WEBVTT - Beanie Babies: Reigning Toy Craze Champion 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:03.000 Hello, people. If you want to come see us live 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:05.720 next year, your very first chance to do it is 0:00:05.760 --> 0:00:08.959 going to be Seattle, Washington on January twenty fourth at 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:10.160 the Paramount Theater, isn't that right? 0:00:10.480 --> 0:00:13.160 Yeah? And then the following day, the very next day, 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:16.000 we're going all the way down to Portland, Oregon for 0:00:16.079 --> 0:00:19.439 another show on the twenty fifth at Revolution Hall. And 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:23.479 then after that, the very next day we're doing another show, Chuck. 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.799 That's right, our annual trip to f Sketch Fest on 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:29.479 January twenty sixth. You can get tickets now. Just go 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:32.320 to stuff youshould know dot com, click on the tour link, 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:36.919 and please please buy from official sellers from the venues. 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:39.199 Do not buy scalts tickets. 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.560 All right, and everybody, we will see you in January. 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.720 With bells on jingle bells. 0:00:47.200 --> 0:00:53.520 Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:59.160 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:02.400 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're feeling fairly festive 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:07.760 and this is Stuff you should Know. That's right, the 0:01:07.959 --> 0:01:11.360 episode before the Christmas episode. 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:16.640 Yeah, which is become a I guess tradition to do 0:01:16.680 --> 0:01:18.480 a classic toy. When did we start that? 0:01:18.880 --> 0:01:25.639 I'd say more custom than tradition. All right, I'm sorry, Christmas, 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:28.480 I'm feeling contrary. It is definitely a tradition. 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:31.200 Yeah, that's because you're about to shut it down for 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:34.240 a month, so you don't care you're burning bridges exactly. 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.559 I won't see you until like twenty twenty four. 0:01:37.240 --> 0:01:39.600 Yeah, like chuckle, forget anything that happens today. 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:42.800 By then, I'm trying to think of what our first 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:46.240 toy one was. It was a handful of years ago. 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:49.960 I don't remember, but it was slinky maybe no, No, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.280 I mean we've done toy ones, just not around Christmas. 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:55.320 I'm trying to think of the first toy Christmas ey one. 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:57.880 I can't. I'm drawing a blank right now. So this 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.560 is like high quality podcasting doing right now. 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.360 Yeah, well, good pick this year. 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:06.600 Yeah thanks. I don't know what made me think of 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:09.880 beanie Babies, but I did, and I think it turned 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:12.000 out to be a good one too, because it had 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:15.480 nothing to do with Christmas. Really, yeah, Christmas pops up 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:19.360 at one part. But it's a toy, and it's a 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.600 really interesting toy because Beanie Babies. For those of you 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.000 who don't know, if you were born after the nineties 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:32.240 were probably well, i'll just say The Financial Times called 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:37.560 it potentially the greatest market bubble of all times. Yeah, 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:39.880 I mean that's really saying something, because there's been some 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:43.600 market bubbles, but the beanie baby craze of the mid 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:48.320 to late nineties probably topped them all. It was just 0:02:48.400 --> 0:02:50.960 that crazy. I mean, we've talked about some crazy stuff 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:53.920 that people have done for toys before, people elbowing one 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.960 another for a cabbage Patch kid. That's peanuts compared to 0:02:56.960 --> 0:02:58.440 what people did for beanie babies. 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:01.440 Yeah. I didn't know anything about this either, because that 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.120 was sort of the end of college and then my 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.120 New York New Jersey years, and I just I knew 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.000 that beanie babies were a thing, but I was not 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:15.200 participating in the economy in that way at that point. 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.840 So you didn't known a single one. Oh, of course 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:21.720 not I didn't either, No, I totally didn't. But the 0:03:21.800 --> 0:03:24.559 thing is is we were in the minority in America, 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:29.120 something like sixty two or sixty three percent owned at 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:32.200 least one beanie baby at the height of this bubble. 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.480 Think about that. That honestly was one of the most 0:03:34.480 --> 0:03:36.040 shocking stats in this whole thing. 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.920 Yeah, that's like six point three people out of every 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:39.560 ten people. 