0:00

He's like, I got this far by not

0:02

listening to anyone and by

0:04

believing that all the good ideas I stole

0:07

from people were actually mine. So

0:09

don't worry about it.

0:21

Welcome to your ring about. I'm Sarah

0:23

Marshall. As always, yesterday,

0:25

today, and tomorrow, This week,

0:27

I am so happy to tell you that we are learning

0:30

about beanie babies with

0:32

Loftus. Two of my favorite entities

0:35

on this planet. We are getting into

0:37

the holiday season. Actually, we're right

0:39

in the thick of it, I would say, And

0:42

I really wanted to get into the sort

0:44

of child's play,

0:46

corporate possession, sinister,

0:49

fad toy, angle of it all. And

0:51

talk about beanie babies because I have

0:53

skin in this game. I was the

0:55

kind of child whose innocence was

0:58

corrupted by collector's guidebooks

1:00

it told me to save my princess Diana

1:02

beanie bear in a

1:04

clear acrylic box and it hunts

1:07

me to this day. I am

1:09

so excited to have Jamie back on the

1:11

show. I love anything that

1:13

she does in podcast. She makes me excited

1:16

for what's happening in our medium because of

1:18

her and excited to get to work with her

1:21

whenever I can. She was here

1:23

a lot about this time last year

1:25

talking with me about the Amityville horror

1:28

the warrants, the inspiration for

1:30

the hit Hannett House horror

1:33

movie series, The Conghearing. She

1:35

has a recent podcast series

1:38

called Ghost Church, She's done

1:40

a lot of short series that are all amazing,

1:42

and she is the co host of

1:44

Bechtel Cast. If you wanna

1:46

support us and get bonus episodes, we

1:48

have won out just recently about

1:50

fleetwood Mac and the recording of rumors,

1:53

and you can do that on Apple plus subscriptions

1:55

or Patreon or spend that money.

1:57

On a nice fad toy from your childhood

1:59

that probably

1:59

is very cheap on eBay right now.

2:02

Let's get into the episode. Don't

2:04

buy any possessed toys. Don't become

2:07

possessed by the spirit of capitalism, happy

2:09

holidays. Welcome

2:11

to your ring about the pie cast where

2:13

we tell you why

2:14

your beanie elephant didn't

2:17

appreciate the way you thought it would.

2:20

And with it's Jamie Loftus.

2:22

Hi, Sarah. Hi.

2:25

How are you? I'm good. I'm very

2:28

excited

2:28

to talk about one of one

2:31

of life's great passions, beauty

2:33

babies. I wanna share with you

2:35

before I get started. Mhmm. Be

2:37

cursed beverage that

2:39

I will be drinking through this episode that

2:41

I found at Safeway last

2:43

night. I don't know if you can read this.

2:45

Oh, I haven't seen this one. Mountain Dew

2:47

fruit cake. They did

2:49

it again. It's a fruit

2:51

cake flavored mountain dew. Oh my

2:53

god. Have you cracked it yet?

2:55

No. I have been waiting for this moment.

2:58

I think Fruit Quake

3:00

flavored Mountain Dew is like,

3:02

embodies

3:02

this show in a sense because

3:04

these are two of the most maligned flavors

3:08

in America. So so let's

3:10

crack her open. Alright. Let's see what she's

3:12

got.

3:15

It's good. It

3:16

does not taste like fruit cake. It tastes

3:18

like a merishino

3:18

cherry.

3:20

It's got like Shirley Temple Energy

3:23

about it? Yes. Okay. And

3:25

so Jamie, yes.

3:28

Who are you? What what do you

3:30

do. You can talk

3:31

about your work and also just about completely

3:33

random stuff. All of it will be great.

3:35

Okay. So I'm I'm a comedian and

3:38

a podcast and I've

3:40

written on TV, but that's not relevant to the

3:42

discussion. So I've made a

3:44

bunch of podcasts. I do the Bechtel

3:46

cast. With my friend Caitlin

3:48

Dorante, which you've been a guest on.

