- What
inspired you to tackle Beanie Babies and Ty? What was it about these
adorable little plushes you just couldn’t resist?
I was in elementary and middle school when they
were popular. I only had a couple but my mother and I were big into antiques
and flea markets and, overnight, it went from no one knowing what Beanie Babies
were to Dick & Ellie’s, a popular Cape Cod flea market at the time, being
like 20% Beanie Baby dealers. I have these really vivid memories of these Beanie
dealers just being really busy and really excited—talking about how much their
inventory was going up in value. We were both totally perplexed by it.
And then, all of a sudden, it was gone. No one
talked about Beanie Babies anymore. I hadn’t thought about them in forever
until I was in college and saw, at a little country auction house in Amherst,
MA, several big Rubbermaid containers full of Beanie Babies—perfectly preserved
and almost perfectly worthless. I Googled them when I got home and realized how
big they’d been—10% of eBay’s sales at one time—and that the guy who’d created
them had become a billionaire, and the richest man in the history of toys. The
story of how this thing had gone from a $5 stuffed animal with no advertising
produced by a small company into this speculative craze that really did take
over the lives of a lot of people was really intriguing to me.
- In
the course of doing research for the book, what did you learn that
surprised you? What challenges did you face writing the book?
So when I started making very preliminary calls
to see whether it might be a topic worth further exploration, the first thing
that struck me was the sort of strength of emotion people felt about the toys
and also about Ty Warner. I’ve never reported on anyone who stirred such
universally strong feelings in people. One of the first people I reached out to
was someone who used to work at the company. I messaged her on Facebook and she
said to call. I called and her husband picked up the phone and the first thing
he told me was, “Ty Warner ruined out life.”
The biggest challenge was that Ty declined to
talk to me for the book—which was sad, in a way, but I think it also forced me
to really leave no stone unturned in my search for the story. I also think that—and
Malcom Gladwell wrote
a spectacular essay on this—access in terms of telling someone’s story
tends to be overrated. If you wanted to know the truth about who I am and what
I’m like, spending a day with me and asking lots of questions would probably be
one of the worst approaches to that. Not that I have anything spectacular to
hide or anything, it’s just that I would, as anyone would, tend to show you a
side that would be different from what other people see when I’m not being
shadowed by a reporter with a digital recorder.
If you really want to know about someone, I think talking to as many people as
you can who’ve known and liked/not liked that person at every stage of their
life is a better approach. That’s how I pieced together the story of Ty’s life
and career.
- You
cover some pretty extreme manifestations of the Beanie Baby craze-
including a murder, debt, and more. How was the craze a manifestation of
American culture in the 1990s?
It’s a fantastic question. I think much of what
drove the craze was more universal than American: our willingness to suspend
disbelief and engage in magical thinking, the allure of the get rich quick
scheme, and our overreliance on past performance as a predictor of future
outcomes are things that have shown up in every culture since as long as there’s
been recorded history.
But the Beanie Baby craze really did rise in a
special era of unreality in America: the internet bubble. In terms of how that
ethos found a manifestation in a plush toy, a lot of that ties in with the
unique way in which the mother-daughter relationship of the 1990s tended to be
centered around materialism in a way that it hadn’t been before. That bond wasn’t
about religion or sewing or cooking the way that it had been in previous generations;
it really was, more than at any time in history, a relationship defined by
shopping and spending and brands. And that’s a big part of how these animals
that started out as a popular kids’ toy became this obsession of adults.
- Do
you own any Beanie Babies yourself? Do you have a favorite?
Haha. I think it’s impossible to spend a lot of
time researching and reporting on other people’s obsession without that
obsession rubbing off on you. It’s not something I wrote about in the book at
all because others have explored that way better than I ever could—go order
Susan Orlean’s Rin Tin Tin right now!—but
yes: I did, for “research purposes,” buy many, many Ty animals, including
Beanie Babies. I still can’t walk by a display of plush toys without stopping
to examine them. I also buy them as gifts for people who probably don’t want
them but at the same time, they need to stop worrying and learn to love them.
My favorite Beanie Baby is definitely Kaleidoscope—a
spectacularly designed cat who came out after the craze had ended. I think my
all-time favorite Ty piece though, would have to be Sugar,
who is a Ty Classic cat. The cats are my favorite Ty animals because, as you’ll
see in the book, they’re what started the company and they’re at the center of
some of my favorite stories in the book. I also like Whisper
the Deer, Seaweed
the Otter, and, among the new Beanie Boos line, I think Rocco
the Raccoon is pretty perfect. Have you blocked my email address yet?
- So
much of the book is about Ty Warner and the way the personal and the
corporate intermingle. What can someone developing a brand learn from
his example- good or bad?
I think the thing that struck me about Ty was
how his obsession with the product transcended the business element of it; it
wasn’t just about trying to create a toy that would sell. It was this quest to
create the most perfect plush animals. Even his competitors would always give
him credit for that: He has an incredible eye and he doesn’t stop until a piece
is perfect.
Ty really built that company on his own perfectionism,
love of the product, force of personality, and intuitive grasp of consumer
psychology. He did it all without consultants or focus groups, and he had no education
beyond a year of college (studying drama).
- You talk about how fan culture- the magazines and books
devoted to Beanie Babies- helped grow the market for them as collectibles,
then Ty tried to use scarcity to manipulate the secondary market and grow
retail sales, successfully for a while. Is there a Beanie Baby fan culture
now that the collectible market has all but dried up? Have we all moved
on, or are there still hard-core Beanie collectors out there?
One of my favorite
things about the internet is that, it seems, nothing ever really moves on
completely. At the risk of outing myself as a total weirdo, I need to disclose
here that I am an obsessive Perry Como fan and collector; I buy something Perry
Como related at least once a month, and I know probably all the other diehard
Perry Como fans just from being on the internet. Weird obsessions and interests
in esoterica are, I think, really encouraged by the internet where you can find
a community for almost anything, which provides the social element that keeps
hobbies alive long after what would otherwise be their expiration date.
So the craze for Beanie
Babies is entirely over, 99%+ are worth much less than the $5 price they
retailed for in the 1990s, but there is still a world of enthusiasts living on.
Leon and Sondra Schlossberg have a wonderful site called TyCollector.com, and there’s
also BeanieSource.com, which has great updates on new releases from Ty. And, as
a kid’s toy, Ty’s line of plush animals remains the most popular in the world—which
they deserve to be because, in terms of value, they really are the best.
Thank you so much, Zac! This is one the funnest interviews I've done and I really appreciate your time!
