Yemisi Brookes

(On Cable TV, February 2022) Everyone who was alive during the late 1990s remembers the Beanie Babies mania, but that’s no excuse not to revisit the topic, especially as children and grandchildren of the OG Beanie Baby maniacs are now rediscovering the tubs of stored stuffed animals collected during the boom. Through interviews by major figures in the phenomena, archival footage and some impressionistic segments (some of them faked to look like 1990s footage, complete with SD-TV aspect ratio), Beanie Mania gives an enjoyable, sometimes amazing, still relevant overview of those few years. We spend some time with ex-employees of the Ty toy company, many of them hired before the Beanie Baby phenomenon really took off. We have an overview (but no interview) of the enigmatic Ty Warner, who built the phenomenon, raked in millions in profits and was later convicted of tax evasion with a wrist-slap of a sentence. We get interviews with the hard-core fans of the time—those who bought, collected, appraised and catalogued the Beanie Babies, turning it from a toy line to a collecting and speculative investment phenomenon. (One of the interviewees is “Beanie Meanie” Harry Rinkler, who correctly warned people about the speculative bubble that would inevitably burst.)  Criticism about Ty are well-framed, discussing tensions between the company and its fans, the way its employees were not treated with respect or financial compensation, and the reclusive, litigious nature of its founder. Archival footage shows us the manic aspect of the craze at its highest, as McDonald’s restaurants were mobbed for limited-edition Beanie Babies, an accidental highway spill had people stopping their cars to grab Beanies scattered on the road, and some people, well, went a bit crazy maxing out their credit cards. It’s a wild and (now) amusing history of a fad, but the lessons to be learned here are particularly relevant at a time when there’s a new generation of suckers willing to fall for dubious investment vehicles and manic fads with no clear future. (Yes, I mean cryptocurrency.) There are a few things missing from the result—the famous story of the divorcing couple that divided up their Beanie collection in the courtroom is notably absent. While the film ends on a “new generation” of people, some of them overenthusiastic YouTube contributors, rediscovering the Beanie Babies phenomenon, nothing is said about the enduring successors to the Beanie Babies—the Beanie Boos are still relatively popular today (I’ve got a few sitting at home—great gifts for kids) and how the Ty company is still very much a thing. But let’s cut director Yemisi Brookes some slack—this is a film about the Beanie Babies craze, not the aftermath. There’s still enough here to amuse, infuriate and inform if ever you’re considering a dumb investment scheme.