3:50

It's a feminist movie podcast. And

3:53

I do a bunch of investigative stuff.

3:55

So I me a show called

3:58

My Year in Mensa, which is about

3:59

what it sounds like. I infiltrated Mensa

4:02

for a year, and it went

4:03

terribly. And get produced an amazing

4:06

podcast. It's like the the fits

4:08

Carlando of podcasts. Like, horrible,

4:10

horrible time, great podcast.

4:14

You know, the cause versus benefit, unclear.

4:17

So I've also done shows about the

4:18

Legacy of Lolita. That was also

4:21

not a very fun one. The Legacy of

4:23

Kathy Comics, much more fun.

4:25

Mhmm. I did a show called ghost

4:27

church this year that was about

4:29

community of Psychex who

4:31

live in Central Florida. And

4:34

I'm writing a book about Hot Dogs So what

4:36

are what are topics flying

4:38

around?

4:38

So what

4:40

is a beanie baby? Okay.

4:42

So a beanie baby

4:45

was a really popular,

4:47

originally American, but it became popular

4:49

across the world. Bean bag

4:52

plush toy that was released

4:55

in the early nineteen nineties. People

4:58

liked them because they were

5:00

a little understuffed, so they were very

5:02

like possible and cute. Mhmm.

5:04

They became huge collector's

5:06

items. So they were just basically these

5:08

like cute five dollar toys but you

5:10

couldn't get them at a Walmart. You couldn't get

5:12

them at any big box

5:13

store. You could only get them

5:16

at, like, small hallmark y

5:18

kind of -- Mhmm. -- gift stores. And

5:20

so people viewed them

5:22

as kind of collector's items. They became

5:24

super, super popular as the nineties

5:26

went on. And then pretty

5:28

much two thousand on the dot.

5:31

This huge popular secondary market

5:33

crashed. And as

5:36

far as the general public is concerned,

5:38

they're never heard from again. Although, it's

5:40

not quite true. Mhmm. There was

5:41

this kind of myth that

5:44

spread -- Mhmm. -- that they were

5:46

really valuable and, like,

5:47

oh, you know, if your

5:50

mom loves you. Puts

5:52

your family

5:52

into debt and loves you

5:55

and buys all these beanie babies, she's gonna

5:57

be able to send you to college

5:59

by reselling

5:59

them on eBay later. What

6:02

a wonderful dream? Like, of course, we

6:04

believed that. It's like, right? You know,

6:06

like, it's something that normally only

6:08

adult men get to do when it's available

6:10

to little kids. Exactly.

6:12

So you remember speculating about

6:15

beanie babies as a kid. Do you ever

6:17

remember,

6:17

like, playing with one.

6:19

No. I don't think kids

6:22

played with beanie babies. And he's

6:24

like, didn't. Well Yeah. And that's the

6:26

thing. And I was you know,

6:28

also a kid who, like, I wasn't

6:30

allowed to have candy

6:31

when I was little. So when candy became

6:33

available to me, it just tastes did

6:35

too sweet. It was like too

6:37

much. But the point is that when I

6:39

was a kid, I would come home with my Halloween

6:41

candy. And

6:42

I would eat like three pieces of candy

6:44

and then I would like count the rest

6:46

of them and arrange them by type and arrange

6:49

them by color and just sort of like

6:51

revel in this commodity that

6:53

I had. So by the time beanie babies

6:55

came around, I was just like, alright.

6:58

No fucking around with these beanie babies.

7:00

We're gonna put the little acrylic tag

7:02

protectors on the tags. I

7:04

have the little acrylic boxes for

7:06

the bears. Yeah.

7:08

The plastic box is so much waste

7:10

associated with baby babies.

7:12

Yeah. So much plastic in addition

7:14

to the babies themselves. And so

7:16

I this feeling that it would be, like, really

7:18

foolish to play with a beanie. And I think

7:20

actually the first, like, two beanies I

7:22

got, I

7:23

cut the tags off. Off and, like, treated

7:25

as toys. And then I was like, what

7:28

a foolish child I was now I'm

7:30

eight and I would never do such a thing. Mhmm.

