The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 270, Mary Beth's Bean Bag World with Fryda Wolff

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Seanbaby got Brockway and Fryda Wolff to agree to this podcast before telling them it was about Beanie Babies. They thought it might be about hacky sacks or novelty chairs, how could they have known it was about tragedy bears? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert is going to jail because you didn't buy his book. But it's not too late to help him win some creature comforts in prison. Every copy goes toward the commissary fund! https://linktr.ee/killyourimaginaryfriendd

the official podcast of 1,900 hotdog.com. We're the last website, doing funny articles, but we don't run out, so you have to go to Patreon.com slash 1,900 hot dog to subscribe. I'm Sean Baby from the internet, and my partner was a quarter-finalist on Meat That Beef, but due to his performance, it is now illegal to call him a hunk in California or Nevada. He's Robert Brockway. Ah, the Brockway Buns laws. Just to add fucking politics.

It's woke. You can't even have your buns out anymore. Here's a Brockway fact. I was once the lookout for a high-stakes Beanie Baby heist, and it ended in death and tragedy. Like all of my Brockway facts, this is true, but you can have no follow-up question. Damn it.

That's okay. I read about it in this magazine. You've heard our guest, maybe here, but also in video games and shows and international commercial campaigns. She's voice actress, La Supremma, Atrice de Voice, Friedo Wolf.

Hi. Hi. You were having me. Can you imagine that was my default voice? It's not? I feel lied to. But that was free voice work. Yeah, that was free voice work.

In your face, we got it. Wait, I haven't been recording any of this. Fuck. Oh, good, I can pop up my levels again. Be right back. Creeke. Clop, clop, clop, clop, clop. She did.

She's doing her folly work. Wait, did she think I was serious? About... There's that creek. That was a lot of dedication to a bit or there's been a misunderstanding. Well, are we starting over or not? No, we're not starting over. I was just totally kidding.

Oh, my God. I'm so gullible. We got the free voice work. We got the free folly work of the heavy door and the clumps. And that bit that you were, I guess it turned into a prank. It was a bit and now it's a prank. Sorry. Yeah, we're going to get you kicked out of the union for all this free work.

Like, you're in a lot of trouble now. Yeah, you don't have to do any real research if you have me on on a topic I'm not knowledgeable about. Just tell me anything and I'll believe it. Then I'll post about it. And then I'll start a blog and a podcast. Perfect. Hey, that's what we did. That's what we're doing right now.

We should do some plugs. Frida, do you have anything fun you're working on that you should plug? Survival. Having things to look forward to putting on pants on a daily basis. Remembering to wash my face. No, nothing. I mean, I'm an actor. I'm unemployed 90% of the time.

As far as stuff that's coming out, also no. Cool things that I can't announce yet because they're not announced. And there was that fun actor thing of like, well, did they keep me? We'll find out when we see the credits. Oh, right. No. Just continuing to wake up every day and dealing with it. And you're still still never COVID?

Still, my husband and I still never COVID. We're really boring people. We still wear masks indoors and eat outdoors. We're spoiled. We live in Los Angeles where the weather is very temperate. And even when it's very cold, it's like never lower than freaking 50s. And there's a burner. And you can drink.

And it's just very, we're spoiled. So, yeah, still six years on. I get, I'm part of an ongoing COVID survey study from Johns Hopkins. They send emails every, I don't know, six. months or something and they're still like still haven't had it really yeah amazing so we don't i also have not had it we've been sick uh twice and each of us have had independent colds twice in six years but also we don't have children like you guys do so you're fucked he doesn't but i have enough for all three of us i got sick six times this morning sean got my kids in the divorce brockway you don't

have kids? Why don't I think you have kids? One of my kids is definitely Brockways. The crazy one is definitely Brockways. I don't have kids and I've never had COVID also. What? This is a largely COVID free podcast. Wow. Yeah, I get it all the time. Yeah, I've been sick a few times, but I test every time, always negative. Hmm. Which is not cool. Uh, so that's your plug. It's not getting not getting COVID. Don't get COVID. It's not even, you know what? It's not even cooler or a challenge anymore. Like, I'm also one of those nerds who still like reads the wastewater reports. You can tell if there's COVID in the poopies water and if you sign up for your local health department, they'll send you the poopies water report and you can see influenza A and B in there

as well. COVID never came back. Like it stayed really low and stable over winter and it's already doing the funnel up before spring break. It's like it's not that it's done. It's just in the background because so many people passed it back. It's like when everyone had herpes in the 90s. So many people passed it back and forth. That's not even impressive anymore or special. You think you're so cool with it, but no. It's not that big a deal. No, it's weirder to not have had it at this point. So you read the wastewater report.

I only, locally, I only subscribed to next door. So all I know is when a DoorDash deliverer isn't white. But I'm up on that. Oof. But no, no, flu is much worse than COVID. So don't, like, even it's so six years ago. It's so uninteresting now. It's like the herpes of the 2010.

Well, this is awkward because my plug is for COVID. I was really excited to plug it. Well, we're just shit talking it this whole time. Yeah, it's a great plug. I guess. I guess I can promote my book instead. That makes more sense. I do have a new book. It's called I Will Kill Your Imaginary Friend for $200.

It's doing shockingly well, and I don't think that has anything to do with my promotional efforts. If anything, I've got to be hampering it. Let's see. At the time of this recording, it has been out six weeks or so. It is on its fourth printing. It has hundreds of reviews already. Seems to be holding steady around four and a half stars. People have decided totally independent of me and my threats and my blackmail that this is a good book. Probably shouldn't have gone to prison for it.

To be honest, the prison is more about the arson than the book promotion. I really just talked up the whole book promotion thing. I figured I could motivate some people. But it's fine. prison is fine. Try prison. If you are a member of the U.S. government, any member of the U.S. government, try prison. We do crafts in here. You'll love it. Yeah, my plug is for prison. I got the sweater you knitted. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's a great time. Doesn't fit. They limit our internet access. Way too small. My buns are hanging out.

I work out all the time. I mean, that's all intentional. You gave you gave me your measurements. Brockway, I got to ask, how do you feel about the audiobook version of your book and do you feel AI could have done it better? I really love it and absolutely not. Like she did such an amazing job, especially like ascribing the voices to every character that like you genuinely, a lot of people are saying, I thought this was like a full cast recording because she just can absolutely

disappear in a voice. And I make her do some wild goddamn voices in that book. I had to send her, I had to send my poor voice actress Trum Trum videos and be like, you got a, You got to find this madness and like this is the pitch. And she, God bless, she did it. Did she do like a weird accent?

Yes. She did the weird accent and the like the crazy speech patterns and the like oscillating voices. No, AI would never have stood a chance in hell. And the audio book is great. Support humans. There's my plug. It's for humans. Oh, great.

There we go. COVID prison and humans. Higher humans. There we go. Humans. Give me a shot. Tell you what I like in an audio book besides the human bit. As someone who consumes, like, less so now, but when I, you know, in the pre-COVID world when I was driving to work, I mostly record from home.

But when I was commuting a lot and also working out at the gym, I would always have an audiobook on. I like voice actors who make choices of judgment. It's not just doing voices because, like, first of all, everyone thinks voice acting is doing voices, it's not doing voices. You're acting and the way you act modifies how your voice comes out. But it's making choices and judgments. So it's not just he said chuckling, he said chuckling, just those little bits that make it more alive. Or also when the actor is just sort of like is imposing the judgment of the character,

you know, however they feel about the thing or the person they're talking about, that makes all the difference in the world. And I cannot imagine a robot making choices because a robot has no feelings or taste and cannot make those judgments. There's no oscillator button for that. They keep telling you there isn't, but there isn't one. So I am very happy to hear that you are happy with your audiobook because not everybody feels that way. I love that we have you on and you have so much expertise on that subject.

And today we're talking about Beanie Babies. Not using any of them. Yeah, it won't be useful at all. Did you have any Beanie Babies? This would have been about the time you were probably still in Scientology private school, huh? With your sister, Sean. Your sister. That's how I even know you in a weird circle.