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:44.720 Yeah, that's amazing when you're talking about a little kid's toy. 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:48.400 Yeah, well that was the thing. It wasn't kids that 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:51.600 fueled this craze. It was almost exclusively adults because the 0:03:51.640 --> 0:03:53.920 reason the market bubble grew was because there became this 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:59.600 idea that beanie babies were valuable, that they had an 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:04.160 inherent value greater than the face value that you would 0:04:04.160 --> 0:04:05.640 pay for them at the retail store. 0:04:06.240 --> 0:04:07.720 Yeah, which was true for a while. 0:04:09.280 --> 0:04:11.800 Yeah, it was. It was. We'll get into all that, 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.360 but let's start from the beginning, shall we. 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:17.840 All right, Well, you can't talk beanie babies without talking 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.800 about the gentleman who started it all. I do remember 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:27.560 seeing the letters t Y on beanie baby packaging, so 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:30.800 I wasn't completely head in the sand, sure, but I 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.800 did not know that t Y was the guy's name. 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.599 It was Ty Warner, who was born in the mid 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:42.719 nineteen forties in Lagrange, Chicago suburb Lagrange, Illinois, and he 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:46.159 had a pretty not great childhood. It seems like, is 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:46.839 that fair to say? 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:48.800 Yeah? From everything I've heard. 0:04:48.800 --> 0:04:51.920 Yeah, I had a mother who suffered from mental illness 0:04:51.960 --> 0:04:55.680 which was not treated, which is even worse, didn't have 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:58.960 a great relationship with his dad. His parents got divorced 0:04:58.960 --> 0:05:01.000 when he was in his thirties, but he went to 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:06.360 college at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where he learned his 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:08.239 love of treading the boards. 0:05:09.640 --> 0:05:14.320 Yeah, yeah, kalam theater, right exactly. But he did. He 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.160 got into acting, and it kind of either he was 0:05:17.240 --> 0:05:19.719 already like a theater kid at heart, or it turned 0:05:19.760 --> 0:05:22.320 him into a theater kid because he ended up taking 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:26.880 that that way of living or that way of looking 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:28.800 at the world or being in the world with him 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:30.839 essentially for the rest of his life. 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.040 Yeah, he seemed fairly flamboyant. 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.960 He was flamboyant. There's a really oft sighted story about 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:43.400 him showing up when he became a salesman for the 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.000 toy company that his father worked for. He would show 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:50.599 up to these sales calls in a Rolls Royce wearing 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:54.640 a floor length fur coat and a cane and a hat. Amazing, 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:58.239 essentially like Kramer when he accidentally's wearing the Technicolor dream 0:05:58.279 --> 0:06:03.000 coat and ends up with that big Jamir Kui hat Niccain. Yeah, 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:06.479 that's essentially what Ty Warner showed up to these sales 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:09.719 meetings looking like in the early sixties, and apparently it 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:14.160 worked because he said that his premise was if he 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.080 showed up to a sales meeting looking like that, people 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.040 would say, I want to see what's in that guy's briefcase? 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.000 Yeah, or do. 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:25.920 You Yeah, it depends on the kind of party you're 0:06:25.960 --> 0:06:26.280 in for. 0:06:27.520 --> 0:06:31.400 Yeah, he was a really good salesperson. Apparently he thought 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.960 a lot of himself though, and in nineteen eighty he 0:06:35.000 --> 0:06:37.559 worked for this company, I guess what, for like eighteen years, 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:40.200 because he got the job in nineteen sixty two, So 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:42.840 that's a nice long run. But at least the way 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:47.400 his former boss told it, guy named Harold Nazamian, who 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:53.159 was the CEO, basically accused him of moonlighting on the 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.960 company and using their you know, sales list in his 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.400 personal personal relationships with people as a salesperson to sell 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:05.159 his own stuff while he was working right as a 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.000 sales manager for this company, and so he got fired. 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:10.080 Yeah, on those sales calls he would be like, yeah, 0:07:10.080 --> 0:07:13.200 I've got these great dacin products, but also I want 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.520 to show you these too, So he was not only 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:18.480 using company contexts. He was using company time too. It's 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.880 about as bad a thing you can do as a salesman, essentially. 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:24.840 Yeah, And it wasn't long after that that the beanie 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:25.600 baby came along. 