Beanie Babies

Beanie Babies is a range of cuddly stuffed toys created by American businessman H Ty Warner in 1993. Warner also founded Ty Inc in 1986.

Ty Warner opened his first toy company in 1983, when he was just 39-years-old. The aspiring actor had recently been fired from Dakin Inc., a California toy company specialising in stuffed animals where Warner had worked as a salesperson for much of his adult life. Undeterred, Warner decided to open his own rival toy company manufacturing small stuffed animals: Ty Inc.

Warner invested every penny he had in the new business, mortgaging his house and drawing from the $50,000 he had just inherited from his recently deceased father’s estate. Thankfully for Ty, the gamble paid off: Warner’s first range of toys with Ty Inc, Himalayan Cats, were mocked for their resemblance to ‘roadkill’, but the toys – filled with plastic pellets rather than the then-typical stuffed animal stuffing – proved enormously popular.

By 1992, Warner was making good money on a catalogue of dozens of stuffed animals, but he had an idea to go further. At that time, there were according to Warner no toys “in the $5 range that weren’t real garbage” – and he wanted to change that. Warner set about creating a set of quality plush toys that were available for under $5, and by 1994, Ty Inc had begun selling its first Beanie Babies.

Called the ‘original nine’ by collectors, Spot the Dog, Squealer the Pig, Patti the Platypus, Cubbie the Bear, Chocolate the Moose, Pinchers the Lobster, Splash the Killer Whale, Legs the Frog and Splash the Dolphin would within a year be joined in stores by over 40 more Beanie Baby toys.

Declining to sell to major toy chains like Toys R Us, Warner instead sold his product only to small and independent toy stores, which drove up demand. Warner furthermore would introduce new Beanie Babies and discontinue old ones, thus increasing the products’ scarcity and desirability.

As a ‘bubble’ arose in the Beanie Baby market, the toy quickly became a sensation, with its own secondary line of related merchandise like books and accessories. By 1999, on its toys and associated merchandise, Ty Inc was making a profit of $700 million a year.

Today, Ty Warner has an estimated net worth of $2.4 billion. Beanie Babies, meanwhile, remain popular, while some of the rarer toys in the line are collector’s items that can go for thousands of dollars.