That's a story for another podcast. Yeah, I guess that's not how we know each other, but that was a fun surprise when you were over. And you saw a picture of your high school classmate on the wall. Yeah, between Scientology and video games, the world is incredibly small on the West Coast. No, but I think I think I'm not a, not that I'm like so punk rock, but there are very few trends that I got to participate in because I had very stingy, elderly. parents. My father was born in 1925. My mother was born in 1940, and I'm 44 this year. You do the math. It was weird. It was like being raised by, you know, grandparents, but who also didn't want to be dumped with this kid. So they did not shower me with like whatever toy de jour was happening. I got to observe it as an observer. And I like that very few people. I was just asking my husband Joe, he's six years younger than me. But he's also like, he's lucky. He's, he's lucky. He's. He's, doesn't get stuck in wiki potholes. I get stuck in wiki potholes

all the time because I love avoiding things I need to do. He didn't know what tulip mania was. If you don't know what tulip mania is, you can look that up. But unless you're a history nerd, you're not going to know what tulip mania is. So this generation's tulip mania is Beanie babies, or rather elder millennials, Gen X,

understand beanie babies. This generation, Labibos. It's whatever thing that previously would have had no value, but if you can produce a lot or even maybe it's sorry to say it because there are some that are made after me, but Funko Pops, a thing that for its parts has no value or emotional attachment for people whatsoever. But if you make it into shapes and then you can push it with marketing and you can ascribe some sort of, it's the limited addition, it's scarcity brain in the same way where you're like,

oh, sure, there's a bunch of like, there's a bunch of unicorn, whatever. Oh, no, no, no. there's a bunch of bear, say, beanie babies, but this unicorn is a special limited edition and it's in a certain color. Now it has, like, scarcity value where people are going to fight or perhaps murder each other for it. Please. I just think every generation, because there's always a grifter, too. And every generation, there are showmen who will be grifters who will come up with some crap that we didn't need, that will ascribe value to it, that will try to make the most fit, and then they'll move on to the next thing. And this is also how I feel about AI or so many things.

As someone who voices commercials for a living, a commercial is selling you a solution you didn't need to a problem that you didn't have until you heard this commercial. You didn't know you needed this, but now you need it. You should be embarrassed, ashamed, feel less than whatever. That's how I make my money. Taste delicious.

Sometimes that's another. That's why I have 50 garden weasels. Yeah. So, no, I think Beanie Babies and anything like it are always relevant. It doesn't always end up in murder or bankruptcy. Has anyone died for a Lubbubu yet? I don't know. They would have live streamed it by now.

Yeah, I think I would have done that. Not yet. Working on it. My wife got into those. She has, she has, I don't know, people have fun of that kind of stuff. Beanie Babies was kind of next level, though. It's, okay, so I did an article recently that sort of opened my eyes to something. It's going to sound obvious after you hear it. But Beanie Babies are kind of a bummer.

And I say that, and I want to emphasize that, like, you have no idea how much of a bummer. So I bought a stack of magazines off eBay called Mary Beth's Beanbag World Monthly. It was originally called Mary Beth's Beanie World Monthly. Can you guess why it was changed? They sued? Exactly. She and her publisher were separately sued by Ty Warner, the CEO of Beanie Babies. It had no effect on her love for this man.

So she kept producing the magazine with any press release this company put out. She would reprint it. She would spin it in their favor, no matter what the circumstances. Like Frida was explaining, we know that Beanie Babies were sort of this cautionary tale of speculation economy. Like at a glance, you instantly recognize it for what it is. These things are worth nothing except for the limits of a collective imagination, which is plainly going to fail one day. And no one learned anything from Tulip Mania. No one learned anything from Beanie Babies.

We keep recreating it with NFTs and multi-level marketing and cryptocurrency. And it's all stupid imaginary money for idiots. And the idiots are dumber than them. That's what everyone knows. But what I discovered is Beanie Babies itself is crushingly depressing. And we're going to get into that. It's going to be torture. You'll love it.

What did she change the magazine to? What was the name that after she got sued? It was Beanie World and now it's Beanbag World, which is... That's a real different. five. That's like a lot of disappointed hacky sackers buying that magazine. Yeah, it is inherently misleading. She could have just left it like cute beans monthly. Just something that let you know what it was

without saying beanie? Yeah. Small animals that you love monthly. I don't know. There's not a great way to do it, but Beanbag is like the saddest way to do it. It's like she translated into Hungarian back. Hey, brul's. It's like Do you like your beanbag monster babies? The calling it a beanbag is like specifically taking all the magic out of it so that somebody would look at it and be like, oh my God, it is just a beanbag. Right. Yeah, sadness monthly.

So it came out in 1997 because of this woman, Mary Beth Sobuluski. She just loved these beanbag monsters. It sold almost 200,000 copies in its first issue, which was a lot. It'd be insane now. then it was pretty good. And then it more than doubled in the second issue. And so they started running it quarterly. And then very soon they ran it monthly. For almost four years, they just were pumping these out. And they are like fucking 300 pages long each. These things are the thickest magazines. So you're probably already seeing a problem with running a monthly beanbag

magazine. There's no fucking news ever about these things. The news for Beanie Baby, was they came out. People bought them. And so what these magazines ended up being was any fucking celebrity who touched one would get a four-page spread. These articles, they're like apocalyptic, and I'm going to read some to you. I have December 1999, and the reader mail section has multiple poem parodies. One of them is a half a page long. I'm not going to read it to you. I just want you to know what happened. Can I call a shot? Yeah. It's an easy shot. Okay. This is like, this isn't Babe Ruth pointing to the home run.

This is Babe Ruth, like, pointing to the pitcher, being like, you're going to catch this coming right at you. If there's something about Beanie Babies and Y2K, like maybe, worried about Y2K, one thing's not going to go offline. It's this Beanie baby. There's some stuff like, there's a lot of Y2K stuff, but no, these are all Christmas poems. Okay, that's all I just want to know if there's a lot of Y2K stuff

in the Beanie Baby magazine. That's all I want to know. It was a few months before Christmas and all over the land. The new Beanie's were released and were in hot demand. You can just extrapolate the rest of that poem yourself.

It is tragic. Did you ever see any like fan fiction in these? Just like people making up stories about because I mean, in thinking about it like, you know, us three collectively grew up with like 80s cartoons and all, all 80s cartoons were only developed,

two reasons. One, cocaine, two, to sell merchandise and toys. And it's kind of wonder, I don't remember, was there ever a show? Was there ever any kind of like animated show or anything pushed to sell? It's not like they needed it to, but isn't like the natural evolution is like, if you start with a toy, then do media versus media and then a toy? I don't think they did. And you bring up an important point that like you talk about those commercials, those cartoons that were just commercials, but those had so much imagination and they were so like, And you could imagine how to play and what those things do. You could kind of picture He-Man and Battle Cat and they're off hours, you know, making

sweet love, whatever you're imagining. But like they had voices and personalities. These bears and cats and things, they don't do shit. I don't know. I mean, we just figured it out for ourselves because you know what it was. Those cartoons and toys were marketed to children. Beanie babies were not. Beanie babies were not being bought up by kids.

They were being bought up by adults who did not have. a certain diagnosis and perhaps hadn't discovered trains and were collecting them for coping or addiction purposes. Oh my God, you know what? Fits perfectly inside model trains as though they are designed. Little cute beers. Fill them up with beanie babies. They fit right in the chairs, right in the conductor's caps. Tear them creatures open and pull out their bean insides, fit even better in the trains. Weirdly, I'm pretty sure. I'm having a flashback. I'm almost certain there's a Lubu-Boo movie coming just because it. see it as a thing to capitalize on before it's gone. Yeah.

Yeah, but at least that's something. At least there's, I don't remember there being any lore to Beanie babies. Nobody ever, like, told you, oh, this is, this is busy bear or whatever. And he's, he's an accountant and he hates his job. Yeah. Like, it was never, they didn't, they didn't get a backstory. Right. I found it.

Paul King to direct Laboo Boo Boo movie for Sony. Okay. My baby daughter watches a little Labubu video. And they do, there's something like, they creep, they creep, around this world of rainbows, like, with their weird grins. And you kind of get the idea they're stealing and eating children, but like, they're doing stuff. You're like, okay, I get... Doing something. Yeah. They have a purpose, whereas Beanie Babies were just very, like, general, kind of generalized designs in the way where, like, again, people of a certain

age remember Lisa Frank folders and trapper keepers, and they were sort of like, you know, a zebra blowing bubble gum, wearing headphones, dancing on a rainbow. Like, there wasn't necessarily narrative or a story there or any sort of like sequencing in the merchandise, it was just sort of like almost what we would consider to be AI stuff now where it's just random shit thrown together. And no disrespect to Lisa Frank because any of those images, like, you know, when you were a tiny child outside of middle school, you couldn't do drugs yet. So you saw those and you were just like, wow, this is the close as I can get to hallucinating, right? Yeah, like it just, it took you somewhere. I mean, it was to the point where like I went to private Catholic school up until

high school and trapper keepers of that sort were completely banned because they were too distracting the visual drugs were too strong for the Catholics that's funny can't look at the pictures this still image is too distracting too much imagination too much stimulation from this still image well there is no imagination these letters I guess to answer your question there is no fan fiction or fun to the letters like people write in and they're just like I got a bear. I think it might be fake. Like, I think some of them are electric bills. I think they just print whatever they get fucking sent. I do have a letter here on page 36. I want to read you.