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.800 No, that was so it was nineteen eighty when he 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.840 lost the job. He apparently moved to Rome. He went 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:34.880 to go visit some friends and ended up living there 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:38.840 for a few years. And when he came back, he 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.840 was inspired to keep going in the toy industry. I 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:45.400 guess it kind of got under his skin and he'd 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.160 seen some toy cats there in Rome, he said, and 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:52.360 he was inspired to create not beanie babies at first, 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.120 but his first plush toys, which was a line of 0:07:55.200 --> 0:08:01.520 cats laying down, pretty fluffy. They looked they were fully stuffed, 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:03.760 which is a big difference between them and beanie babies. 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.640 And then for every cat there was a Himalayan version 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:11.120 of it. And they were pretty cute little cats. But 0:08:11.160 --> 0:08:13.080 the thing that he did that I think really kind 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:15.920 of helped sell these things because they were like a 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:19.840 modest successive scene. It described as that he gave them 0:08:19.920 --> 0:08:23.000 names they were in They weren't just some stuffed cat. 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:28.040 This was Smoky, this was Peaches. Like these cats were individuals. 0:08:28.080 --> 0:08:30.960 They had an identity, and that made them that much 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:31.680 more lovable. 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:35.520 Yeah, And they were larger, they were about seventeen inches. 0:08:35.679 --> 0:08:39.080 They larger than beanie babies would be. They would cost 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:42.200 more than beanie babies at twenty bucks. And like you said, 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.560 they were stuffed, but not stuffed with the you know 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:47.640 kind of the genius of the I don't know about genius. 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:51.400 That's probably stretching that word. Sure, let's just say the 0:08:51.640 --> 0:08:55.000 fairly smart thing that he did with beanie babies was 0:08:55.040 --> 0:09:00.800 he stuffed them with beads like like a what's it called, yeah, 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:04.360 pretty much, and didn't overstuff it so you could move 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:06.840 them around and pose them and they could, you know, 0:09:06.960 --> 0:09:09.400 droop over your shoulder and stuff like that, not like 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:13.200 a regular sort of fully stuffed whatever. They stuffed those 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:17.560 things with whatever weird chemical stuffing. 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:23.160 Oh, like the little styrofoam pellets or the syrofoam fiber 0:09:23.480 --> 0:09:26.160 that's kind of like a yeah, fibers. 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:28.480 Yeah, I mean those are those are the cheapest ones 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:29.920 that you would get as like a prize at an 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:34.439 amusement park. Yes, that literal styrofoam balls. 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:36.600 Right, And that was a big that was a big 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:41.000 deal about his Beanie Babies because they were high quality. 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.960 They were very well made from the outset. He was 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:49.240 all up the bottom of the South Korean manufacturers he 0:09:49.280 --> 0:09:52.000 had partnered with to make these things. He was really 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:55.439 involved in the design and manufacturing process. So these were 0:09:55.520 --> 0:10:00.000 really high quality dolls. But he made a very conscious 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:03.319 to decision to sell Beanie Babies at five bucks a pop, 0:10:03.679 --> 0:10:07.880 which he said that mark that was the kids could 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.520 typically buy that with their allowance money, because as we'll 0:10:11.559 --> 0:10:14.760 forget multiple times throughout this episode, these were originally meant 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:17.880 for kids to buy the Beanie Babies were. So that 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:19.719 was a really big deal because he came out he 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:21.000 was one of the first people to come out with 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:24.400 a high quality toy at a price point of something 0:10:24.480 --> 0:10:27.360 you would get at like the County Fair something as 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:32.000 a prize, but instead it was a good quality plush toy. 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:35.959 Yeah, exactly. And so this was nineteen ninety three for 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:38.520 the actual launch of the Beanie Baby, which launched with 0:10:39.000 --> 0:10:43.920 Brownie the bear yep and Pinchers the Lobster, and like 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:46.400 a Cabbage Patch kid, it came with a date of birth. 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:48.920 He used the name like he you know, originally did 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:52.560 with those fully stuffed cats or kiddies. I guess fully 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:54.080 stuffed cat sounds gross. 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:56.360 It's like a traduction. 0:10:56.920 --> 0:10:59.680 Including the date of birth. And then also another key 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.800 was this little short poem and their little heart shaped 0:11:02.840 --> 0:11:05.679 tag turned out to be a bit of marketing genius. 