The Beanie Babies Boom :: Beanie Babies Ty Business Essays

The Beanie Babies Boom "Pounce, Prance, Zip, Canyon, and Snip," came, without hesitation, from the mouth of my daughter when I presented her with five randomly selected Beanie Babies from the one hundred or so that are in her bedroom. She hardly had to think about her response as she named them for me. She knows them all by name. I was intrigued. My daughter, and my wife, are generally very selective in their interests and pursuits. There are no Tickle Me Elmos or Furbys in our house. We have never fallen prey to the lure of pet rocks or Cabbage Patch dolls, but the sheer number of Beanie Babies we possess has made me very curious about these cute little things. The current Beanie Babies phenomenon is somewhat baffling to me, as most popular crazes are. What makes these things so special that my daughter knows them all by name, or that people wait in line at six in the morning to buy them? Who exactly is buying them, and who are they being bought for? These are questions I felt I needed some answ ers to. Over half of the Beanie Babies that we own are now retired, which means nothing more than the fact that if we wanted to buy the same ones now, they would cost three or four times what they did when we bought them the first time. The maker of Beanie Babies, the Ty Company, retires certain models each month which drives the price of the retirees up, in secondary markets, immediately. Is this simply a statement that no more are being made, or is it just a marketing ploy to drive sales? Either way, I feel that anything that has cost my family over seven hundred dollars deserves to be looked in to. When I inquired about what made these particular animals so "unique," I thought I would go right to the closest, most reliable sources that I had. I first asked my daughter, who is seven years old. Her response was that they were "cute" and that they had "cute names." When I asked my wife, she told me that they were "cute," and that they were "soft and cuddly." Now I know what one might think, but one thing needs to be made clear.