Piccadilly tag. I just bought Azalea, trademark. But upon inspection, the tag reads Piccadilly trademark, trademark. What happened? Does that raise the value? And then they write D or D. In general, mismatched hang tags on Thai products do not raise the items for value. Mistag beanie babies and attic treasure plush items are becoming more commonly found as production and distribution levels increase. That's the standard format for a letter, someone thinking they got a jackpot, like when you get a misprinted stamp. Like that's very valuable to stamp collectors. Beanie babies are misprinted so often that all these nerds think, oh, I got a jackpot. This thing is fucking wrong. There's a typo on this. And then this magazine says, no, no, no, there's typos all over these things.

they don't care. These are bad toys. It's weird. They're popular. And we've dedicated our lives, not even to them, but to covering them. Right. To doing journalism based on them. The other thing I found while I was doing this article is that you sort of picture Beanie Babies like, oh, that's a blue one and that's a pink one. But like there was a lot of like, there's a princess die bear that's very famous because that was very expensive. There's a lot of them dedicated to dead people or diseases or tragic events. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what disease is? Leprosy? What? Like, there wasn't an HIV, beanie baby, was there? There was. There was some AIDS baby. What?

100%. That's so gauche. That's so not okay. Okay. But I got one that says it's an HVI baby. How much is that word? That's actually worth a lot of money because that's the cure. That's how you cure a bear of AIDS.

It's very amazing. We solved that here. Jamie, we can cut it. all this. That's never going to happen. Okay, so let's talk about the news. Let's let me skip to the news section of this magazine. And, um, okay, uh, the first one is called Halo Goodbye. And it's about this woman and she included a picture of herself with her little bear. And the bear's name is Halo and it's dedicated to the majesty of Jesus Christ. It's a, it's a god bear. And so this woman, it was so moved by the Tide Corporation making a god bear that she's like, you can never retire

this bear. This bear must stay in stores forever. And so she started a campaign to keep it in stores. Frida, can you guess what happened? Hold on. So she started campaign to keep it in stores. Was it just not moving in the stores? No, no, no. What Beanie Babies, their business models,

they put out the bear for like a few months or a year or whatever, and then they retire it. So they don't make any more, and that's what causes the secondary market to go crazy. So she was like, please never retire this bear. Do you think you know the ending of the story? Can I steal if she doesn't? Sure.

No, steal, yeah. they sued her close they ignored her and retired the fucking bear so this is the take this is a follow-up to a three-page feature they wrote a couple years earlier where she was really excited about this and then here's here's the aftermath is now she should be goddamn thankful she got away without a fucking lawsuit that's true it could have gone way worse for uh the next one is about Beanie babies scammers getting caught. A 58-year-old woman

who used Beanie babies to get donations for a fictitious dying child has been sentenced to another hundred hours of community service. This time for shoplifting food. So it wasn't the Beanie crime that got her. She just stole some food. It's actually very, very legal to use Beanie babies to swindle children.

That's the whole business model. Look, don't publicly shame people for stealing food. They did. You're the bad guy. Yeah, if you see someone stealing food, no, you didn't. But if you see someone stealing a beanie baby, make fun of them. They have a problem.

Yep. Yeah, still don't turn them in, but just like, I don't know, slap it out of their hands. Yeah, just be like, you can do better. Aim higher. I mean, that's what I should have done on that heist. I have a lot of regrets about that. She was, if this changes your opinion, she was already on probation after being convicted on one felony charge of collecting money under.

false pretenses in a beady scam. So she had one count of beanie scam. I mean, as long as she's scamming people like that own and love beanie babies and not the other way around. I agree completely. That's it's like you lost your money to Amway. It's like, okay, but like you know it was Amway going in, right? Like yeah. Yeah. This is all the scam. This is like you're asking me to sympathize with, with like an NFT grift to like somebody, you're asking me to sympathize with like Seth Green in this situation when like, no, no, I'm on, I'm, I don't know who stole that, that board ape NFT from him, but more, I'm on their side. Whatever, whatever crimes they have done, they have my support.

This one, this is a news article called bad beanie checks get collector jail time. It's about a 49 year old man who was sentenced with time served to 23 months in county prison for writing a $352 check for beanies. Okay, he deserves that. He bounced a check to be. To buy beanies. To buy beanie babies? Yes.

Are we illegally allowed to say that? Or is he in prison for beanbags? I think he might be in prison for beanbags. We don't want to get sued. Beanbag crimes. Convicted Beanie, trademark scam leader, dies. Eldred Proctor, half of the couple convicted last year of scaming 90 Beanie collectors, died in early September from throat cancer complications.

So that's just an unrelated, just fucking petty venture. Celebrating the cancer death of Beanie-related criminals? This is the leading hobbyist magazine. This is like their fucking Nintendo power. When we say fandoms are toxic, this is what we mean. Yes. It always ends this way. That's something else to be like, yeah, fucking get them.

We're on throat cancer. We're on throat cancer side here. Holy shit. It's fucking grim. And the rest of the news is all just rewritten press releases from the Thai Corporation. So there is an interview next with a popular teen opera singer who Google tells me made a less successful attempt at a pop music career. We're not going to read that. But just to give you the level of celebrity that they got, they got a...

Does she like Beanie Baby? Kind of. It doesn't say much about the Beanie Bay. I'm embarrassed. But I'm aware. I think her mom had one. To be honest, I skimmed the article. I was looking for pictures of her with her amazing collection.

But no, she's just like, she touched the world of Beanie in some way. And now she's going to die of throat cancer. Because that's what these things give you, folks. That's exactly right. We solved it. I'm having an epiphany. I feel like maybe like the silent and greatest generation, so that's the people who proceed at my parents, the people who proceed at boomers.

I feel like their method of coping with abuse was collecting precious moments figurines. And then the younger boomers to elder Gen X's way of coping with abuse was collecting Beanie Babies. Like that's how they just funneled their trauma. It was just like if you could just get enough of the precious moments and the Beanie Babies, they could reflect back to you, you know, the childhood that you would have liked to have had. There's something about that. It might be why they all tend to ski. towards sadness, why they made so many beanie babies about tragedies and diseases.

Did you guys watch years? This is, I don't, it's got to be more than 10 years now, but there was a Beanie Babies documentary, like Netflix or something. Did you guys see it? Yeah. I found it in my research. This woman was in it a lot, Mary Beth Subalusky. Oh, okay.

I remember watching it and I knew about the setup and the murder, but the more interesting thing that I retained as I just remember Thai being the. the guy, the Beanie Baby guy. I just remember him being like a literal Willy Wonka, sad, private to himself weirdo. Mm-hmm.

It was just like intensely just unreachable socially, very childlike, like, you know, every, like Robin Williams and toys, just like that classic weirdo who was probably very disturbed for whatever reason and just sort of, you know,

shared his coping method with the world, which resulted in more tragedy and weird. He was really... He was really... Communicate the like madness and abuse in his life through like creating tiny beanbag animals. People were like I

fucking love these. Like what? He's like no. Okay but don't look at me. Please. Like this dude was ill-prepared for a public life. I found something about this opera singer. She's accomplished much as a performer but lacks one thing many teenage girls have a large beanie baby collection.

She loves... She specifically does not. She specifically does a below average number of beanie babies. And that's why she's in the magazine, folks. Yeah, that counts. That counts as beanie related. There's a feature called A Wizard with Words on page 96. It's about J.K. Rowling. And I couldn't, I read this the entire thing. I don't know if she knows what Beanie Babies are. It is two pages introducing you to the most famous author on the planet, who obviously now we all

hate, but like at the time, what are they doing? I get it. She seems like she has a Beanie baby vibe. Yeah. Like I would have just assumed in the 90s, like you're the kind of person that has that you were involved with murdering somebody for a beanie baby. Like that's the vibe I got off of it. Yeah, if it was like 1999, if you were at her house. I was not a Potterhead.