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.400 It was just just an extra little something to make 0:11:08.440 --> 0:11:11.839 it different to appeal to a kid, because you gotta 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:13.840 even if it ended up being a thing that adults 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.720 try to collect because you know, they thought it was valuable, 0:11:17.000 --> 0:11:18.960 it never would have gotten there if he hadn't have 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:21.080 made a toay that kids really loved to begin with. 0:11:21.520 --> 0:11:24.280 Right Also, I mean he wasn't the first to do that. 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:26.439 This was a good ten years after the Cabbage Patch 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:28.840 kids and their adoption papers and all that stuff. But 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.920 it's still it is a good marketing technique for sure, 0:11:31.960 --> 0:11:35.080 and it did work. But the thing that made beanie 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:40.360 babies really kind of take off was multifold. Part of 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:45.120 it was his marketing scheme. He had a really brilliant 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:50.600 idea which was only certain kinds of stores could carry 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:52.840 beanie babies, and you actually had to be a licensed 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:56.800 beanie baby retailer to sell beanie babies legally or legitimately 0:11:57.400 --> 0:12:01.920 and those stores were like Hallmark stores, locally owned gift stores, 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:08.960 hospital gift shops, like small stores. So that right off 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:12.960 the bat canceled any chance of anyone I saw it 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:15.520 described it going into like a big box store, like 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:18.600 a wal Mart or something and seeing a bargain bin 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:21.480 of beanie babies just lumped together for fifty percent off. 0:12:22.000 --> 0:12:25.080 So the fact that that didn't that possibility didn't exist, 0:12:25.160 --> 0:12:29.160 someone couldn't see that automatically made it. They were just 0:12:29.240 --> 0:12:32.079 higher status than they otherwise would have been. Because he 0:12:32.559 --> 0:12:36.040 made enough to sell to huge retailers like that, he 0:12:36.640 --> 0:12:39.360 decided deliberately not to do that for that reason. 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.720 Yeah, super smart. I mean, if you can create a 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:48.720 scarcity and the illusion that what you're peddling is like 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:53.360 limited and collectible, yeah, then you're going to do pretty well. 0:12:53.640 --> 0:12:56.080 And that's what he did. But not only by limiting 0:12:56.120 --> 0:12:57.680 the amount of stores that could be sold in, but 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.120 he also limited the number of toys that these stores 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:04.920 could even buy. Like that Hallmark store once they you know, 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:06.920 really talk took off, couldn't be like, hey, we're going 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:09.880 to dedicate half our store to these things now because 0:13:09.920 --> 0:13:12.840 they're selling like hotcakes. So he would dole them out 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:16.040 in limited numbers to the stores, and each of those 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:19.480 stores only had certain products, like you know, you might 0:13:19.559 --> 0:13:22.880 have Spot the Dog and Squealer the Pig at one store, 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:26.120 or Chocolate the Moose and Flash the Dolphin at another. 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.360 And that creates a situation then where kids are like, 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:34.920 I got a you know, like completing the collection as 0:13:34.960 --> 0:13:38.960 a classic kid's toy scam. 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:43.439 For sure, Yeah, by all the exactly. And so you 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:45.760 would have to go around town to multiple stores in 0:13:45.800 --> 0:13:49.680 your town to get the ones that were available, and 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.280 because they were allowed to only buy limited amounts, frequently 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:55.559 those things were sold out. So the idea that these 0:13:55.559 --> 0:14:00.480 things were scarce collector's items was manufactured out of the 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:05.000 gate by Ty Warner in his marketing skit. I almost 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:07.120 said scam, but scheme, I think is a better way 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:07.640 to put. 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.720 Yeah. The other big thing is that this coincided with 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:16.880 the rise of the Internet. There's a great scene in 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.520 the movie. There's a movie that's out now, I think 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:23.080 an Apple original called The Beanie Bubble. 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:26.760 Yeah, I haven't seen it. Did you watch it now? 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:30.760 The reviews aren't kind. I may watch it because I 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.880 love Zach Galifanakis, who plays Ty Warner and Elizabeth banks 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:38.040 Is in the movie is a sort of a thinly 0:14:38.120 --> 0:14:42.840 veiled version of his former business partner and and romantic partner, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:46.440 I think Patricia Roach. But in the movie, in the 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.840 trailer I saw today, Zach said, because you know, they 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:51.680 started a website and there were you know, an early 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:54.760 website in those years, Yeah, Zach Galifant or I guess 0:14:54.760 --> 0:15:00.040 ty Warner says we broke the Internet things about it 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:01.800 was a pretty good line because the Internet was so 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:03.600 new over him, just like I guess you know there's 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:03.960 a thing. 