Simmons got him fired. So Jeffrey White, who had borrowed beanie babies from him and hadn't given them back, killed Harry Simmons. We understand you've been loafing. Exactly. who had borrow beanie babies from ahead and give them back killed Harry Simmons. We understand you've been loathing.

Is that true? Yes, Edith Grime. If you got time to lean, you got time to clean, son. Should we take a break on that note? Yes, sure. All right, we'll be right back and wrap up the story of the Beanie Baby. Lately I've been learning some stuff about insomnia or how you mean, yeah, how about the one on borderline disorder? Better yet worth more than a hurt that one before,

but it was so nice I learned it's why I said everybody listen up Oh it's just a touch of roll It's stuff, it's stuff, it's stuff It should now When Walter Isaacson set out to write his biography of Elon Musk he believed he was taking on a world-changing figure. That night he was deciding whether or not to allow Starlink to be enabled to allow a sneak attack on Crimea.

What he got was a subject who also sowed chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social-emotional networks. When I sat down with Isaacson five weeks ago, he told me how he captured it all. They had Kansas spray paint and they're just putting big axes on machines and it's almost like kids playing on the playground. Just choose them up left, right, and center. And then like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he doesn't even remember it, getting the bars, done, excuse being a total ****. But I want the reader to see it in action. My name is Evan

Ratliffe and this is On Musk with Walter Isaacson. Join us in this four-part series as Isaacson breaks down how he captured a vivid portrait of a polarizing genius. Listen to On Musk on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Tune in to the new podcast, stories from the village of nothing much. Like easy listening, but perfection. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in everyday life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai, and you might know me from the bedtime story podcast, nothing much happens. I'm an architect of Kozy, and I invite

you to come spend some time where everyone is welcome and kindness is the default. When you tune in, you'll hear stories about bakeries and walks in the woods. A favorite booth at the diner and a blustery autumn day. Cats and dogs and rescued goats and donkeys. Old houses, bookshops, beaches where kites fly, and pretty stones are found. I have so many stories to tell you, and they are all designed to help you feel good and feel connected to what is good in the world. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the village of

nothing much on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, I'm Maya Shankar, and I'm a scientist who studies human behavior. Many of us have experienced a moment in our lives that changes everything, a moment that instantly divides our life into a before and an after. On my podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, I talk to people about how they've navigated exactly these moments. Something died in me that day. It never came back.

I'm so grateful that something you did emerge, a new me emerged, a new me was born. I also talked to experts on the science of change about how we can live happier, healthier lives. These momentary experiences of agh, they tend to, through their challenges to your belief system, help us be more resilient. Because as we all know, the only constant is change. So let's make the most of it. Listen to a slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We call this a bubble, like any sort of collectible or real estate bubble or financial bubble, because they eventually burst. And the beanie baby really followed the, I was about to say, rise and follow the internet, the internet clearly,

clearly never fell. It survived. But the big dot com boom was what, what helped the Bini baby along and also helped kill it a little bit. Although, you know, Bini babies were bound to, I think they were bound to go away one way or another anytime as something, it's something like this uh... uh... uh... uh... uh... all this nineteen ninety nine the website said or stop

we're stopping the operation we're not going to make any more of these uh... this point three hundred twenty five different beanie babies at the end of the year uh... some people thought no this is we know that tie guy by now it is just a stunt uh... to get people to buy more of his stuff. But it kind of work, because enthusiasts and collectors were like, all right, this is our last chance to go and get what's out there to complete our collections. Right. I didn't read the books at Bisonette's book, but I brought a review of it.

They mentioned the way that he puts it. This was, in fact, a 100% a stunt to kind of juice the beanie, the beanie baby market again. And it did work, but in the short term, and he basically says Ty Warner killed his creation by carrying out this stunt. Because on Christmas Eve, here's where Christmas pops up as we said at the beginning. Christmas Eve, 1999, right before the turn of the millennium.

Or no, I guess that was a year later. He said, tie, tie, Warner announced on the website, I changed my mind, I'll leave it up to you guys to vote whether we should keep making beanie babies or not. And in his credit, you had to pay 50 cents to vote whether we should keep making beanie babies or not. And in his credit, you had to pay 50 cents to vote, but each 50 cents vote went to the Elizabeth Glazer, Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation. So that was something. But 91% of people said, yes, we want to keep beanie babies going.