I'm one of those like weird hipster assholes where if too many people like a thing, I'm like, oh, it can't be good. And I was like that about Harry Potter from day one. So I was a Harry Potter fan number one before it was cool to hate it. And then even before Rowling came. out as anti-trans. I was like, read another book. Please, you're embarrassing my generation. Anyway, I have ingrained. I never sought anything about her out, but I have ingrained in my brain. She did like a 60 minutes interview or something a while back. And I remember the softball

and the interviewer tossed her was something about like, how can you possibly choose what to merchandise or what to say no to when it comes to branding Harry Potter? She had a little thing. And she was like, the weirdest thing they ever asked me was for. peanut butter, as if, like, peanut butter was, like, too weird left field, gauche or lowbrow, but all the other shit that she agreed to put Harry Potter on was fine and noble and upper crust. I don't know what the fuck she meant. But for something about, like, peanut butter was just too low peasant line for her to cross with her brand. Potter butter? You think they call it Potter butter?

Peanut Potter? I mean, it couldn't be Harry butter. No, it's Harry butter. You're right. It seems definitely a hairy butter. Hairy peanut butter. Yeah. So gross. Yeah.

I do think Brockway's right that she is, she has that beanie vibe. Like if you're in her transvestigation room and she's like circling all these ladies' necks and saying, I know, I know it's her. Like you'd be wondering, why aren't there any beanie babies around here? Like, first and foremost. I would assume there would be a whole room for, and I would assume, I don't know where this is coming from, but I would assume that room used to be her dead childs. And I assume it's now full of beanie babies. 100%.

I don't know why, but that's just the vibe. That's the very specific vibe I get from J.K. Rowley. And she's got a whiteboard of terribly racist names. She's like, I've got this black character. Martin Luther's slavery. I can't. I'm trying to come up with something. No, that's a Beanie baby name.

That's one of the Beanie babies. You can't use that. TM. Keep all this in, Jamie. We're really sticking it to her finally. It's about time. Someone did. Okay, so page 100, they start talking about counterfeiting a lot in this magazine.

We're going to see if you can answer these counterfeit questions. You're working together as a team. Question one, I sent two bears I bought online from reputable sources to an authenticating service. I was told they were counterfeit based solely on the fact that the fabric was wrong. You always say there will be more than one thing wrong with a counterfeit. Is it possible these are not counterfeits? What do you think the answer is? No, they're not genuine.

Oh. Yeah, I would assume they're not genuine, but like, the Beanie babies were never made from silk, you know? They were never made from, like, expensive textiles. From the jump, they were very cheap materials, which is why they turned such a profit. So, I mean, just as someone who, like, I'm not rich, but sometimes I like to pretend, and I do like watching videos on learning about fast fashion, fast fashion the production of luxury goods

and sort of what makes what, like, for example, something that's stuck with me. There's a video you can find on YouTube of like someone who works with designer buyers talking about how in the same way where people were like, used to get in the 80s, everybody owned those luxury cable knit sweaters that when Harry met Sally and now they're all flammable and they feel like shit and I feel like glass on your skin. And it's true because of how fashion has devalued. And the same way we're like up until the 90s jeans were great. And now cheap jeans versus

expensive jeans, the difference in quality is marked. For example, and this is like inane stuff that you don't think about if you don't work in this business, like the zippers. And I shit you not. Once you notice stuff like this and you love being kept up at night by minutia, take like either cheap jeans. versus like more expensive jeans or even like a cheap bag of any kind you like backpacks, purses, whatever next to a very expensive or designer luxury one and feel the difference in the zipper whether it's chunky and it gets stuck or it's buttery. Shit like that adds up. But beanie babies? Like I could see it in maybe this let's say the

stitching or the stuffing or if it smells like formaldehyde is how a lot of things get dyed black if you get a pair of jeans or like a denim jacket or even a black t-shirt and it fucking stinks. It's formaldehyde. You're not supposed to wear that. It doesn't really wash out either. What was going on with the Beanie Babies? There was no, was there ever like a leather bound Beanie Baby or like a Silks?

No, they were all made out of pillowcases. Polyester? Filty. Right. I love that you assume that the counterfeit Beanie Baby is like somebody was out there making one out of the finest of luxury silks. But that's what I'm saying. The authentics, the originals, were never made from expensive textiles. I think.

I remember them just feeling cheap. I'm assuming this one's like fucking burlap or something. Like this one's human skin. And they're like, is it still real if it's a skin baby? Like, pubic hairs punched in for a wig. There you go. The necronomicon. We should go into business, Brockway.

Yeah, there we. I think we have a winning idea here. Custom bean babies for warlocks. By Frida and Broadway. Just exclusively. for witches and warlocks. I'll pre-order some of those. What was the answer?

The answer is, yes, this was a counterfeit bear, but then she spends an entire third of a page saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, but don't worry about it. You should keep buying stuff from those people. Sometimes people, she's not, she doesn't want to throw the dealer under the bus because if you know anything about crypto, there's this thing I think they call Fudd,

where like anyone who's a little bit negative at all, they're like, get the fuck out of here. Stop seeing anything negative. You're going to fucking burst. to this illusion that we have. And so she's doing that. She is like, everything's cool. Things like this happen.

Don't even worry about it. Keep buying beanie babies. Please just keep buying beanie babies. Don't question like why if it's, if this is something you enjoy, how are you getting like a counterfeit one at random? Maybe it's all bullshit. Don't go that far. Don't start putting the pieces together.

Stop thinking about this. Don't question the baby. Like they're right to not to fight against this as a community. Like this is the kind of toxic shit where you're like, oh no, what are we doing with our lives? Okay, next question. I recently bought a Liberti trademark and in looking over the counterfeit digest. I have found nothing wrong with the bear except the tsh tag. And the authentic picture of the tch tag, the TM is beside the word the and on mine it is beside the word collection.

I thought I had a counterfeit until I found the picture in your book with the authentic tush tag having the word beanie and benin instead of beanie. My liberty has beeny spelled right. Please let me know if this is a misprint or if I have a counterfeit. Okay, what do you think the answer is to that. Nah, it's just fucked up. It's genuine. It's real. That's exactly right.

What? They have misprint typos? All the time. Yeah, he told this at the start. They're all fucked up. How does that happen? Don't they just set it and forget it? I mean, like, stuff is computerized at this point. Yeah, you have to work.

You got to load up the letters every time thing. This will really have to work to fuck up a mass product produced product. Yeah. Take a minute. Hire, with all the billions you're making, hire somebody just to look the shit over. Does it say beaneen? If it does, change it so it doesn't. Next question.

I bought a beanie trademark at a local beanie show, no trademark. And when I got home, I noticed the word original, and the Yellow Star was spelled original. Did I buy a counterfeit? Genuine. Good shit. Solid shit. At this point, I'm going with it.

I'm genuine. Yep. No, you did not. The misspelling is a mistake. Other spelling mistakes. ranged from surface watch being spelled suffraise or suface wash to Gosport in UK being spelled gasport before it was caught and correct. I remember on the documentary, like, the official company Beanie Baby's website was made by like literally a 16 year old who was doing it like an after school hours. I remember this, like this very young inappropriately young should still be in school and then they like hired her full time to like run the website.

I wonder if they ever like announced these typos on the website because how do you validate this stuff? Like, I feel like she's just lying out her ass with the toxic positivity so people can buy in it. It's funny you say that because I came to the same conclusion when I saw the price guide. I was like, there is no way anyone could have done this research. This is a fucking woman talking out of her ass. And had to have been the number one authority in this community. Like, she had the number one magazine and wrote 80% of these 400 pages. This is like evangelicals where, like, no, no, no, the rapture's just been postponed.

Yep. Don't even worry about it. Let's do another question. You guys are getting good. In the January 99 issue, you asked about a clubby trademark hang tag with Beanie's trademark printed in red on the back where the barcode should be. I have mine from last year, and it does not have the word Beanie's, no trademark, and red on it. But my mom has one that does. Does one of us have a counterfeit?

What do you think? Genuine. She's going to say counterfeit. Nope. It is a tag variation, not a counterfeit. Oh, my God. About all of the typos that you get on tags. Retroactively, we are not on the same team.