7:32

In retrospect, it's like kind of

7:34

chilling to think about how Scrooge

7:36

McDuck like my behavior became

7:38

around them.

7:39

Should I should I get into the story

7:41

of beanie babies. Yeah. I feel

7:43

like we've established what they are. They're

7:45

filled with little plastic beams,

7:47

I guess. That's why they're called that

7:49

PVC pellet. So Yeah. I

7:51

guess they couldn't call them pellet

7:53

pels. That doesn't have quite

7:55

a ring to it. No.

7:56

They're like hacky hacks with features.

7:59

They yeah.

8:00

Other purifies hacky socks. They

8:03

have these iconic little if

8:05

you don't remember them, they have these little

8:07

red heart shaped tags that say tie

8:09

and there's a little poem on the inside

8:12

of every beanie baby.

8:14

Of course.

8:15

The man who starts the business is

8:17

named Thai, which I think a lot of people

8:19

don't know that the little heart shaped tag

8:21

that says Thai, that's just the name

8:23

of the guy who started the company.

8:25

I remember this being very confusing and

8:28

I and a bunch of other kids who I knew

8:30

believed that it was like a

8:32

copyright logo -- Right. -- that it

8:34

was like There's TM, so there's

8:36

obviously also t y. Like, that was

8:38

what we worked it out too.

8:40

So it's just a guy named

8:41

Time Warner. This was all confusing because I

8:44

remember being like Time Warner

8:46

bought

8:46

AOL, a very relevant thing to

8:48

my life, but Time Warner, they must be

8:51

connected. I think when you're a kid, you just think

8:53

that names that sound similar must

8:55

be related. And I think that people

8:57

involved in Q1 on really continue

9:00

that trend.

9:01

But then every so it's true,

9:03

like -- Yeah. -- the scars cards.

9:06

We're like, wait.

9:08

Pennywise,

9:08

is related to one of the potential dads

9:11

for a mommy that is all connected.

9:14

Okay. So Time Warner

9:16

is the guy who becomes

9:19

a billionaire off of this

9:21

company. Is Curtis still alive, hasn't

9:23

given an interview since nineteen ninety six.

9:26

K? But to get there, in contrast

9:28

to billionaires who

9:30

shall not be named, he

9:32

made a kind of

9:34

intelligent choice which

9:37

was

9:37

that when beanie babies became successful,

9:40

he self homologized in

9:42

a couple of interviews and then never

9:44

said anything again. Smart.

9:46

And just sort of counted on being

9:48

powerful enough that his

9:50

employees would never really

9:53

can test this kind of false narrative he

9:55

introduced. Wouldn't it be great if

9:57

billionaires today, like, weren't so obsessed

9:59

with like saying

9:59

shit all the time? You know, like,

10:02

now people are like, one billionaire, so people

10:04

have to listen to me every day.

10:06

And it's like, what about being a

10:08

quiet billionaire? I

10:10

mean, quiet billionaires

10:12

get the most evil

10:13

done. Right. They do.

10:15

They really do. It's

10:16

kind of his worked out great for Tyme, but it's

10:18

wild that he's quiet because he's such a

10:21

colorful character.

10:22

So the Thai version of

10:24

his childhood is he grew up pretty

10:27

low income in the Chicago

10:29

area. The truth is he grew up in a

10:31

pretty upper middle class

10:32

family. He lived in a Frank Lloyd White

10:35

House. Like, That's

10:37

fine. One of those poor kids who lives in

10:39

a Frank Lloyd. Right? I mean, I get it could happen

10:42

theoretically hard to imagine though. The

10:44

Frank Lloyd. Right? Orphanage.

