Bean there, done that...

[Demonoid Phenomenon]

A few years ago, I had this idea of trying to put together a book about the Beanie Baby phenomenon.
I had an original angle, though.
It was going to be stories about Beanie Baby madness and the extremes that folks went to in order to feed their bizarre obsession with these stuffed animals.
Unfortunately, very few people were willing to dish any dirt.
I joined many a message board and got absolutely nothin'. There's an almost Stepford Wife-ish kind of vibe to hardcore Beanie Collectors, I discovered.

So, just out of curiosity, I was wondering if anyone here had any freakish incidents to share involving Beanie Babies? Having survived that fad at its worst, I have some tales to tell, but I wanted to hear yours first.
I may still write that book. Never know!

[TheRoo]

During the christmas season, I went to the Mall of America, and wnet into a shop that sold them. I saw two forty year old women fighting over a Beanie Baby. They were pushing and shoving over a small stuffed animal. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. I haven't been back to the mall since.

[ArenaBoy]

This is a story that my teacher told me. He went to a McDonald's when they were giving them away, he ordered a kids meal and he went through it and pulled out the Beanie Baby. Through all this, there is a line of cars with kids in them waiting for those Beanies, my teacher had his in plain sight and threw it away. He knew he didn't need it, the sad part is that everyone came running out of that van willing to dig through the trash just to get a Beanie.

[Demonoid Phenomenon]

Wow, ihatethenba68, that's a switch! It was usually the Beanie that was kept and the food thrown away!
Of course, we're talking Happy Meals, so the term 'food' is subjective.

[RebeccaOTool]

During the McD'S 'giving Beanies away' craze, my Best Friend and I drove around with my Mom ALL DAY eating happymeals, and trying to collect all the beanies. We missed one tho. I still have a bunch of those guys...

[lordlundar]

I think I have the ultimate:

Authorities in Hershey, Pennsylvania, have accused a former
nurse of stealing from a patient. Was the woman rifling through
purses or dipping into unconscious men's wallets looking for
cash? Nope, she allegedly stole a Beanie Baby toy from a
twelve-year-old girl who was recovering from open-heart
surgery. The fifty-year-old nurse struggled with officers when
they"tried to confiscate "Halo, the angel bear," which the nurse
had stolen from the girl's bedside. She was arrested for theft,
resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct. Maybe Tyco will come
out with "Parolee, the ex-convict bear" in honor of the nurse.

Pitiful, no?

Exerpt taken from "Hey Idiot! Chronicles of Human Stupidity" by Leland Gregory. p60

[draftermatt]

It's kind of sad really. I don't remember any weird stories but my sister collected them. She still has boxes of them in plastic bags. She hoped they'd be worth something.

Now people sell them at stores for $5-$7. My wife and I have a few, but they are for decoration purposes.

[friendofjimmyk]

So, just out of curiosity, I was wondering if anyone here had any freakish incidents to share involving Beanie Babies? Having survived that fad at its worst, I have some tales to tell, but I wanted to hear yours first.
I may still write that book. Never know!

If there is any place that you will get scary beany baby tales it will be here.

May I make a suggestion for your book? Why not combine a few fads together? Like throw in Tickle Me Elmo and (I'm not sure how old you are) Cabbage Patch Kids, maybe do a history of toy craziness - that way you have more material for the book.

Just a thought.

[Demonoid Phenomenon]

friendofjimmyk, I was thinking the same thing (taking the topic and spreading it out to include other toys).
Beanies were just the most outrageous fad of all time (in my opinion), and I figured I'd have enough material to use for 50 books.
But, as I pointed out earlier, those close to the hobby are reluctant to speak ill of their fellow collectors (or themselves), even anonymously.
I'm a brand-new 40-year-old, by the way, so I've lived and worked through many a fad, including Cabbage Patch, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Beanies, etc.
Never have I seen the likes of the Beanie craze.
And all in the name of 'getting rich'. I've mentioned this here before, I think, but I can remember so many Beanie customers who proudly told me all of the things they were going to do with the money when they sold these things for a hefty profit.
I deserve an Oscar for holding back many a smirk.
I wanted to explain to them that if they and everybody else in the universe are buying these things, who are they going to sell them to in the end?
Everybody who gives a dang about the toys will have them already.
And when the popularity wanes (which it would and very much did), they'll just be stuffed animals again, and nobody will care.