We are against each other and I'm winning. It's true, Frieda. You got to pick it up. I bought a Valentino at a show for $7. A friend told me it was counterfeit because it had a brown nose and it was too cheap for a retired bear. Do you think about a counterfeit? What do you two think? Remember, you're on opposite teams now.

Counterfeit. Genuine. Rockway's right? Answer, you got a great buy. Valentino's supposed to have a brown nose, though most of the bears today have black noses. There are a few in the beanie babies. all-rise reserved collection with brown noses like Valentino trademark,

Curly Trademark, and Liberty Trademark, and 1997 Titty Trademark. Shit's fucked up. We don't know. Yeah, they don't know. Sometimes the nose is a different color. We don't fucking care. No consistency. I think you get it. That's the point I was trying to make is that there is a huge counterfeit problem in this community and industry. And there's no way to tell because there's no quality control in the originals and authentic ones and they're cheap as fuck to begin with.

But, oh, they acknowledge the shit out of it, Frieda. There's so much of the media is dedicated to counterfeits. Like, I have several videos about counterfeit beanie babies. Next is the price guide, and it takes up dozens of pages. It's like a third of the magazine, every issue. Here's the way the pricing works, since there's no way for this woman to have gone over every internet auction and trade show. And, like, most medium-sized to big towns had at least one beanie baby store at this point

in history. And so you don't know what they're charging. So she just says if it's available, like if you can buy it at Walmart, it's $5. And if it's retired, it's $1,000. And those are the only two prices across every fucking toy. All right. That's absolutely just making it up. God damn it, I miss the 90s.

I miss pre-super prevalent internet era where you could just like, what are you going to do? Look it up? Probably not. I mean, technically at this point. you could, but probably not. Where would you look it up here? This is where you would look it up. This is the phone book of the thing.

God, it used to be so easy. To just. So easy. Grift to the holy shit at it. I mean, technically, it is still easy now. It's just, it used to be easy and not completely evil. Now you definitely have to, like, get a lot of people killed with your grift. You at least have to, like, vaporize the water of a farming village somewhere.

This price guide says it's a $599 value, which is just a funny thing to say in your magazine that, hey, this part of the magazine is worth $6. It's just to whom? I don't, I truly don't get. And how much was the magazine in total? The magazine was $6.99. So you're all, the magazine's basically just a dollar because $5.99. It was the rest of that shit, worthless.

Almost worthless. And here's where you start to see that all the, at least I noticed that there's a lot of bears for AIDS and wars. This was before 9-11, but there are 9-11 bears. It really, as going through, I just, it set this tone that these fucking dumb toys are these reverent shrines for the people we lost, and it isn't any fun. Like, there's a reason G.I. Joe didn't have a guy named AIDS, is my point. They all shared the same chlamydia.

But again, that's fun. I mean, I think Serpentor was like an STD, right? I'm pretty sure I got Serpentor at some point in college. They took Hitler's gonorrhea and they mixed it with Gingas-Kahn's herpes, and that's how they made Serpentor. And then gave it to a snake and then gave it back to a human. Yes. There's a news section in this price guide. Like it's a little mini magazine inside the magazine. And it's all the same fucking news because there's nothing happening in the world of Beanie Babies.

But that's another magazine, baby. How much is that one worth? Oh, definitely 2647 value. This is a fucking steal. There's a profile on a minor league baseball player who collects Beanie Babies. I haven't marked down for the page. I don't know if it's worth reading. For sure, the least liked player on that team. Do you guys keep hitting me with the ball? Because I, Because I collect beanie babies. It's like you're be, you're bein' me with the ball. Yeah, that's, that's it.

It's part of a fun nickname. Heads up. Freed to see if you can finish this headline. This minor league baseball player has a wife who rammed him into bankruptcy from so many Beanie baby purchases. That's in the regular article where the headline is, has a major league. Oh, I thought I was to finish the headline. Oh, you were finished.

Oh, that was right there. Is that real? Wouldn't, would you, if you're, look, this is before athletes were coming out as homosexuals in, you know, in public. This is more shameful. Funny you should say those exact words. I probably wouldn't have mentioned this, but, I mean, I got six out of ten gay dar. It's not great. I sometimes am deep into a bathroom wrestling match before I notice a boner.

I'm like, oh, is this a sex thing? God damn it, buddy. I'm just, but yes, this guy's ping in my gaydar. This guy's here, his wife, and he has a big old beanie baby grin, and I'm like, okay, I could, if this guy said he's gay, I'm like, well, yeah, that we, hoping. Nobody's surprised. I'm sure they're regulars at their church.

Yeah, you could also just go with, they kind of have a church vibe. It says Sal and his wife Trina make the most out of his traveling schedule to augment the couple's growing Beanie Baby collection. One of Sal's prized fines was a princess. bear. I gave it to my wife and told her that she was my princess, he said. Oh, no. That's the caption. That's the caption to the photo I found a little gay. They definitely have shih Tzu's. All right. Since we're not on the same team, I'm going to take the opposite tack and say this guy, this guy is straight. It's just that he and his wife cannot

have children. Oh. And this is how they're dealing with it. That's really dark. There's a sadness or deception or both, just like with every Beanie Baby story, for sure. But let's look them up. Let's figure it out. Okay. No, we don't have to. Anyway, he's cell or so. We could look him up. Yeah, let's look him up.

I'm kind of curious now. Let's not do. Go on, let's do it. While we're waiting, I'm just curious, Brockwell, you said you don't have kids, right? No. Do you collect funcos? No. How are you coping?

How am I coping? Oh, with not having kids? Yeah. Like, what are you collecting instead of debt? Life experiences? I don't know, just like enjoying peace? There is something like, and I'm sorry to say this is going to get me, like I'm already, everything cancels me. They'll just give me cancel or something new.

There is something incredibly disturbing if like I watch a random YouTube of someone and their backdrop is just like floor to ceiling wall to wall. So many funcos, there's no daylight. It's like call your brother's concerning. It's too much because like Funko knows that people will buy any. old thing. There's no limit, so you don't have to, like, restrain yourself. And if you have problems with restraint and shopping addiction or anything like that, you'll just keep going because they can be so affordable. Them and also you can, like, jack them for, like, you know, the odd you go to a Comic Con and they've got the limited edition. They do that all the time.

I myself have, I believe, four funcos, and they're all characters that I've voiced. Now, that's just narcissism that I'm enjoying because I don't get to be a toy every day. I've been a toy a few times and that's great but that's not going to be my whole career and it's not you know I can't take them with me they're just fun to be like hey I had a job once now I'm unemployed acting I bet I can guess them I bet the mass effect one

yeah there's three of them are those because there are three different head costumes that's going to make it easy then it's going to be you're not going to get the fourth one though it's not it's not uh wait you were from that moba Loba. Didn't you voice loba? Is it loba?

Loba from the Mova? Lobe from the Mova. Lobe from the Mova. It's Lova from Mova. That's my final guess. No. And I want to say it right. I'm looking it up on my website real quick. I couldn't verify.

Is it Lila? Do you guys know Guardians of the Galaxy well? A little bit. Is it Lela or Lila? I think it's Lila. There's this Otter character She's Rocket Raccoon's girlfriend Oh sure

Of course Yeah I even knew you've wasted that Yeah Yeah it's Lila So But she's spelled LY LLA

So telltale games Which no longer exists Did some Guardians of the Galaxy games And they had me be Lila The Otter Opposite

Nolan North as Rocket I was his girlfriend And I'm gonna tell a story now Because you're looking up You know Potentially gay baseball players by Meany Baby. So this is one of the, I don't have like that many like bragging rights or things I'm going to put on my, this one's going on my fucking tombstone. So when I was still going to studios, pre-COVID, I was going to into, I think it was like for trolls or something else. I was, you pass like ships in the nights with other actors as they're like exiting a studio and you're going to studio. So I passed Nolan North. He doesn't really know any personal. I was like, hey, hey, I just recorded Lila. I was your girlfriend opposite. And he stopped me and he said, telltale was good about this. Telltale would play. If you were in a scene with another actor,

but because all the actors are recorded individually, they would play the other actors pre-recorded stuff so you could play off of them like they were there, which was very helpful. And if you know the story at all, it's pretty tragic. Basically, they're like in an animal testing, like in the game, they were in an animal testing lab.

And then Rocket makes it out. This girlfriend doesn't. It's very, it's a lot of feelings. And it's telltale, so it was a good storytelling. So Nolan North says to me, a nobody. he's like, you were so good, you made me cry. I cried in the session. Good job.

