Hello, and welcome to mind of Micah today, part two of the beanie baby bubble.

What we can make of bubbles.

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All right, on to part two.

Beanie babies were the creation of Thai Warner, the elusive billionaire behind toy company Thai Inc,

which he founded in 1986.

He launched Beanie babies in 93 and initially people didn't get it.

At the beginning, nobody really wanted Beanie babies, says Lisa Triveldi, one of Thai's earliest employees.

Consumers don't seem to quite get them, and retailers don't think they'd fit the aesthetic of their stores.

Then she says, it felt like a switch flipped overnight.

Beanie babies took off in the suburbs of Chicago where Thai's headquarters was located, and then fanned out.

When you're in the midst of it, you don't really see the intensity escalating or whatever Triveldi says,

because you're in the vortex of it all.

To the extent that he could, Warner manufactured the craze around the items,

and the endeavor was, after all, to make money.

Despite retailers and shoppers' initial reservations, the Beanie babies were indeed cute,

and Warner's team attached names, poems, and birthdays to them to make them more personal.

Most of the original ones were written by Triveldi.

The toys were excessively priced, and at the same time, Warner was able to pull supply strings to create a sense of scarcity around them.

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