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.560 Yeah, apparently. So he had an employee named Lena Trevetti, 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:10.880 and she was a coder, and this is like nineteen 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:14.240 ninety three ninety four, and she convinced Ty Warner to 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.520 create a beanie Baby's website because they were getting calls 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:20.320 and letters and stuff like that from people saying like 0:15:20.560 --> 0:15:22.920 this is my checklist? Is this accurate? Am I missing 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:25.080 any And they thought, well, let's just put like a 0:15:25.160 --> 0:15:28.360 central place where all of the beanie babies can be listed, 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:29.920 and it can be a place where everybody who likes 0:15:29.960 --> 0:15:33.440 beanie babies can come and like learn and get excited 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:37.600 about beanie babies and buy beanie babies because starting in 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.840 nineteen ninety five, they started selling beanie babies on this website, 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.240 and that was the same year that Amazon and eBay launched, 0:15:45.240 --> 0:15:47.560 so they were one of the first e commerce sites 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:48.880 on the internet. 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:52.240 Too, Yeah, which is amazing. The movie has a character 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:55.760 named Maya, who was again a thinly veiled version of 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.720 Lena Trevetti, which I'm curious why they didn't just use 0:15:58.760 --> 0:15:59.520 their real names. 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:08.760 They touted this as loosely based on Zach Bissonette's book 0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.320 and that some of it was fictitious, I think to 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.280 keep from getting sued. I get the impression that Ky 0:16:16.360 --> 0:16:20.120 Warner is not shy about suing people well. 0:16:19.960 --> 0:16:22.480 Which is interesting because he played Ty Warner in the movie. Like, 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:23.920 that's the only name that wasn't changed. 0:16:24.000 --> 0:16:26.440 Yeah. I don't know why they did it, but they 0:16:26.520 --> 0:16:28.720 definitely did it well. 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.960 Judging from the trailer, it seems that both the Bank's 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:35.960 character and the Maya character are kind of One of 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:38.680 the threads of the movies, as it was seemingly in 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.440 real life, was that there were at least a couple 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.120 of women in the organization that had a lot to 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:47.200 do with their growth in the sort of story is 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.960 that he never gave them enough credit, and that seems 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:50.760 to play out in the movie. 0:16:50.880 --> 0:16:54.880 Oh yeah, he like if you read any like corporate 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.560 write ups, like press releases or the very rare interviews 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:01.200 he's given, like it sounds like the whole thing was 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:05.359 just him, just him, And in part it was largely 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:09.120 him because he owned the company from the outset, always has. 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:12.000 He's never sold one share, he didn't take it public. 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:15.000 It's been a privately owned company by him one hundred 0:17:15.040 --> 0:17:18.480 percent as far as I know from the outset. So 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:21.960 he definitely, you know, really was the driving force in this, 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.840 but he had help that is largely unacknowledged publicly. That 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:28.359 it's a good thing that Zach Bisonette came along, and 0:17:28.840 --> 0:17:31.320 also the people who made that the movie based on 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:35.240 Zach Bisonett's book to kind of shine a spotlight on 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:39.680 the other people of this, particularly women who helped him. Yeah, 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.840 Zach and Zach, that's right, the two Zach's on the 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:45.600 Zach attack against Ty Warren's. 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:49.840 The other thing that he did to sort of, you know, 0:17:50.000 --> 0:17:52.960 drive this, I mean, I guess we can call it 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:55.960 a fall scarcity, is he had he was very secret 0:17:56.000 --> 0:17:59.639 about the company. He didn't want people outside the company knowing, 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.280 like when they were going to launch a new kind 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:06.200 of toy, how many they were making. Right in nineteen 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.119 ninety five, he started retiring models that was huge and 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:11.520 then adding other ones. And he would just all of 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:15.080 a sudden drop like, you know this Marty Moose, what 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:15.840 did I call him something? 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:17.080 The moose, chocolate moose. 