10:45

No. He did have

10:47

a difficult

10:48

childhood. His mom struggled

10:50

a lot with mental illness, and there was a

10:52

lot of, I think, emotional and physical

10:54

violence in the house because of that,

10:57

his father

10:57

was stepping out on

10:59

his mom. Like, doing all this -- Mhmm.

11:01

-- things were challenging in the Franklin

11:04

Bright House is, I guess, what I'm

11:06

saying. Yeah. But Ty's father

11:08

is a toy salesman. Like, he's very

11:10

nepotismed into the toy business.

11:12

Yeah. Tie's father works for this

11:14

company called Dakin,

11:16

which has a fascinating history all

11:18

its own. It like started as a

11:20

like gun import company and they

11:22

eventually get around to selling

11:24

plush toys exclusively. It's

11:27

fascinating. This is in,

11:27

like, the nineteen fifties and sixties

11:30

as ties growing up. And

11:32

at the time, they were most famous for

11:34

the bacon bear, which is, like, this teddy

11:36

pair. Tie is said to

11:38

be, you know, like an

11:40

awkward teenager, not

11:43

particularly good at

11:46

stuff. But, like, when he graduates

11:48

high school, he moves to

11:50

LA

11:50

briefly to try to become an actor.

11:52

It doesn't work out. He moves

11:54

back to Illinois. Basically, a

11:57

lot of false starts, and then he's like, alright,

11:59

fine.

11:59

I will ask

12:01

my dad for a job at Dake and

12:03

Toys. Yeah. Kai was, like, bad

12:05

at most things, but he was, like, a really

12:07

good salesman. Like

12:09

Michael Scott. Exactly. Exactly.

12:11

Like, you know, have a weird guy.

12:14

Yeah. He also has a difficult relationship with

12:16

his dad. It's like rumored

12:18

that he and his dad dated the

12:20

same women at the same

12:22

time so odd.

12:24

So it just like a very

12:26

kind of complicated upbringing.

12:28

But eventually, he gets

12:30

a a dick and he's really,

12:32

really, really good at it right

12:34

away. This man knows

12:36

how to sell a plush. And this

12:39

man also knows how to

12:41

really put off everybody he comes

12:44

into contact with in spite of that everyone who

12:46

works with Ty

12:46

doesn't like him. There there's

12:48

a lot of accounts of people just being like

12:51

he just was like a really humorous

12:53

y guy. Like, thought he knew better than

12:55

everybody. He has this very

12:57

new money vibe about him, where the second

12:59

he, like, the check hit.

13:02

He

13:02

bought, like, a pink car

13:04

and was, like, wearing a pink fuller suit

13:06

and, like, high heeled platforms was

13:09

going to work at a toy company, like,

13:11

holding a cane. Wow.

13:13

So he went, like, full Willie Wonka.

13:14

Willie Wonka Trisha Loftus.

13:19

One of the most cursed combinations

13:21

I could possibly imagine.

13:23

Really unpredictable host. Yeah.

13:27

Eventually, like, he does so well

13:29

there, but always, like, disagrees with people that

13:31

he works with. So what he starts to do is,

13:34

like, start to build company

13:36

on the side. He's like, okay. I'm gonna make all the

13:38

money I can to take and and then fuck off and

13:40

start my own company. Mhmm. So Ty is

13:42

starting this side business.

13:44

He started his own side hustle in the early

13:46

eighties with the intention being he's gonna

13:48

start his own company and bail. Dakin

13:51

becomes suspicious of this and they have a

13:53

PI follow him around

13:54

for months to

13:57

build the case against eye warner.

13:59

It was

13:59

wonderful because everyone

14:01

hates him so much at work,

14:03

that they're like, if we build this dog enough case,

14:05

we could just fire him because he's their number

14:07

one salesman, but

14:08

he's despised. Yeah. He's kind of

14:10

has a grew issue in that way.