Of course he did. Yeah. And the company said, oh, well, that's great. We just so happen to have a whole new line of them ready to go. So here you go, everybody, beanie babies for all. And it was met with some craziness, but nothing like it used to be, and very shortly after the whole thing started to fizzle out rather quickly. Yeah, it seemed like this sort of the last hurrah. I don't know if Ty

Warner saw the writing on the wall and wanted one more sort of big sales crunch. I mean, if that's how we planned it, and then that was pretty smart because that's what happened. They had a huge sales jump. Even though brief, they sold about $800 million in 2000. I mean, that's seven years later. I think Bini babies lasted a lot longer than I would have expected them to. It seems to me like it would have been like a two year flash in the pan,

but they were around for a while. Yeah, I saw that they were still going until about 2002. So that's, yeah, that's a good long, almost a decade of a craze of a bubble. But at the end of it all people started to realize like, oh wait a minute, everybody has these things. This this clubby bear that I had to pay for the privilege of buying to be part of the club. Everybody has that. Or everyone has the princess die,

everybody has that. Or everyone has the Princess die, Beanie Baby Bear, the special limited edition, Beanie Baby, they released in honor of Princess die after she died. They made it sound like this was like the scaricest Beanie Baby yet. There was like a hundred million of them out there. So people started to realize like these things aren't scarce at all. There's a glut of them. And these thousands and thousands of dollars were the beanie babies that I have set aside are worthless.

And that was a huge blow to a lot of people. At the same time, I think it was also freeing because you'll just come across stories of people who basically spent all of their free time tracking down beanie babies. It was an obsession that they couldn't quit. And so they were out a bunch of money and time and wasted years, but they were free finally when the market finally crashed. Yeah, it's like Bitcoin.

I've seen it, I've seen it very closely compared to Bitcoin and at least one article. Yeah, I mean, I know people who are sort of obsessively hours and hours a day trading cryptocurrency. And it seems exhausting. And it's the same thing. If you ever see a bubble coming along, that's not a long term thing.

If something suddenly just jumps in value in it's shocking and people are writing like crazy articles about it, buy it, and then sell it during that. Don't hang on to it long term. Same thing with Bitcoin, like a lot of people made a lot of money by buying Bitcoin cheap and then selling it at its peak,

it's people who hung on to it as long term investment that are now like, I lost my shirt, you know? Yeah, totally. It's the same thing with Beanie Bay. It's the same thing with any economic bubble. You have to know when to get out at just the right time. Or you can sit on the sidelines and be like, you guys are chumps. Right. Well, who certainly wasn't a chump was Thai because he, and I feel like I can just call

him Thai because that was so his brand, the TY. Yeah, for sure. No one knows exactly what kind of dough he made on these because, like you said earlier, he never launched an IPO and didn't have to disclose stuff publicly, but he is and was a man with some ego because in 1998, there were some questions about, you know, beanie babies, did they really sell as much was at the top toy seller in the world. And he himself took out a full page while straight journal ad saying that he made $700 million in profits in 1997 alone, which is, I don't know if

that number is true, but if it's 700 million just in profits in one year, then that's remarkable. That would have made Thai ink more profitable than Hasbro and Mattel together that year. This is just from being sold. Exactly. Just in profits, right? That's what that taking out that ad in Wall Street Journal is what you call today a flex. Flex. Yeah, but I mean mean he is still a

legit billionaire it's sort of gone up and down according to Forbes as far as his net worth goes uh... two thousand two supposedly at six billion two thousand nine down to three point two twenty twenty three four says he's worth about five point seven uh... but it's you know he still has that company but he also diversified got into real estate notably as a hotelier and he owns the I think still closed four seasons hotel new york still closed what's it closed for ah there depends on he you ask I think he claimed it was renovations, but other people said it was a dispute with the Four Seasons brand,

but I think it's supposed to reopen in sometime next year. Yeah, I saw he had a dispute with the Four Seasons brand over upkeep fees, like what he basically needed to spend to keep the thing up to Four Seasons standards. Yeah. I also saw that that was the first hotel that opened to first responders and doctors and nurses who were working on the front lines of the COVID pandemic so that they had a place to

stay. It wouldn't have to go home and infect their families. Which I thought was pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, I guess we can talk about that a little bit in a broader sense because in a broader sense because Warner is someone who has been notably charitable as far as like front facing sort of putting stuff out there, kind of stuff like the Elizabeth Glazer pediatric AIDS foundation when he donated, you know, the 50 cents for those votes and stuff like that because he got in trouble at one point for tax, well not tax fraud, but what do you call it, tax evasion. And as part of his sentence, one of which was a couple years probation, 500 hours of community service and $100,000 fine on the criminal side, he paid over $53 million in civil penalties. But part of the argument was like, hey, you know, as far as this defense goes, like, this guy's really charitable. He's donated millions

of dollars to the Children's Hunger Fund and the Andre Aguisee Foundation. And like I said, a lot of really public facing, like, large donations, but prosecutors are like, that's a pittance of what this guy's worth. Right. And just because he gives a little bit of money and makes a big deal about it, doesn't mean he didn't break the law. Yeah, the judge in the case though was like, yeah, he did, but again,

I'm pretty impressed with his charitable work. So he got off easy. He could have gone to prison for four years. Instead, he got off with a $100,000 fine, 500 hours of community service and two years probation. And it was for just the dumbest thing he had a Swiss bank account that no one knew about but him that had like a hundred million dollars in it. This guy was a billionaire three times over at his poorest point. There's just no reason to have done that. And he did and he got caught doing it. And so he called it the greatest mistake of his life. Besides, besides that pump and dump scheme at the turn of the

millennium. So they kept making stuff, stuff ease. In fact, as a company in 2004, they started licensing deals or getting involved with licensing other people's stuff, like Garfield and some Disney stuff. There was something called Peony Booze that came out in 2009. Those were kind of things. That were, yeah, they did okay.

