The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute
The end of the craze was just as swift and extremely devastating, with "rare" Beanie Babies deemed worthless as quickly as they'd on ...more
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As someone who specifically remembers the long McDonald’s lines and aggressive sleuthing of new shipments to Hallmark stores, the story behind Ty Warner’s billion-dollar empire and how Beanie Babies became a cultural phenomenon is one that glued me to the page. Even now Ty, Inc. remains a secretive operation. This book is the only trustworthy journ ...more

I had recently turned 14 and had just started at a new school. Suddenly I was around all these new kids and I quickly developed my first girl crush (at least my first girl crush ...more


1 mistreated child
2 misguided women
1,000,000 acres of plush
50,000,000 innocent suburban children
50,000,000 obsessive suburban parents
10,000,000,000 dollars
infinite financial optimism
Let child stew in his own thoughts until he reaches entrepreneurial adulthood. Add women one by one, taking care to make sure they do not mix. With great attention fold in the plush, slowly at first but more quickly as the p(l)ot comes to a boil. Add innocent children and instantly remo
...more
This book takes us through the origin story, madness, and decline of the Beanie Baby fad. I never knew anything about the enigmatic founder Ty Warner but he might be the most interesting person in the world!? Eccentric, insane, ruthless, genius... NEED a biopic immediately.
I loved hearing about his vision for the Beanies ...more

Beanie Babies were plush stuffed animals which had the then-unique characteristic of being understuffed and filled in key places with pellets which made them easy to pose. Available in a variety of colors and animal characters, the toys were slow to pick up interest. That lag t ...more

Never heard the background story, never even thought there was a big company with history, never knew there was unique Man running the spectacular show of thousands people going ...more


This is the story of the Beanie Baby craze - small, understuffed plush animals that were produced largely throughout the 1990s. When author Zac Bissonnette approached creator Ty Warne ...more

*Used for PopSugar 2018 Reading Challenge prompt "A microhistory." ...more

I vividly remember the Beanie Baby craze. I was in first or second grade, and I remember someone telling my beanie babies would only be worth money with their tags on. I also remember my brother pulling off the tag on my little grey kitty and attacking him for doing so. (oops). So, when I found out there was a book about Beanie Babies, and examining the craze I knew I had to get it. This book was gif ...more



Market bubbles are nothing new. A few people make a ton of money and everyone else loses. At the time of the Internet Bubble in the 1990s there was another bubble: the Beanie Baby Bubble. People lost all reason speculating on small stuffed animals, thinking they would become rich. Ty Inc., the toy company of Ty Warner, became familiar to all of America as normally rational adults - even though we're talking about toys this story has little to do with chil ...more

Part of the reason I found this book so fascinating is I remember this craze so well. (I even had the infamous handbook.) I was five or si ...more


Zac Bissonnette had a pretty compelling story to t ...more

Behind the obvious rise and fall lies a most interesting story of a strangely broken man, Ty himself, who launched his mercurial line of plush and briefly captivated America.
There's two main takeaways from this book at least for me. One, it's a fascinating portrait of a grotesquely broken man. Gripping stuff. Two, there's plenty of nuggets of wisdom for investors. How ide ...more

It reads like a novel, sometimes almost like an expose or soap opera, Ty is such a bizarre character. I really found myself wondering about how human nature and crow ...more


I have no idea why I read this, but I'm glad I did. I was about 9 when the "Beanie Baby Bubble" blew up, so I have no idea of the impact it had on modern consumerism (ie. explosion of eBay, and counteractively, the demise of teddy bears).
I knocked it down a few stars because I don't think the author had a clear vision of this book. Is it a Ty Warner autobiography? Or a history of the beanie baby? The author needed a better thesis or overall idea of what story the boo ...more




This book was reviewed as part of Amazon's Vine program which included a free advance copy of the book.
I remember watching two co-workers participate in the Beanie Baby craze of the late 90s and was entertained as well as frustrated by the amount of money they continued to sink into their Beanie “investments” (one had the means to support her “habit” … the other did not). Zac Bissonnette’s THE GREAT BEANIE BABY BUBBLE provides a very detailed understanding of the Beanie Baby man ...more

Ty Warner was as meticulous and micro-managing in the beanies as he is about his own appearance. He would work and re-work the designs until they wo ...more

When I first heard of this book it immediately brought me back to those times of plastic bins filled wi ...more

A fascinating case study of a speculative bubble, with a twist.
I was a couple of years too old to really get caught up in the Beanie Chase, but I grew up in the Chicago suburbs not far from the epicenter, so I know a bit about what happened, and was interested to see the stories behind not only Ty Inc. and Ty Warner, but many of the third party promoters and dealers, like Les and Sue Fox, the authors of the self-published bestseller The Beanie Baby Handbook.
The story of Beanie Babies is insepara
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Play Book Tag: (Poll Ballot) The Great Beanie Baby Bubble by Zac Bissonnette - 4 stars | 3 | 13 | Jan 24, 2020 02:01PM |