Remember Beanie Babies a.k.a. the NFTs of the ‘90s?
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Do you remember the Beanie Babies craze in the 90s?
00:02Well, now you can take a nostalgic look back at the frenzy that swept America.
00:06Apple TV Plus' latest film, The Beanie Bubble, tells the mostly true account of the boom and bust of the $5 pellet-stuffed plush toys.
00:14When Ty, Inc. first started selling Beanie Babies in 1993, their popularity was minimal.
00:18It wasn't until the toy's creator, Ty Warner, decided to only sell them at small toy shops and limit the quantity of each animal that the illusion of rarity was born.
00:27This was further amplified when Warner began retiring certain animals in 1995, creating a sense of scarcity and leading consumers to stock up.
00:34Suddenly, a booming resale market was born, with the stuffed animals accounting for 10% of eBay site-wide sales in 1998.
00:41That same year, border officials confiscated more than 8,000 smuggled Beanie Babies at the U.S.-Canada border.
00:47In 1999, a West Virginia man shot and killed a former co-worker after an argument over $150 worth of Beanie Babies.
00:55Also that year, a divorcing couple couldn't agree on how to divide their collection, leading a judge to make them divvy up the toys in person on the floor of a courtroom.
01:03The hysteria reached a peak in 1999 when Ty, Inc. announced they would stop making Beanie Babies, citing a shift in interest to other toys like Pokemon and Furbies.
01:11Today, beanies that once went for hundreds or thousands of dollars can be found online for $15 or less.