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.720 Chocolate Moose is gone, let's say. And if they're being 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:24.080 baby people out there, like, no, chocolate moose never left. 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:25.680 I'm just using that as an example. 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:26.760 That's a good idea. 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:28.560 But they would just announce that on the website and 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:30.280 all of a sudden, people are like, oh my god, 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:33.920 they've retired the moose, and you know, people are driving 0:18:33.960 --> 0:18:35.880 around and trying to find them in those stores before 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:36.520 they're all gone. 0:18:36.640 --> 0:18:40.600 Yeah, that was a deliberate thing to do as well, 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:44.359 to create the further scarcity, like legitimate scarcity. But apparently 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:48.479 he fell into that backwards or he stumbled into it, 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.920 because we said that he was really involved in the design. 0:18:52.440 --> 0:18:55.680 After these things would launch, he would like, see one, 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:57.840 be like that's too orange, I want it more red, 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.200 And all of a sudden, I saw a pinchy the 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:04.080 the lobster would be a much deeper red. Well, they'd 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.200 stop producing the orangish red one, and these beanie baby 0:19:07.240 --> 0:19:09.800 collectors would go bonkers trying to find the other one. 0:19:09.840 --> 0:19:13.760 He started to notice that, and so he created real 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:17.400 scarcity by deliberately retiring some just out of the blue. 0:19:17.560 --> 0:19:20.720 People would go scramble to find them, and then retailers, 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:25.200 most importantly, would start stockpiling everything that he had that 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:27.800 they could sell, say the orange pinchy. 0:19:28.720 --> 0:19:33.120 Yeah. He was also smart enough to realize that the 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:37.320 cabbage Patch kids, like when that bubble burst, it just 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:39.960 kind of all went away, and so he would do 0:19:40.040 --> 0:19:42.640 things like, hey, Hallmark, if you want to order these 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:45.199 beanie babies, you got to also order some of this 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.800 other stuff that I'm selling. It's not as nearly as popular, 0:19:48.840 --> 0:19:52.240 but he tried to increase revenue sort of across the company. 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:54.600 So he wasn't all in on the beanie baby, right. 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.199 I say we take a break and come back and 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.040 talk about how McDonald's factors into this. What do you think. 0:20:00.680 --> 0:20:09.600 Mcwe lately I've been learning some stop about insomnia or aluminia. 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:14.119 How about the one on border like disorder that are 0:20:14.359 --> 0:20:20.520 under order? That one be warm, but it was so nice, Olearnest, 0:20:20.880 --> 0:20:23.920 why everybody listen. 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:42.800 Up, stop stop stop Star Josh and shock. 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:46.520 So shot. 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:51.720 Okay, Chuck. So we said, McDonald's factors into this, Like 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.560 any great American economic bubble story, McDonald's going to play 0:20:55.560 --> 0:21:00.199 some role in it whatsoever, somehow, some way. And McDonald 0:21:00.320 --> 0:21:03.520 is the one that basically said, if you are just 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.160 kind of out there on the margins and don't really 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:08.520 know what's going on in this beanie baby collector world 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.880 growing under your very nose, this McDonald's happy Meal promotion 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:16.280 is going to just blow the doors off of any 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.600 illusions that beanie babies are not a cultural force to 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:20.360 be reckoned with. 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:23.760 Yeah, over a couple of years, I think they had 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.080 two versions in ninety seven and ninety eight where they 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:32.240 there were hundreds of millions of teeny babies. These were 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:34.600 even smaller, obviously because it was, you know, to fit 0:21:34.640 --> 0:21:35.360 into a happy meal. 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:36.240 Yeah, teeny beanies. 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:38.639 Yeah what I say, teeny babies? 0:21:38.680 --> 0:21:39.320 It works too. 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:40.960 I like teeny babies. 0:21:41.000 --> 0:21:42.200 I like teeny babies. 0:21:41.920 --> 0:21:46.160 Too, teeny beanies. And you know, even if your thing 0:21:46.240 --> 0:21:49.000 is already popular, all of a sudden, if hundreds of 0:21:49.040 --> 0:21:51.200 millions of these things are going out and happy meals 0:21:51.800 --> 0:21:54.400 and you know the most popular, you know, fast food 0:21:54.440 --> 0:21:58.520 restaurant chain in the world, then it's gonna just skyrocket 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:00.520 this thing even further. And that's exactly what it did. 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:03.639 Yeah, the nineteen ninety eight one, the second one that 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:06.040 they did where you could get teeny beanies in a 0:22:06.080 --> 0:22:12.160 happy meal. The first weekend of that promotion, McDonald saw 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:16.399