And I was like, fucking Nolan North said I made him cry. Fuck yeah. So that's one of my few feathers in my cap for sure. So Lila and Rocket were sold as Funkos as a pair. And I have that as well. Because again, it's just not that many things I've done art or toys. But that's rad. Am I going to collect them?

Hell no. First of all, I live in Los Angeles. I can afford this apartment. Space is limited. Yeah. Otherwise it becomes an unlivable. 40 situation. There's just no, I can't do floor to ceiling anything. I'm going to go by all your funcos, Frida. Yeah, I think you made a sale. I don't know how much of a cut you get of that.

Yeah, I think you would have to, I think people would give you money to buy them because, you know, RIP Andromeda didn't do very well. And I think very few people played necessarily those Guardians of Galaxy Games, which is also White Teltale no longer exists. Games in general are, you know, somewhere below sea level. I heard that they did well, but that was a totally separate drama. Like that company went under from the same, the same dark capitalism that's fucking everything up. Yeah, yeah. So, no, people, people,

I don't think this ever happened with Beanie Beavis, but people would probably pay you to take these funcos off their hands. All right, listeners. Got any, got any misprints in there? Yeah. Is it like, I wish, then I could resell them. Why, lull? Okay, well, this next feature after the,

probably not gay baseball player, this one just says Remembering Columbine And when I say remembering Columbine It happened about four or five months before this was Fucking printed So like back at 99 that was the same news cycle Like no one had forgotten

That was still on TV most nights It's fucking crazy And they did make a Columbine bear I wasn't exaggerating earlier When I said they made a lot of bears based on tragedies Does he have the trench coat The little bear trench go? God, Jesus. Keep it in, Jamie. I want them to know he said that.

They have one of the survivors holding up the bear, and the caption, I swear to God, I used this in the article. It just says, Lance Kirkland holds up a Columbine Remembrance Bear. Kirkland was shot in the face last April at Columbine High School. That's the delicate way they put this brave survivor of a horrible tragedy. This dude got shot in the face. Bye. You hold up the bear? This magazine is, it's so fucking crazy.

And the rest of the magazine is just, it's just about weird losers bringing beanie babies to sick kids and old folks homes. And some of it seems like it's attached to charity, but they never mention how or how much money they're raised or if it's any way related to this magazine. So I was going to ask, is there any mention, Sean, like just for stuff like the Columbine Bear or the HIV Bear, is there any mention of like profits being funneled towards charity? I feel like. percentage of sales anything? Hold on. A specific charity. I don't want to hear too charity.

Not like a Trump Foundation or something. Charity works in our finance department. Let me look at us. I feel like that would be that would be front center, right? If these guys will go jealous. You would have to say the actual name of the actual charity. Because that, I mean,

nothing espouses goodwill like money. It's money. You can't just like, oh, that's so nice you made a thing. No, send the fucking money. You're not going to believe this. The first page is just explaining what Columbine was, just a matter of fact, the murderous rampage. And then no mention of charity for the bear.

Okay, hold on. The bear can be ordered by sending check or morning order to Kids Creation's Inc. Or calling, blah, blah, blah. Each bear retails for 10.85, each plus $3.95 shipping handling. No mention of charity. That's so gross. Pure.

That's bold to not even. pretend. Yeah. God, to not even like, not even like a fun for the survivors. Like nothing specific. Nothing. That's so gross. It is. Just give us $11 because we're remembering column mine the thing like currently on your TV. So that means when the when the survivor after the photographer was done saying, can you hold the bear up closer to the gunshot wound on your face? I want to get bolt in the photo. He asked, he asked, hey, where the funds for this going to? And the photographer said, me, us. Yep. No, not even a lie to tell them. Just us. Just the Beanie Baby Corporation. What are you stupid? I'm going to skip this next issue. I did bring

three that we're not going to get to any of these. The next one, they started doing a thing where it's a lot of reader photos, just pictures of random people holding up a few Beanie Babies. There's a page asking for people to do this. It explains how to take a picture of you with your kid. It's not a contest, they just want pictures of your kids. You're not allowed to ask that. I don't think you're legally allowed to ask that in the 90s. There's also that page was on page 32, which is where the table of content said the counterfeit digest would be, so it's appropriate in a way because we've been tricked

by a scoundrel to send them pictures of our kids while looking into counterfeiting. But yes, the counterfeiting is basically like, watch out for the washed out orange color rather than a vibrant color, that makes an inauthentic digger the crab. And that exact tip is repeated 16 more times. Each different toy gets a full page. It's 16 toys saying, get the brighter colored version of these two toys.

Don't read into this, but how much was the magazine with all the children's photos? Just the one with the children's photos. Oh, now that you mentioned it, 8599, none of the proceeds going to charity. God, this is such a bargain. This one also had a two-page feature, on a child actress who owns several Beanie Babies,

and she would go on to star as George Michael's forget of her girlfriend, Anne, on Arrested Development. But only once, this is not May Whitman, this was the girl that played Anne for one episode of Arrested Development. That's what passes for a Beanie Baby featured celebrity. That person, that actress I mentioned before, she was a star.

Let's see, there's a four-page feature on Plexiglass cases, to imprison your little beanies in the Phantom Zone, and then a lot more of something they call Mary Beth's helping hand now, which is just to add pictures from weird events where someone had a beanie baby, maybe. I don't think there's charity involved in a lot of these. I think they're unrelated to the magazine most of the time. It's just like if the Cincinnati Bengals brought pizza to orphans, like this magazine

would run a story on it and sort of say like, sort of try to glom on to that. Like, what a fun way to get pizza to kids. You're like, all right, but did you, were you involved? Did you, were there beanie babies there? Why are you talking about it? Did you at least give them beanie babies? It feels like the least you could do. I mean, they don't want them.

Children never wanted them, but you make the token effort. Maybe give them to the nurses. I did find a really very, very strange column. Mary Beth has letters to the editor, but she also answers, read or mail. Then she'll have another column about whatever, and then a column about counterfeits, and then usually a column about the industry and the news. I think, if I'm correct, is there's seventh column of the issue? and it just says if I were Thai Warner

and it is basically an open letter to the CEO of Beanie Babies. It's 10 lists. I don't think I'm going to read all of them. But the first one is make yourself more accessible and user-friendly to your public. Because he's just... Hold on. No, hold on. Make a person user-friendly to the public?

She's not a good writer. She just likes Beanie Babies. I wish I could use you in an easier way, a fellow person. This is the guy who fucking sued her magazine to make it change its name. And is any of her feedback stop suing me? Let's see.

If I were Thai Warner, I'd stop suing Mary Beth. Here's the second thing she would do if she was Ty Warner. She'd bring out some fresh design ideas and new Beattie Babies. I would do all this better. I'd have way cooler and newer.

ideas. Number three is to create unique teeny ideas for the next McDonald's teeny Beanie promotion. So that's not a bad idea. Work with McDonald's. Frida, you worked with McDonald's. And it probably went really well for you. I do. I still work with McDonald's. Yeah. I work, I work with like, if anybody's old enough to watch Mad Men, I work with the marketing people who work at the outsourced marketing place that McDonald's hires to pump out commercials. I've never worked with like McDonald's corporate. But the, but the, but the, marketing people. You never met Grimmis. No, I've never met Grimmis or the hamburger. I did absolutely picture like Mayor McCheese cutting checks.

Great walk, Frida. That would be something. Yeah, I legitimately, that's what I pictured. And you're like, I've got this McDonald's commercial. I pictured him just tearing off a little check from his, his burger-shaped, I assume, checkbook. I wish it were that fun. No. No. But the people I work with are lovely. I mean, mostly my claim to fame with that. I always say is like getting, I get to be bumped up with like Brian Cox of like succession and super troopers. Another like, again, none of these people know I'm alive. It's a miracle that I even got to like let Nolan North know that I'm alive.

Brian Cox doesn't know I'm alive. But it's nice to like share scenes and things with people who are very cool and they don't have to meet me. Brian Cox and I talk about you all the time. Amazing. It's probably for the best he doesn't know you're alive. I feel like if you brought up the McDonald's commercial that he did, he would beat the shit out of you. No.

No, he's been doing it for years and years and years and years. He loves it. It's easy work. Mindless work. He makes the filial fish sound sexy. If I went up to him at a, I don't know, a convention or an awards show or something, was like, I love your work in the McDonald's commercial. I feel like he'd punch me straight in the gut like Houdini.

