If you were around in the 90’s you likely owned a bean filled bear known as a Beanie Baby. They were everywhere. They were EVERYWHERE. They caused divorces, bankruptcies, robberies… it was a whole thing.
Based on Zac Bissonette’s book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, The Beanie Bubble will take a look at the insanity that was that craze. And considering it will star Zach Galifianakis and Elizabeth Banks, I’m hoping a it will be a humorous look.
The description for the movie reads: “It pulls back the curtain on the absurdities and injustices of the American Dream — particularly the female relationship to it. It’s a celebration of the women who helped power Ty Warner’s success, whose strengths and good instincts shaped and amplified the phenomenon, but whose names are not on the Beanie Babies’ heart-shaped tags.”
For scale, let me share some stats I gathered from around the web:
In the midst of this perceived “shortage,” collectors launched an all-out Beanie Baby warfare. Among the more notable instances:
- At a market in Connecticut, fanatical collectors trampled children to get their hands on the retired tie-dye “Garcia” bear.
- A 77-year-old Chicago man dubbed the “Beanie Baby Bandit” stole 1.2k of the toys and hoarded them in a storage locker.
- At the border, Beanie Baby smuggling rings ran rampant (“People are smuggling [them] in similar places where they hide drugs,” an agent told the Seattle Times).
- A West Virginia man shot and killed a 63-year-old security guard over a dispute involving “several hundred dollars’ worth” of Beanie Babies.
And these two images which say so much. Cred: Thehustle.com
