Beanie Babies Go Bust with Ian Karmel and Brian Moller | 35
The Big Flop
Wondery
4.6 • 884 Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When eccentric toy maker Ty Warner created a new line of floppy stuffed animals with cute names and charming poems, he unleashed pure havoc and chaos into the world. At the height of Beanie Mania, people spent their life savings and even assaulted others to collect the rare creatures like Patti the Platypus and Ziggy the Zebra before they “retired”. When the dust settled, fortunes were lost, limbs were broken and Ty (as in, TY INC.), was left holding the big, floppy bag.
Ian Karmel (All Fantasy Everything) and Brian Moller (B Mo the Prince) join Misha to relive the Beanie Baby bubble,
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the Big Flop early and ad free. |
| 0:05.3 | Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:15.0 | Frances and Harold Mountain just want their divorce over and done with. |
| 0:25.6 | Four grueling months of bitter disputes, weeks of going back and forth about assets. |
| 0:33.0 | They just have one issue they can't seem to settle. |
| 0:37.2 | Who gets the babies? No, not the children. |
| 0:41.5 | The Beanie Babies. It's 1999 and society has lost its collective mind over these pellet stuffed toys. |
| 0:51.6 | Francis and Harold have grown emotionally attached to their dozens of beanies |
| 0:56.5 | worth somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000, depending on the volatile collector's market, but you |
| 1:04.7 | wouldn't understand. The divorce decree was simple. It said the ex-couple had to divide their collection equally, |
| 1:13.3 | and they can't. Francis has refused to cough them up, so Harold has filed a motion to get his share. |
| 1:23.4 | The Mountain family has made a mountain out of a pile of playthings, |
| 1:28.6 | and Judge Gerald Hardcastle can hardly believe he's going to have to take the court's precious time to figure this out. |
| 1:37.9 | They really need a bailiff and a guy in a robe in the room for this? |
| 1:42.7 | Okay. |
| 1:44.1 | Hardcastles ordered Francis to haul in all of the |
| 1:47.6 | beanies, spread them out onto the dirty courtroom floor, and for her and Harold to squat down and each |
| 1:54.6 | claim a beanie until no more remain. It's impossible to figure out which part of this is the most embarrassing. But at least |
| 2:03.8 | now, if the beanies don't appreciate over time, their shame sure will. |
| 2:13.3 | Small understuffed plush beanbag dolls called Beanie Babies. They sell for about $6. |
| 2:18.9 | Do you know if that retires, that bear alone will cover the price of everything? |
| 2:22.6 | Ty Warner had to take the Thai heart off of shipping boxes because they would assault UPS drivers. |
... |
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