He'd say very Scottishly thanks and I love the money and he'd move on. I would definitely act really drunk and go, I'm naked. Like it's kind of in this and like in the in the like influencer everybody just wants to get sponsored climate. It's really weird to hear about pre-social media people of any sort of elevated visibility. So like professional athletes, actors or whatever going out of their way to say that they collect independently a thing because these days you try to be pictured with a thing once hoping that you can hook that. company or whatever and then get paid to post on Instagram or TikTok or whatever

with that thing versus being a genuine fan that's very, very rare. I was thinking about that. Like, I was watching Lily Allen just put out an amazing, you know, if you fuck with a songwriter and you break her heart, she's going to make an incredible album. And she did. And I watched a retrospective and she talked about how, like, she had a longstanding work relationship with Carl Lagerfeld, who's dead, who was the director of Chanel.

Now, the second she started making money, her beanie baby, Labuboos, were Chanel bags. And so she'd go out and, like, paparazzi take photos that she's, like, at the end of the night, drunk, getting into the car. And, like, somebody showed a photo to Carl Ogrefeld. And he's like, when did we start sending this nobody bags? And they're like, we're not sending her bags. She's buying them. And they were like, oh. And so then they started, they had her, like, perform on, like, runway shows.

and, like, they would send her clothes and send her bags and stuff. Okay. She had to do it. She was doing it before anybody else. This is, like, this is Y2K. So it's so crazy to hear about, like, maybe not, you know, like a Lily Allen pop star heading up GlassNabry level of people. But still, like, anybody's doing something at professional level doing this, not reaching out to the company first being like, do you want me to, like, carry my beanie bag, baby around in, like, a bag, and, like, pop rotsy can take a photo.

And, like, we can make something together. It's weird. because it's just not how anybody does things now. It's only the peasants. It's only, you know, the proletariat who collect things and everybody else just wants to be seen with it and paid. It is kind of how they did things then, but like the Beanie Babies was just like completely the reverse of the energy.

Like they're like, please, just hold up the Beanie Baby and we'll tell people you touched it. No, I'm not doing that. No, I hate these. They give you throat cancer. No, specifically, can we get the kid who was shot in the face to hold up the beanie baby and ex his face? Perfect. Hold it. Hold it there. Got it.

Yep. Hold it. Yes. Oh, this got to sell sevens of fucking bears. I mean, he's not Lily Allen famous, but he's who we could get. So I'm going to speed run to the end of this because we're wrapping up. At this point in the market, Pokemon was becoming very popular. And it was making at least Marybeth really insecure. So there was a lot of feature articles about how Pokemon's just this stupid fad. When I say a lot, I mean like two to three every issue, just like, ah, it's cool. People like it's not like Beanie Babies.

This shit's going to stick around forever. Beanie Babies. Pokemon is going away. So I did send you two images. Frida, if you want to read the Beanie's number one in the email I sent, just the headline. Yeah. This isn't, I mean, then this is a photo of Miss Marybeth. Uh-huh.

That's Mary Beth. Yeah. She looks like what you pictured, right? That's what you picture. For those who can't see, she is a white lady with a very showing upper teeth smile. She definitely runs the HOA in her suburb. And she's got a very 90s past shoulder length blunt cut with some light feathery bangs and a zip up polo, which is red. Beautifully described.

She's every woman of every pre-carrying care in America. Anyway, the headline is, fast-fat or long-term. Popular toy crazes like Pokemon may come and go, but beanies are here to stay. Pokemon, Pokemon, Pokemon. It's seen at the movies on television on snacks, lunchboxes, backpack, sleeping bags, trading cards, and board games, and is the most talked about craze since Beanie Babies. And then it starts with Beanbag World has been flooded with questions about Pokemon. And then immediately, she definitely sets it up immediately as like a head-to-head competitor.

It is a threat. And I feel like it has to be because like if you've been to a hobby store, right, you go there and the guy opened the store because he loves comic books, right? And then it's like, oh, these kids only buy fucking magic cards or Pokemon cards. And then it's funcop or whatever. And then suddenly his store is just Funkopop. And you're like, yeah, this sucks. And she can feel that. She can feel Pokemon like eating her industry alive, even though they're not even head-to-head competitors.

These are wildly different markets. But like, to her credit, she was right. I just picked up a new Pokemon game this week and playing the shit out of it with my daughter and I haven't seen a Beanie Baby in the Wild in probably 30 years. So I don't know. Almost like tying them to something,

anything else, aside from existing as a resource, it makes them last and beloved to children and people everywhere. If only somebody could have foreseen that. That infected all of her writers. So most of her writers would come in with like, hey, Pokemon's fine,

but it's not as good as Beanie Babies. I did clip one thing where there was a writer named Lauren Pickens for the bag. And she said, quote, I don't have any fancy statistics to prove my point, but I do know what I have seen with my own eyes. And then, notably, she does not make a point for about five paragraphs and then explains that one time she had these two bears that she got for $4 and sold them for $15. And then a month later, she read that they were worth much more. She told the story like she blew it.

She's like, don't be like me. Don't sell your toys in a massive profit because, like, there's more of a secondary market. At least there was. I think Ty Warner sued the secondary market frequently, so it was really hard to, like, stay stable in that industry. But yeah, all of them make the same predictions that Pokemon's going to go, blah, blah, blah. I did take one clip from this that's just so weird I had to read it. This article is called Smart Surfing. When the Thai Inc. website is down, consider the alternatives.

During the period in September when several Beanie Baby retirements were announced, many collectors reported problems accessing the Thai Inc website. Internet users would type in HTTP colon slash www.com and receive messages that the site was inaccessible due to heavy web traffic. What's a collector to do? Okay, here's their advice. First, try to log on using another domain name, the name by which a web server is known to the internet.

At press time, the Thai website could be accessed using any of the following. And then there's all these like mirror sites that they list. You can go to railroad.tie.com, blah, blah, blah, blah. It is, I'm not exaggerating three pages of that. Are you trying to go to railroad. com? Yep, site not found. Okay.

Well, this article has many, many more options for you to try. Hold on. Hold on. Let me just try something really quick. Pokemon.com. Oh, loads right up. Oh, Marybeth wasn't right. Okay. I attached one more, one last thing, Frida, there was another image attached to the email.

I want you just open it. You can do whatever you want with it. If you refuse to accept it, we could just end this show right here. Can I describe it first? Yeah, I mostly, I just wanted other people to know it exists. When I found that, I'm like, no one's going to believe me that this exists. But yes, please. So, I mean, it's titled Mary Beth's Beanie Jeannie. I mean, she really wants you to know that this is hers. that's at the top in colorful letters and then in wiggly letters perhaps like smoke it says my tie and underneath sung to the tune of my guy and it's an manipulated image of tie what's his last name warner tie warner it sounds so much like time warner i feel like i'm hallucinating but tie warner not to be confused with time warner um is dressed as a genie was he dressed as a genie or did she put it on his head who knows but it looks not Photoshopped. I don't, I'm guessing Marybeth wasn't a big photoshopper. But he's got a genie hat on.

He's sort of smiling. Looks like this photo's taken outside. They've dissolved from the shoulders down into like genie smoke. And it's going into a very Aladdin-y, Aladdin lamp, which has engraved on it, The Beanie Jeannie, Dear God. Can I steal the description? Sure. It's our good friend Michael Swame, and he's dressed like a stripper, dressed like a genie on his way to.

ask a bachelorette party if they would like to rub to make a wish. Yeah. I think Ty Warner's getting the better end of that description. But, like, yeah, it's a good way to describe it. I don't wonder if Mary Beth rubbed and made a wish. Anyway. I'm sure she did. The love that is put into this.

This is the man who has sued her at least two times. And everyone she knows. Somehow the suing makes it hotter. I'm glad you saw it, so I know it exists and I didn't hallucinate it. I wish I knew how the same. the song starts because I would just launch into this because I'm an asshole. It goes, nothing you could say goodbye to boot you back. Oh, oh Christ, well now you've done it. Okay.

Nothing on eBay can tear me away from my tie. Nothing you could do because I'm stuck like glue to my tie. I'm sticking to my tie. I don't know how it goes there. I'm sticking to my tie like early to his feathers like Willard and his weather. We stick together. I'm telling you, from the start, I won't be torn apart from my tie. And it just, it's the whole fucking song, guys.

