Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in
forgotten and bewildering crap culled from area basements, thrift
stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason:
Knowledge is power.
The Beanie Baby Handbook
Author: Les & Sue Fox
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 1998
Discovered at: Maj-R Thrift, W. 47th Street
The Cover Promises: Your toys
are commodities.
Representative Quotes:
"Basically, if you can afford to do
this, simply putting away five or ten of each and every new Beanie
Baby in super mint condition isn't a bad idea." (page 27).
"As seasoned McDonald's collectors,
we had little doubt that $2 would be less than the future value of
any Teenie Beanie. Unfortunately, we were only able to accumulate 500
or so Beanies during the mad rush." (page 190)
A heartless, mercenary endeavor that
strips whatever innocence remains in childish hording, Les & Sue
Fox's The Beanie Baby Handbook teaches kids that fun, imagination, and all of the other qualities we love in toys get in the way of profitability.
Instead, the Foxes encourage kids to become stuffed-animal
speculators.
The Foxes dedicate a page of their handbook to each
of the Ty Beanie Babies the children of America believed might pay for college. They chart each Beanie's cost at issue date, its worth in 1998 and then
forecast how much it might be worth ten years out -- provided you
don't hug or play with it, or anything stupid like that.
This typical entry also shows how Beanies get made!
Stripes currently fetches $.99 on eBay -- just one one-thousandth of the
Foxes' estimate.
The Foxes took all their own photos and wrote heaps of cutesy filler text.
The last line
reads "NOTE: Otters can break open nuts on their chests." Remember that the next time someone asks you "What do otters have in
common with sorority girls?" (Current eBay
price of a mint-condition Seaweed, with tags: $.99.)
Nastiest of all, the Foxes offer a purchase recommendation at the end of each entry. Some Beanies come "Highly
Recommended." Others are merely "Recommended." And others --
oh, wait. The Foxes limit themselves to those two choices, tacitly promising that every last damn Beanie Baby would appreciate in
value.
I'm not calling the Foxes a pair of
Beanie Madoffs. Still, I'm unsettled by any speculators who establish
inflated prices on commodities in which they themselves are heavily
invested. (For further examples, Google "Enron" and
"California.")
This might be a good time to revisit the mission and credo of their publisher.
"Scholastic has created quality
products and services that educate, entertain and motivate children
and are designed to help enlarge their understanding of the world
around them."
I guess kids have to enlarge their understanding of getting
screwed sometime.
Shocking Detail:
The Handbook informs us that the
rarest Beanies are worth more because of their errors. (By this logic, the Foxes should be only slightly less valuable than the last president.)
Really, is Righty
the Elephant's upside-down flag an mistake? Maybe he's warning us that the republic is in peril.
Either
way, I bet Righty just
hates this:
Highlight:
In addition to encouraging thousands of children to waste money on
toy bears they should under no circumstances actually enjoy, the
Foxes have also:
Repurposed
their Beanie photos into a set of Beanie
Baby Trading Cards
Published
1980's
Silver Dollar Fortune Telling,
the back cover of which promises "Fight Inflation With SILVER
DOLLARS!"
Written unproduced films, including (in the Foxes' own words) "a
gory werewolf story" and "a hilarious screenplay titled 'No
Brainer!' starring Woody Allen and Arnold Schwarzenegger."
Manufactured "a neat little calorie counter" for the infomercial
market.
Launched Logopogo, "a world class shopping web-site," now
defunct.
Published
the novel Return
to Sender: The Secret Son of Elvis Presley.
five-star reviews
of their own books on Amazon.Of
Return toSender,
Leswrites "we think it could be the most incisive book ever written
about Elvis, and who he really was. If you can read this book
without being moved, we'd be surprised."
Pop Quiz, Hot Shot!
Which of the following are band names ... and which are the Foxes' proposals for new Beanies?
Biscuit the Dog
Pedro the Lion
Blush the Cardinal
Choke the Boa
Dizzy the Possum
Muscles the Boxer
Donna the Buffalo
Pain the Wasp
Stretch the Ferret
Trek the Starfish
Showing 1-19 of 19
Also, I've never heard of otters, even bean-filled ones, cracking nuts on their chests. One would wonder where they'd get them, being adapted to aquatic environments and all. Clams and crustaceans would be a better bet.
But my Royals bobbleheads are worth a fortune. And did these Foxes really get 500 McDonald Beanies? Even they averaged 3 Happy Meals a trip, that 166 trips to McDonalds.
I worked for a Hallmark retailer from 1998 to 2000, during the height of the beanie baby insanity. I can't count how many angry phone calls I fielded from middle-aged women looking for beanie babies. Or how many time I witnessed a near riot when we were trying to put them on the shelf.
You can never know how happy this makes me. If there was one thing I hated more than beanie babies...it was the obsessed soccer moms from...well...you know...who collected the stupid things.
Your investment is worth a fraction what you paid for it! HAHA!
HAHAHA! You had to figure the Beanie Baby fad would come crashing to the ground, eventually. They're just like all the other novelty trends that have come and gone over the years, like mood rings, Rubik's Cubes, Cabbage Patch Kids, and stuff.
I kind of think Beanie Babies are one of the defining items of late 1990s pop culture, along with things like Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls, Furbys, Pokemon, Hanson and the Spice Girls.
By the way, I'm totally creeped out that a company with the reputation of Scholastic would publish a book like this!
They were DUMPING beanie babies in Sydney years ago at the Easter show (it's a huge fair) where I got five for AUD$3.
Made nice gifts for friends and a great (somewhat short lived) chew toy for the dogs.
We fuelled the greed of brothers and sisters in law as we gave their precious snowflakes beenie babies over a decade ago (they were cheaper in Canada than the US). It is entirely possible that there will be a resurgence of these things as the children reach the age where they have disposable income.
The best gift for your female is a collar and very firm guidance so the simple typical addle-minded female is not forced to attempt what is either very difficult or impossible for the typical American female... act as an adult in a rough and tumble society that requires an ADULT to accept responsibilities along with attaining rights and privileges.
Guide your female. Do not expect the simpleton to think logically or rationally.
Reward good behavior with the shiny trinkets and baubles the simple creatures crave so much.
This message brought to you by the Females as Property Movement.
Their next book should be "Crazy Like A Fox:A Guide To Making A Couple Of Bucks For The Batshit Insane".
I think jjskck bailed too fast on his date -I would have gone all seaweed the otter on her chest, then left.
Via video blog Everything is Terrible!, here is a fucking insane video about collecting Beanie Babies.
Jesus the Christ, these people are frightening.
I went on a date with a girl once and was invited into her apartment. She proceeded immediately to talk to her cat...in baby talk...partially in Spanish.
She also showed me her China cabinet full of Beanies, saying there were a few thousand dollars tied up in her collection.
I bailed quickly, because I knew Thrusty the Penis wanted nothing to do with Cuckoo the Vag.
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