14:13

He's a bit of a despicable me. But

14:15

he has got to manufacture sure his

14:17

minions, so it's it's

14:19

rough. The minions really turn on him, and

14:21

hopefully so. So he

14:23

loses this job at Dakin. And

14:26

has these kind of lost

14:29

years. His relationship with

14:31

his dad is still bad. He's now

14:33

in his early thirties. These are

14:35

like shakes spheres, lost years. He's yeah.

14:38

And, you know, like Shakespeare, he makes a

14:40

huge comeback. But he

14:42

has these,

14:42

like, lost years. He tries to

14:45

start all these companies

14:47

that fail according to

14:49

him, and this is, like, you can't really dispute

14:51

this. I don't really want it to be

14:53

disputed because funny to me. He says

14:55

he has this vision --

14:56

Mhmm. -- of a daken bear,

14:59

a life size

14:59

daken bear. Coming to

15:02

his window, and

15:04

telling him, tie, you

15:06

gotta go back into plush.

15:10

I love this very so much,

15:12

La Gaulle. Don't tell me

15:14

that he That

15:17

a that a six foot tall stuffed bear came to

15:19

his house and was like, die.

15:21

You have to exploit workers.

15:25

After the the spirit of

15:27

plush pass. Yes.

15:29

Sounds to tell him that he must change

15:31

his ways. And at this point, this

15:33

is like the

15:34

early eighties. He's in his, like, mid to

15:36

late thirties. He's a bit of a late

15:38

bloomer, that tie Warner, which I think

15:40

is a fun aspect of his

15:42

persona. He decides he wants to start a

15:44

plush business. He does not have

15:46

startup money. So what he does is he

15:48

goes to this woman,

15:49

Patricia Roche,

15:51

She's like a local woman that he's

15:53

gotten to know. She worked at the local gas

15:56

station, and they just kind of

15:58

became friends. He was a loner

16:00

who get along with a lot of people.

16:02

Patricia was, like, in a bad

16:04

marriage and they just sorta started

16:06

hanging out and they were friends. So

16:08

Ty goes to Patty, that's

16:10

some foreshadowing for all you

16:12

beanie baby heads out there. But

16:15

Ty goes to Patty and is like, Well, I

16:17

had this visitation from this big old

16:19

bear. And

16:20

I have to I have

16:22

to start a

16:23

company. Do you want to start

16:25

it with me. And, like, it's

16:27

disputed of,

16:28

like, was she a cofounder? Was

16:30

she the first employee? This becomes

16:32

a big legal issue later. But basically,

16:34

he's like, oh, start a toy company with me. And she's

16:36

like, I don't know anything about toys. And he's

16:38

like,

16:39

whatever.

16:40

I mean, my read

16:42

of that is, like, Patty, like,

16:44

she's described in the book as having

16:47

as, quote, looking and acting

16:49

like Liza Monelli. So

16:52

she's just like, it seems like

16:54

I was constantly trying to, like, present

16:57

charismatic, but, like, Patty was

17:00

born with it. She's got a star

17:02

persona. I wish I had a Liza

17:04

Manelli impression. I

17:06

really don't. On the

17:09

record with whatever would come out of my

17:11

mouth right now. But

17:13

the way that they originally bonded

17:15

was she was taking classes at

17:17

community college, and she would let Kai

17:19

come to the library with her.

17:22

Because Thai was trying to

17:24

research affordable ways to

17:26

manufacture plushies using

17:28

factories in Asia. These were the

17:30

salad days. This is, like,

17:32

already he's thinking diabolically.

17:34

Yeah. And this is

17:35

America before NAFTA. Right?

17:37

When it was, like, I believe so. Or

17:40

think that it would become that

17:42

you

17:42

could actually manufacture a

17:44

product domestically. Right. Tie

17:46

is an early pusher of

17:49

out sourcing that work too. I think it was

17:51

mostly Korea where baby babies were

17:53

manufactured. Still, the problem

17:55

is how do you get the start up money to start

17:57

baby babies?

17:58

Wow.