Unless he sues me. It's the whole song. You have such a beautiful voice, Frida. And that's how I choose to use it because sometimes I make money. And, you know, I'm, I'm, that's, I just, mama's got to have it. We got so much free voice out of you. For the darkest of, oh, it's beautiful. For free, free voice for my friends anytime.

Although, like, I mean, as a joke. We used it for evil, as always. Happy to. Nobody else does. Well, I'm selling McDonald's. When in the house, when Joe, like, asks me to do something, I'll, no, it's even worse. If he asked me to do something, I'll just say, money, please, and hold up my hand. But especially, like, now, I haven't been recurring on a show, like an anime show in a long time.

When you're a recurring character or lead character on a show, you have weekly recordings to the point where you're, like, it's great because you love having work, but you do. get tired of it. It's a workout. And then you get trained up like a racehorse. And now all that adrenaline has to go somewhere. And it's not so much as being an asshole, but like I will just like be a crazy, insane, annoying, random, random characters will come out at me. There's no one to unleash them on besides the two cats and the dog and the husband. And he'll just be like, please get on a show. Please, please get on a show. Just do it. To direct that elsewhere. Anywhere. Because, you know, he's not my audience. Fair enough. I wish I could tell my wife to get in a soundproof booth.

Cue the sitcom credits. No, I love my wife. Because she talks to you like a normal person, she's not like, for first time listeners of me, if you don't know, because I used to say this more before, my husband, Joe, is a Scottish import. I imported him on a fiancé visa. And for a long time, still to this day, people were like, do you have a hard time understanding his accent? No, bitch, I got to put on his. I have to put on his accent for him to understand me

to the point where, like, if I'm just feeling cun, I'm like, oh, my name's Joe and I sound like this. I want my wife to go places on time, but I'm not like, eh, I also don't want you to look nice. And he doesn't like that. Doesn't enjoy it, weirdly. It has no respect for my talents because I use them to annoy him. I think it's great.

By doing his accent purely. Anyway. That one was me. Please, if you're out there and you have an animated show, hire me. Save, save a man. That's a good plug. His life is in your hands. You sing the Ty Warner parody song.

You do a skyshanket. And then all the casting agents are like, oh, she's got the goods. That's not my new demo. No, that's not my new demo. Absolutely not. There is, there is, I'm disconcertingly, I started reading through this. Well, no. Oh, I don't know how this part of the song goes.

but I'm just going to read it. As a matter of addiction, I just can't stop. My opinion is ties the cream of the crop. As a matter of taste to be exact. The tag's ideal when it's left intact. Oh, again with the tax. Bitch, you don't know what a counterfeit is. We have established that.

Hold on. What could that mean? No, this song isn't about Beanie Babies. This song is about Ty Warner. It's that she's saying very specifically, I hope he's uncircumcised. Did you see the next verse though, Brock? No muscle-bound man could ever get his hands on my tie.

It's no disgrace. Nothing will take the place of my tie. Muscle-bound man? No muscle-bound man could take tie from you? Yeah, no muscle-bound man could ever get his hands on my tie. If they're doing a guy, guy, girl situation, like it's the guy-stay-stays stay on opposite sides of the girl. We all have to operate under rules, and that's hers.

You want to establish that early. Obviously, you want the muscle-bound man to be circumcised so that you can run the gamut. Obviously. That's what they call it, running the gamut. Just out of curiosity, if somebody, if someone who's just like a real big 1-900 hot dog head wrote and recorded this and sent it to you all, how would you respond? Or has someone already? Severely negatively. I tend to appreciate like weird acts of insanity that we inspired.

Yeah, like especially if it's artistic. This wouldn't be. Much like Ty Warner, I would sue them. Yeah, I'd join in on that lawsuit. It'd be a class action lawsuit against them. The entire staff of 1,900 Hot Dog against them. And on that note, don't send anything to 1,900 Hot Dog. No, no dolls made from pubic here, please.

Well, no, we could use some of those, if you don't mind. Unless your tag's intact. Welcome to the 1,900 Hot Dog Stage, a brand new comedian debuting here tonight. The insult comic with class Lord Jimathan Jiggles Thank you, that's quite enough, though I should say, flattery, we'll get you everywhere. Aho, what a supreme audience we have tonight. I recognize a lot of faces, though they might not like me saying that. Oh, I see Aaron Cruston here, a peacock in everything but beauty.

A ho! Ah, Adrian H. I see. Adrian H here, Alex Nolenberg, Alpha Scientist Java, Anandhi, Armando Nava, Autumn Armstrong Berg. Oh, I see Brandon Garlock, he has one of those fine bureaucratic faces that once seen are never remembered. Oh, Brian Saylor, Brockway famously loves the meat milly, a little too much if you know what I mean. Ceryl. Christopher Worthing, I am told, porkpacking. is the most valued profession in America. Tell your mother, I said, thank you for your service. Oh, I'm so naughty. Common sense, I see Craig Lemoyne, Dan B, David Schell. Popularity is the only insult

that has not yet been offered to Dean Costello. A Delta Fox Trot, I see Devin the Rogue Supreme here, I see Dusty's rad title and Elizabeth Schope. Elliot Watson, it is said that he can talk brilliantly upon any subject, provided that he knows nothing about it. Oh, oh, oh, oh, Eric Christian Berg is here, Fancy Shark, Jello, good Satan and his hot witches, I see you there. Greg Cunningham. Greg Cunningham is an excellent man. He has no enemies and none of his friends like him.

Oh, I slay, I truly do. A haraka, Harvey Pengweeney, honk! I have here, I want Brockway to say Dyke, which I'm allowed to do because this accent might be Dutch or something. You don't know. Jabar Al Aden, James Boyd, Jared Clack, Jared Mountain Man, it's the perfect man. Always dull.

and usually violent. Oh, Jared Ruiz, John Deeb, John McCabin, John Minkoff, a lot of John's here tonight. You know what I'm saying. Josh Quicksall, it is said some cause happiness wherever they go. Others, whenever they go. Eh, but no really, go fuck yourself, Josh Quicksall. You know what you did. Joshua Graves.

Justin B. Katie Favelle reminds one of a badly bound hymn book. Give her a few minutes, folks, she'll get it. Ken Paisley, K&M, I see KVH, I see Elaine Haygood here. Lisa, oh, she seems like a good citizen, or a faithful wife, or something else equally tedious. Oh, Jahy Chappelle, Mark Mahoney, Matt Riley, Max Broyooy, I see Mercenary Sissidman here, Michael Lair, Mickey Lohman, oh, Mickey Lohman, such keen, student always ready to give his betters the full benefits of his inexperience oh-hoo mort mr bob gray and d Neil Bailey Neil they say there is no sin except stupidity

so tell the devil I said hello ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha oh fuck you Neil Bailey Neil Schaefer Necku 104 Nick Levino Obsolete. Ogiwan Supreme is like the best art. All style unpolluted by sincerity. Oh-ho. I'm told one ball in has been received in all the great houses. Or once. I kid. I actually like one ball in. Henri Weevil. Ozzy Olin. Patrick Herbst. I see Peewey's uncle here with Rebrandrew and Redwine Time.

Riannon, hello Riann. Russell Bauman. Oh, Russell Bauman, everybody. You seem, Russell, you seem the kind of person who's brilliant at breakfast. No, don't get that one? Go team up with Katie Favel. Maybe you two can figure yours out together. Uh, Sam Kopnik, Sarkovsky, Sean Chase,

Seed. Space Jam fan, I may not agree with you, but I shall defend to the debt. You're right to be a dipshit. Spotty reception, super not, day to stays, TEDH. Thomas, Thomas is such a good friend, he will always stab you in the front air. Thomas Cavatzos, Timmy Leahy, Toasty Gun, I see Tommy G here. Velo. Velo is the kind of person who deprives one of solitude without providing one with company.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha that one was bad Victor Malavankan, Booster, Whalen Russell I see Yvonne Clavom here, Zach and Eva Jeff Oraski is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning As a speaker, he has mastered everything except language, As a dancer he can do anything but move with rhythm And as a wiener, he is everything but plump Oh!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! I kid! I kid, of course. Thank you, thank you all. I'd say you've been lovely, but I've been told untruths cause wrinkled. Oh, no, but seriously folks, truth is everything. Stay true. One must always strive to be true to what they are, even if what they are is a nasty little cunt. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.