🧸 Beanie Babies: The Cutest Boom, Bubble & Bust

The Best One Yet

Nick & Jack Studios

News, Business

4.7 • 9.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 June 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/

Beanie Babies — the unassuming critters with birthdates and bios — are designed to tug on your heartstrings (and your wallet). But for a moment in the late-90s, they burst out of gift shops and into investment portfolios as America went crazy over Legs the Frog, Pinchers the Lobster, and the rest of the plushie pals.Behind this bean-stuffed market bubble hid a mysterious salesman with a chip on his shoulder named Ty Warner (the P.T. Barnum of Plush), who masterminded limited drops, direct-to-retail strategies, and internet virality before any of those things had names.

With plastic pellets and perceived scarcity, Ty built an empire worth billions that stands to this day. But there wasn't such a happy ending for most speculators when the market turned from (Snort the) bull to (Brownie the) bear, wiping out millions.

Find out how Beanie Babies helped launch eBay, why you should never trade your Bucky the Beaver for a cupcake, and why Beanie Babies is the best idea yet.

Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet for the untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with — and the bold risk takers who made them go viral.

Episodes drop every Tuesday, listen here: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Yeties, Nick and Jack here from the T-Boy Studio.
0:02.7	Today, we're going to play you a sample from our other show,
0:05.3	the best idea yet on Beanie Babies.
0:08.1	Get this, at one point in the 1990s,
0:10.1	Beanie Babies made more profit than Mattel and Hasbro.
0:13.9	Combine.
0:15.3	It's wild.
0:16.4	Collectors wanted these stuffed animals so bad
0:18.8	that at one point, Beanie Babies represented 10% of all sales on eBay.
0:24.0	Oh, it was a wild boom, a wild bust, and we cover all of it on this episode.
0:29.7	Here's a short sample of our episode on Beanie Babies.
0:32.2	After it's done, subscribe to the best idea yet so you can hear the rest.
0:35.4	And you're going to want to hear the rest. Let's play the clipjack.
0:40.3	A white Rolls-Royce silver shadow glides up to a hotel entrance.
0:49.6	The door opens and out steps a man. He's in his mid-30s, but he has a youthful elf-like aura. What stands out,
0:56.1	though, is his fur coat, his top hat, and a cane that he starts twirling as soon as he springs
1:01.5	onto the sidewalk. It's like he just stepped out of a 1920s gangster flick. He's got a briefcase in his
1:07.2	hand. Maybe he's about to make some kind of shady backroom deal. Except when he flips
1:12.6	open the case, it's not filled with cash or stolen jewels. It's crammed with stuffed toys.
1:19.1	This is Ty Warner, and he's not your typical toy salesman. And I don't just mean because of his
1:25.3	wardrobe. In 1980, where our story begins,
1:28.2	he's pulling in six figures when the median U.S. household income was around $20,000.
	...

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