I mean, nothing obviously went like the Peony baby, but nothing ever has probably. But he still is out there making money selling stuff and he doesn't seem to be slowing down. I think how was he now? 70, what? Three, I think. 79 years old.

79, that was pretty close. Give her a take six years. Yeah. But he's still trying to market himself and his toy company. I think it was a little dismissive of the movie. Like, everybody who's ever had a movie made about themselves, they always say like 10% of that thing is true, but I think they also secretly kind of like that they've made a movie about them. Sure. That kind of thing.

Right. For sure. There's that, also, that secondary market chuck is still around, and people are trading on that myth that some people still have that beanie babies are really valuable. And so if you go on to eBay and search searching beanie babies, you'll find some for like a dollar. Some I think for less than a dollar. And then you can turn around and find the exact same ones for sale for $25,000 or $60,000 or something like that. And I was reading a, I think, tiecollector.com article where they were basically saying like, we're pretty sure this is either money laundering

that's going on, or it's some sort of scam where these people are trying to beef up like the market value of these things or the secondary market artificially, or it's just a straight up scam where like you pay them, where they buy from you and say, oh, I overpaid, pay me back in a gift card, which is another thing. In addition to selling at the height of a bubble,

never do business with somebody who demands to be paid in gift cards, something fishy is going on right there. That's my other word of advice around this Christmas time. Yeah, I was like a babysitter or something. Yeah, even still. I'd be like, what's your, what's your angle, babysitter? The one thing that cracked me up though was that when the movie came out and he kind of, which was just recently, I think the summer or last summer or whatever, he said, you know, I really wanted, I would prefer somebody like Warren Beatty or Daniel St. Louis to have played me.

I'm like, when this was going on, he was in his 40s. Warren Beatty is 89 years old. Yeah, he's aged. Daniel Lillys is 66. They're not even close in age. He's 23 years younger than Warren Beatty. Like this guy's all over the place. Well, his thing with Daniel Day Lewis is that he really did beat somebody to death with a bowling pin once

So he thought Daniel Day Lewis could really bring that to life on screen like he did and there will be blood Boy you got anything else? I got nothing else have you forgotten all the mean things I said to you this episode? I don't know what you're talking about great., since Chuck doesn't know what I'm talking about, everybody, that means that it's time for listener mail. A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A But we've got some great live shows coming up. Next year, we're doing our Pacific Northwest swing. And as we do every year, almost every year, in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco at Sketchfest. And we went to some bigger theaters this time

in Seattle, especially. So we would love to see everybody and feel those places up. Start 20, 24 off right. Just go to our website, stuffhacheno.com, click on the tour page, and buy tickets from legitimate sources. Please do not go to scalpersites.

You might think it's the real site, but if the tickets are more than like 40 bucks or something, then it's not a real site. Or if they want to be paid in gift cards, not a real ticket seller. That's right. But we hope to see everybody in gift cards, not a real ticket seller. That's right. But we hope to see everybody in January. Flate January.

Absolutely. And in the meantime, if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email. Send it off to StuffPodcast. at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Walter Isaacson set out to write about a world-changing genius in Elon Musk and found a man

addicted to chaos and conspiracy. I'm thinking it's idiotic to buy Twitter because he doesn't have a fingertip feel for social emotional networks. The book launched a thousand hot takes, so I sat down with Isaacson to try to get past the noise. I like the fact that people who say I'm not as tough on Musk as I should be or are always using anecdotes from my book to show why we should be tough on Musk. Join me, Evan Ratliffe, for On Musk with Walter Isaacson.

Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tune in to the new podcast, Stories from the Village of Nothing Much. Like Easy Listening, but for fiction. If you've overdosed on bad news, we invite you into a world where the glimmers of goodness in every day life are all around you. I'm Catherine Nicolai and I'm an architect of COSI. Come spend some

time where everyone is welcome and the default is kindness. Listen, relax, enjoy. Listen to stories from the Village of Nothing Much, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's so much news happening around the world that we're somehow supposed to stay on top of. That's why we launched The Big Tick. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio that turns down the volume of it to give you some space to think.

I'm Wes Casova. Each weekday I dig into one important story and talk about why it matters. Listen to the big take on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.