17:59

Here's what you do. Your dad

18:02

dies. Once

18:05

again, Thai absolute villain. You

18:07

know, his dad dies. He doesn't tell

18:09

his sister for five days. And

18:12

What? That's so many days. He

18:14

so what he does is, like, by the time joy gets

18:16

home and finds out her dad has died. Ty has

18:18

cleared out the Frankloyd White House of

18:20

all the Antiques. So Patty,

18:22

later on in his

18:25

mythology era he will claim to have

18:27

inherited fifty thousand dollars. It

18:29

was closer to two hundred thousand dollars

18:32

plus whatever he made on those antiques. And

18:34

this isn't, like, nineteen eighty three money.

18:37

So all of a sudden he has, like,

18:39

pretty

18:39

significant runway to start this company with

18:42

Patty, and he does.

18:45

So he and Patty are the only ones working

18:47

together for a while. They're making

18:49

these and I really want one

18:51

someday. They make these

18:53

collectible cats --

18:55

Yeah. -- and tie is

18:57

really obsessive about

18:59

how his toys are designed.

19:01

And he's also really fixated

19:03

in this, like, I don't know. I'm

19:05

like, this is a big metaphor for something, but I have

19:07

to continue on with my life. But he's really

19:10

fixated on, like, how where like, eye

19:12

placement on stuffed

19:14

animals. He's very fixated on that

19:16

and he's like, it needs to feel like it's looking

19:18

at you. He would go with Patty

19:21

in, like, huge

19:22

velour suit and, like, feather

19:24

boas and shit like that and would, like,

19:26

carefully pose his cats.

19:30

I I do love that, like,

19:32

if you're gonna be evil, do it,

19:35

capitalistic in the worst way. Like, yeah, you should

19:37

at least love the thing that you make and

19:39

care about it and be about it and,

19:41

like, believe in your product even

19:43

if all your means of execution are

19:45

terrible. Like, it's at

19:47

least

19:47

you have something

19:49

that makes you feel like a human being

19:51

or act like one a

19:52

little bit. He's like a very a compelling figure.

19:54

I like, it I really I really

19:57

love. But also he's evil like he would

19:59

hire,

19:59

you know, one day contractor to help

20:02

run a stall with him at a

20:04

toy convention, and then he would yell at

20:06

them because he's like, you're sweating on the toys.

20:08

Get the fuck out of here and like

20:10

-- Okay. Like, he was mean.

20:12

Yeah. He I mean, has an

20:14

ego issue. The logo is literally his name

20:16

and a heart. And

20:18

there's, like, a fun story about Russ.

20:21

Russ Barry of Trolls

20:23

fame. Who invented the Trolls? The

20:25

Treasure Trolls? Yes. Yet

20:27

yet another Toy Tecu that named his

20:29

company just his first name. Are

20:31

treasure trolls still

20:33

around? Like, is this something that a

20:35

child today would No. Well, our

20:37

kids is Genzie Troll

20:40

literate? Is this my New York Times

20:42

op ed? The trolls

20:43

have evolved. They're like they they make kids

20:45

movies about them now. Oh my god. Of

20:47

course. The trolls are huge. They're voiced by Anna

20:50

Kendrick now. How did that God? The trolls? They

20:52

got the Kendrick bump, but they look

20:54

so different. The company

20:55

kinda coasts along for a

20:57

couple years. It's doing pretty well, and he and

20:59

Patty get into a

21:00

relationship pretty quickly after

21:02

the company is starts because it

21:04

is so romantic to try and,

21:07

like, work

21:07

your workers together.

21:08

Yeah. She says for the book, she

21:11

says it's quote,

21:11

two neurotics feeding off of each other's insecurities. They

21:14

were doing pretty well.

21:16

But the beanie babies themselves

21:20

don't come into play

21:23

until nineteen ninety three.

21:25

So it's art. They've already been around

21:27

for seven years before the beanie babies come along,

21:29

and Ty and Patricia's relationship,

21:32

romantically,

21:32

is beyond repair.