I have a few stories to share about my own Beanie customer experiences, but I'll have to do that a little later. Scary, scary folks.

[protege]

I think I have the ultimate:
Pitiful, no?

Exerpt taken from "Hey Idiot! Chronicles of Human Stupidity" by Leland Gregory. p60

Now that's just pathetic. Anyone who steals from a child like that should be shot. I still don't know what the whole craze was about; nor do I understand why some people were fighting over a $2 giveaway item.

All too often, people get something like that, since they think it's "worth alot of money." Um, no, actually, it's only worth what someone is willing to pay you for it. These are the same folks who will buy into a craze like that...and then get pwned when the demand disappears and they're stuck with the items. They also tend to complain when an item isn't "perfect" as well.

Some of you know that I have a sizeable diecast model car collection. Several of them were bought new in stores, but most were bought at garage sales. Yes, I get pleasure out of uncovering old or unique cars...but I don't pay silly prices for them, unless it's something I *really* want. I've had good luck at junk stores or charity drives--usually, they don't care about the "collector" value, and simply want to sell the item. Plastic models usually don't sell for very much at those type of places.

In fact, I tend to make out rather well at those sort of sales. Just last year, I bought an old 1/48 scale Revell B1b bomber kit for a grand total of $3. Imagine my surprise when I found that even though the kit was started, it was not only complete, but included a full paint set, and about $10 worth of tools!

[k66]

Not really about the beanies but during the whole tamagocchi initial release my mom dragged me at 5am to stand in line in front of JCPenney with her. Ten minutes after they opened a lady pushed a empty metal clothing rack into an 11 year old kid carrying an armful of tamagocchi boxes hitting the kid in the face.


That kid was me. I got away with a bruise or two and a loss of respect for fad-crazed shoppers.

[shenzee]

I worked at Cracker Barrel during this craze and the week before we would get a shipment, we would get non stop calls asking what day the beanies were coming in, which ones were we getting, could we hold them, etc etc.

One night we had about thirty people camped out on the front porch right before we closed and all the servers were fearing that they were going to come in and expect to get food at five minutes to closing. The reality was that they had called and heard we were getting a particular beanie in the next morning, and they were camping out overnight so that they could be the first to get it when we opened!! Once we realized that, we had alot of fun yelling things at them over the loud speaker! And it was a school night, but clearly teaching your kids the importance of education wasn't on the schedule that night....

[Demonoid Phenomenon]

We had customers waiting for HOURS in our parking lot watching for anything that even looked like a box of Beanies to come through the front door.
Joke was on them...we got all deliveries from our warehouse and the truck always went around back.

I felt for the UPS drivers who made any deliveries anywhere near our store because they had people stalking them.

I'll share some of my more psychotic Beanie Baby Customer tales now:

1) There was the grown woman who got way too excited over getting one of the rottweiller Beanies. She snatched it out of my hands (literally) and acted like she'd just given birth to the stupid thing. She cooed, she snuggled it up to her nose, she giggled... It was just too much. You'd have thought she just gotten it from animal rescue. Luckily, I only saw her the one time.

2) There was the nice (at first) elderly grandma who quickly turned feral and started cursing like a sailor because someone supposedly told her they were holding a specific Beanie for her and nobody in the store knew anything about it (uh, no, we didn't do holds; Beanies were strickly first come, first served). We got the "I'm never shopping here again!"speech. And, predictably, that lasted about a week.

