Beanies ‘R’ Us

As we waited for a store clerk to bring out the daily ration of Beanie Babies, some of the parents started grumbling about the silliness of it all.

“Ridiculous,” one mother said.

“Stupid,” agreed another.

Here they were, competent, grown-ups, with credit cards and jobs and German automobiles, reduced to making appointments for a chance--a chance--to purchase little, $6 stuffed animals with names like Waddle the Penguin and Zip the Cat. And please wait until your number is called. And only one per customer, of course.

Talk turned to previous toy crazes, and it sounded like the bar at any VFW Hall, old soldiers comparing horrors. Remember Cabbage Patch. Tell me about it. Tickle Me Elmo. Power Rangers. Bad, bad. This one, they agreed, this Beanie Baby thing, is the worst. This one has the feel of pure manipulation, of being had.

The kids, mine included, paid no attention. They fairly gyrated on their chairs, knees twitching, knuckles cracking, eyes trained on the curtain that led to the supply room. Would there be enough Beanie Babies this day to go around? The thought occurred: This is what it will look like should narcotics be decriminalized, addicts fidgeting in some public place, anticipating the daily fix.

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I tried to imagine the baron of Beanie Babies in his lair. I pictured a Danny DeVito-type. His office would be decorated in dark woods and leather, clouded by blue cigar smoke. Across a desk the size of Kansas would be spread a map. Pins would mark the cities conquered by Beanie Babies. Chicago. New York. Kansas City. Many pins. I imagined the baron laughing like a maniac, laughing at us, the parents of his prey.

Now maybe this picture is all wrong. It’s hard to say. H. Ty Warner, founder of Ty, Inc., creator of Beanie Babies, works at keeping himself out of the public loop. He rarely grants interviews. Ty, Inc., his privately held company based in a Chicago suburb, has an unlisted number. “Ty, Inc.,” an inquiring New York reporter recently was informed, “does not believe that it would be appropriate to discuss our business in a public forum.”

This much is known. Warner was a veteran toy company executive who quit a decade ago to start his own firm. In 1993 he started making Beanie Babies, little stuffed animals with heart-shaped tags in their ears. The tags introduce the creatures, giving their names, “birthdate” and a few lines of descriptive verse.

It is said that Warner is tough with retailers, making them follow his rules. He has eschewed television advertising and big toy stores, relying on word-of-mouth to feed the frenzy. A new tie-in with McDonald’s seems out of character, but this is said to be part of a larger strategy. “He’s no dummy,” explained one distributor. “He knows how to market something and keep it alive.” More than anything, Warner is said to have mastered the tactic of limiting supply to manipulate demand.

“The strategy here,” Forbes Magazine reported last October, “is empty shelves--the deliberate creation of scarcity which pumps up word-of-mouth demand to a frenzied level. . . . Ty Warner knows that the harder his toys are to get, the more people want them and the longer his fad will last.”

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So far, so good. The consensus in Toyland is that Beanie Babies soon will challenge Barbie at the mountaintop. Forbes estimated sales last year at $250 million. There’s a Beanie Baby black market. The frenzy has spread from the Midwest, through the East, across to Northern California. “It is only just starting here,” said a Southern California distributor. Good luck, parents of Los Angeles.

It has been unnerving to observe the influence of these creatures over the neighborhood children. My daughter and her friends spend hours calling store after store: Have the Beanie Babies come in yet? They actually beg for work, folding clothes, washing cars, cleaning up after the dog--anything to earn a few dollars to put toward Legs the Frog and Co. They even, Lord save us, share Beanie Babies with siblings. This miracle is tarnished by the explanation that commingling herds ensures they will have as many Beanie Babies as the kids next door.

In short, they have learned to act like perfect little American consumers, shopping for the label, keeping a jealous eye on the Joneses, wanting, getting, wanting, getting. As a dad with an outsized appetite for certain brands of flannel shirts and a bad case of new car fever, I can only conclude that it won’t be the last time a marketeer invades their brains.

In fact, I suspect that’s one reason parents grouse so much about Beanie Babies and similar toy crazes: Through the children, we see such an unflattering reflection of own consuming selves. Ah well, lighten up, dad, lighten up. Just be grateful Beanie Babies come fully assembled and require no batteries.