21:34

He is

21:36

she alleges in this book very, very abusive

21:38

towards her. There's

21:41

pretty brutal stories about

21:43

that in that book as well as

21:46

She's, like, not paid as if

21:47

she is has cofounded

21:49

this company with Tie, which is

21:51

a repeated pattern of behavior in

21:55

ninety two, which is kind of like one of the final

21:57

blows to their relationship. She used

21:59

to make a percentage of

22:01

sales, which meant she would

22:03

have been entitled to something around two hundred thousand dollars.

22:05

Ty takes her his girlfriend

22:07

of five plus years at this point into his

22:09

office and is like, great

22:11

news. I'm gonna offer you a salary now. It's

22:14

fifty thousand dollars. And you're

22:16

just not gonna wanna say that's a thousand

22:18

and ninelli because she's not gonna take

22:20

it well. She's gonna

22:22

dance right over to you and

22:24

tell you what for. Right. And so she but

22:26

he won't budge on that, and so she's like,

22:29

god, you know, on top of

22:31

his, like, possessiveness and, like, he

22:33

would have her stocked and all

22:35

this

22:35

stuff, he all was

22:37

not compensating her even remotely fairly, and so

22:40

she builds on the relationship, but

22:42

stays with the company. Sure. That'll

22:45

work out. You know, she starts dating a new guy

22:47

and they go on a vacation to

22:49

Cancun, and Ty shows up

22:51

in Cancun. Yeah. He

22:53

just he was bad to

22:55

her in every conceivable way. So

22:57

in early ninety three, Patty says,

22:59

after the Cancun incident,

23:01

she's like, I need to leave this company, which

23:03

also is, you know, sucks for her because

23:05

she didn't do anything wrong. It's just like

23:07

he became too abusive for her to stay

23:10

at her job that she was really good at and was already underpaid

23:12

at. This is another way that women lose money.

23:14

I feel like we make a big deal about the,

23:16

you know, for every dollar a man may

23:19

figure which is important, but, like, there's so

23:21

many other ways to

23:22

express that and one is just like how

23:25

much money and how

23:27

many assets to forfeit because you just have to, like, leave

23:29

an unsafe situation. Right. I

23:31

mean, it's like I've I've unfortunately, not

23:33

to this degree,

23:33

but it's like I've left jobs because

23:36

you're like, guy is never gonna

23:38

get fired. He's unfavourable. And

23:40

he's horrible to

23:41

me. So now I can't work

23:43

on, you know, insert

23:46

Jing. Now I can't get my beanie millions

23:48

when the beanie ship comes in. It's

23:50

just over now by default. Right.

23:52

Because she was sound it sounds like very much they

23:55

were doing

23:55

equal work as executives,

23:58

if not a bit in

23:59

her favor. But anyways, she leaves

24:02

and starts selling insurance in the

24:04

early nineties. She will be back.

24:06

Mhmm. Tie in nineteen ninety

24:08

three creates the first beanie

24:10

baby. It's legs.

24:11

Here he is. Hi

24:13

legs. He's so frog. Oh, he's

24:15

so damn cute. And we love legs.

24:17

He's so cute. He's got

24:20

absolutely no mouth. They

24:22

debut with twelve beanie babies,

24:24

legs the frog, squealer,

24:27

the pig, brownie the

24:29

bear, flash the dolphin,

24:30

splash the whale, patty

24:32

the platypus, chocolate the

24:35

mousse, spot the dog, and

24:37

pinchers. The

24:37

lobster. Lobsters. Now here's the thing about

24:39

Patty, the platypus. It is a direct

24:41

attack on Patricia Roche. He

24:43

truly is just a diabolical individual

24:46

where even after she has left

24:48

the company, he names

24:50

Patty the platypus, a magenta

24:53

platypus character after

24:55

Patty. There's a poem inside

24:57

that is also a direct assault on

24:59

her. It's this. Ranned

25:01

into Patty one day while walking.

25:04

Believe me,

25:04

she wouldn't stop talking like that.

25:06

Listen and listen to her speak.