3) There was the grown woman who openly and shamelessly badgered a small girl for her Princess bear (it was the last one), and she didn't stop until somebody told her to back off. The child had come in alone and was near tears in terror. The badgering lady was kind of wild-eyed and probably had consumed one too many lattes in her mad quest for Beanies.

4) There was the collective gasp of horror from a crowd of Beanie collectors when a mother bought a Beanie for her son and, since he was a bit young and there was a choking concern, pulled off the tag. Seriously, it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. You'd have thought that someone had been murdered right before their eyes the way they acted. The mother looked up when everybody gasped and said,"Oh, for pete's sake, it's a toy!" Oh, one of those wonderful moments I'll never forget.

5) There was the one oh-so-anal collector who went through I don't know how many Beanie tigers to find one with perfect whiskers. She turned them all down. There was one that she seemed satisfied with at first, but then she ascertained that one of its eyes was slightly crooked. Yeah, well, that ain't the only thing, lady.

6) There was the slightly high-strung collector who bought a Beanie and came back in several minutes later SCREAMING because the animal she bought had a small stain on the side. Hey, you picked it out, idiot. If you didn't notice the stain when you had your nose all up in the Beanie pile, why would we? And one word for you: therapy.

7) One last story for now: We had a strict All Sales Final on all stuffed animals and that included Beanies. Obviously, if there was a flaw or defect, we would make an exception, but otherwise, it's yours. And, of course, a gentleman walked in one afternoon, bought almost every last Beanie we had (he walked out with something like 50+ Beanies total), and one hour later, he showed up and tried to return every last one. We just pointed at our very obvious and in-your-face sign, and, you guessed it, he went off. We heard it all: "I know the owner!" "I'm calling the BBB!" "I spend thousands of dollars here!" "It's not like you can't sell these things to somebody else!" and on and on. Finally, once he realized we weren't budging, he went to leave just as another customer was walking in. He looked her in the face and yelled, "Hey, you want to buy some f***in' Beanie Babies?! Apparently, I have some to unload!!" He didn't wait for an answer and stomped out. The look on the lady's face was priceless. Once we explained what just happened, she just burst out laughing. Whew!

[Becks]

All I want is the Mongoose (I think that's what it is) with the poem about killing things.

But it's not worth paying more than $5 for.

[zzapp the witch]

Here in Oregon, we have a lot of retirement homes/hospitals/communities. I remember that there was a group of hospice nurses that got into a crap load of trouble for sorting through their (still warm) late patients' belongings to strip out all of the beanie babies. They would get together on the weekends and trade em like you would baseball cards with the neighbor kids. I still see some of those nurses, and some of them still keep those damn things on display on the front and rear dashes of their vehicles.

And anymore I'm thinking that most of em pled out, made a deal, or something, seein as they still have their licenses.

The one outrageous moment I saw, up front and personal, was on Black Friday in 98. Furbies. That was one of the very few days I was at Wmart for opening. The manager unlocked the doors and almost got trampled. Two little old ladies got completely stampeded over (had to call ambulances for them), a gal at the electronics desk got half of her hair and both earrings ripped out, while her opponent got a black eye and bite marks on her arms and legs, (I was told that the half bald gal's kid was on the ground, biting the other gals legs, LP said that the kids excuse was "That lady was trying to steal my Xmas present!") Keep in mind that this is a town of about 40,000 people, and the surrounding area is very rural. (Oh, man the white trash stories I could tell!)

I have yet to own a beanie baby, furby, elmo, or any other popular toy, and I adamantly refuse to buy them for my children (You want [insert insanely popular toy]? I have some chores you could earn money from). The one beanie I did recieve from my Californian aunt, "This is for you to start your collection on, dear" I threw in the fireplace as soon as she went out the door.

Its been ten years since I've had to work retail, I hate Xmas now, last year I ordered everything online that I didn't make myself, and I hated a little less, but not enough for me to stop changing the words in carols to something sadistic and wrong. My favorite thing to do while shopping? Tell off sucky customers for the employees that can't.

Oh, and hi, I'm new here. Long time lurker and pimp, though.