The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute

Witnessing the mania during its heyday was confusing to me. Adults buying cute little stuffed toys as an investment strategy made no sense. I could understand a few rare items being of value but we're talking millions of these suckers being horded by people. Mr. Bissonnette's 'The Great Beanie Baby Bubble' does a very good job of explaining how the toy became a fad then turned into insanity. The book is not only a dissection of the phenomenon but also an explanation of how rational people are lured into a quirky greed-fueled social event. There is much to be learned from this quick-reading work.The author describes the creator, Ty Warner, and his obsession with making and marketing the ultimate stuffed animal. Everybody has idiosyncrasies but Warner makes most of us look like rookie eccentrics. A self-absorbed skinflint who was an exceptional good salesman and workaholic kept rewriting his rise to success. Mr. Bissonnette separates fact from fiction. Warner's story is not as he portrayed due solely to his actions. There was a lot of serendipity involved. The book explains how the craze first began in a Chicago suburb, the key players in the fad's rise, and the Beanie Babies inevitable fall.The author also inserts many colorful stories about the Beanie Baby acolytes. Some of the topics covered are such things as the gimmick of retiring certain Beanie Babies, the birth of e-commerce, eBay, copyright infringement, knock-offs, the farce of price guides, the partnership with McDonald's, a rundown of where many of the players are now in their lives, and most importantly, the nature of economic bubbles. The book also includes 8 pages of photos.Beyond the compelling story, Mr. Bissonnette gives the readers a cautionary tale about the attraction of get-rich schemes. In my lifetime there have been two housing bubbles, the baseball-card bubble, the dot-com bubble, the Beanie Baby bubble, and numerous fads that people have lost their ever-lovin' gourd over such as Cabbage Patch Kids, Furbies, and Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards. As long as humans exists, these greed-induced follies will occasionally appear. 'The Great Beanie Baby Bubble' may help you be better prepared for whatever insanity is down the marketing road.

This book has a lot of good information and insight about the beanie baby "bubble" - the whole experience of it. It goes beyond that, however, acting not only as a chronicle of the craze, but also as a biography of Ty Warner, bringing in insights from other crazes and providing information on anything that sheds light on anything related to beanie babies. I learned a lot from this book, not only about beanie babies, but also about other bubbles, the toy industry in general, e-commerce in the late 1990s, etc. In addition, it provides interesting anecdotes of people in the craze, such as the beanie baby killer, the soap star who lost a great deal of money from beanie babies, and a robber who went for the beanie baby case instead of the cash register (during the height of the craze).One such insight that really resonated with me is the author explaining that, because the market was oversaturated with commons, when the next round of retirements occurred, their prices didn't go up very much (as opposed to the previous round of retirements), and THAT may have killed the craze. I somewhat believe this to be true. I was a young collector when the craze happened, and I feel like I remember a new round of retirements occurring, and the prices not going up very much, and that yielding disappointment. Quickly, I forgot about beanie babies.If I were to criticize this book, I would say a few things. The author makes a few assumptions that I don't necessarily agree with. For example, he suggests the reason beanie babies became successful was because of a few early collectors in Chicago reaching out to stores nationwide. I may be uninformed, but I think that's a stretch. He also talked about how the 1997 retired beanie babies would go for several hundred dollars. I don't remember this. I was a young collector then and I distinctly remember Lefty and Righty being the most expensive of all beanie babies retired in 1997 and they were going for $190 or $200 (I even went to shows at the time so I think I'm somewhat of a reliable source). Maybe in some random deals these beanies were going for more than that, but I didn't see it. There were other claims that I thought a little suspect, such as the young, 19-year old DePaul University employee making Ty Warner a billionaire by creating the website. I personally don't remember the website and didn't really use it if I was aware of it. I feel like the author was an outsider in the whole process and so his choosing of facts related to the bubble is imperfect.I also don't necessarily agree that it was all silliness or delusion. Why do people collect art? Beanie babies are cute and a type of art form, and when you make them scarce on top of that, it becomes a craze. No one can make beanie babies like Ty because they are his own signature. I don't agree that the mania had no basis.That said, the book is fascinating and if you don't take everything at face value and weigh it on its own terms there's a lot of good information, and a lot to be learned, including details about Ty Warner's life. I commend Zac Bissonnette for attempting such a comprehensive view of one of the most commanding fads of the late 1900s, and giving us plenty of details about it.

Very interesting and informative book, despite the fact that the majority of the information gathered about Ty and its products are from people surrounding the CEO, but not Ty Warner himself. So ultimately after reading, it leaves the reader still wondering what the real story is? Still entertaining and worth reading.

Having lived through the Beanie baby craze here in the UK, I'll always have a soft spot for them.This book offers a lot of interesting info into the weird world of Ty Warner- an undeniable genius. By the end of the book, I still wasn't sure if I admired or hated the man!Just goes to show how you can make any product desirable if its marketed in the right way.This book sits on the bookshelf in my bedroom as a reminder of those heady days, next to the two rather large boxes of Beanies circa 1999!

Very, very interesting read. Would definitely recommend this to anyone.