25:08

That would explain her extra large

25:11

beak. Evil. Ty

25:12

wrote that one. It's it's so

25:15

incredible that someone managed to

25:18

slander

25:18

their ex who they

25:21

were extremely abusive towards

25:24

via

25:24

a child's toy.

25:27

That

25:27

becomes extremely popular.

25:30

It's awful. However,

25:32

the baby babies are not

25:33

very popular right away.

25:35

Really all you need to know about the beginnings

25:38

are that ties business

25:40

model is that, like, we're talking about

25:42

before. He only sells them in small

25:44

gift shops. He wants to kind of

25:46

create this feeling

25:48

of, like, exclusiveness and

25:50

specialness and scarcity. And

25:52

so the rules are if you

25:54

are selling beanie babies, they have to

25:56

be displayed because he's very, like,

25:58

it needs to feel like they're looking

26:00

at you.

26:01

He has a real thing for being watched by toys.

26:04

So he only

26:04

sells to small places. Mhmm. And

26:06

it doesn't take off for a while. This

26:08

is where the second

26:11

undersugbeanie

26:12

babies iconic woman comes into

26:15

play. Lena

26:15

Trivedi, she is number

26:17

twelve. And what that means is she's the

26:20

twelfth tie employee ever. I think she's a student

26:22

at Dipal -- Yeah. -- because this is

26:24

all happening in the Chicago area still. Mhmm. But

26:26

she's hired when she's nineteen as

26:29

a telemarketer She's hired at twelve dollars

26:31

an hour. But the company

26:32

is so small that she and

26:34

she's kind of their resident young person. Have

26:37

you ever been a resident young

26:38

person at someone's company? It

26:40

kinda rocks, but it's horrible. I feel like I've

26:42

been that not at someone's company, but

26:45

in the context of teaching

26:47

sometimes where, like, I you

26:49

know, sort of teaching in grad school and I got gone to

26:51

grad school straight after college. So there were

26:53

a lot of people who were,

26:56

like, actual adults who were in my cohort with

26:58

me and they were teaching

27:00

students who were younger than them and I was teaching

27:02

students who were essentially my age.

27:05

Right. And in company, I feel like this

27:07

would be you're in the middle between, like, the

27:09

company and the demographic that you're trying to

27:11

reach. Yeah. I had, like,

27:13

similar experiences at an

27:15

improv theater in my early

27:17

twenties. Lina Trivedi

27:19

kind of fills

27:21

that role at Ty

27:23

in the early years. And she's like really excited

27:25

when Ty likes her

27:27

ideas that have to do with

27:30

telemarketing. So she's Yeah. She gets really into it.

27:32

So even though she's technically a

27:34

telemarketer, she starts throwing out ideas,

27:36

most of which become very successful

27:38

and associated with

27:39

the brand forever. Oh, including

27:41

the poems and the tags. Integral. That's

27:43

a Lena Trivedi original.

27:46

She proposed that they add them.

27:48

Tye said, that's an amazing idea. Can

27:50

you write them for all eighty beanie

27:52

babies by tomorrow? She

27:55

does. She does it.

27:57

She's a legend. She's our generation's,

27:59

you know, brand owning, plath,

28:02

Angelou. She she belongs to

28:04

some great I love those

28:06

little poems when I was a kid and I love knowing that they

28:08

were like or that many of them were

28:11

turned out in

28:12

one night by a

28:14

very overworked employee.

28:16

A college

28:17

student yeah,

28:19

move over to Zuckerberg. You goddamn

28:21

a loser. People will be doing

28:23

more important things late

28:26

night chugging Probably Mountain Dew

28:28

Fruitcake. You're writing code

28:30

and she was writing odes. 00I

28:34

felt that's a word. I thought that

28:36

was awesome.

28:36

So she brings that

28:38

idea and that's immediately successful.

28:41

She's also the first person to say,

28:43

like, hey, we should start a website.

28:44

For the beanie babies. Oh,

28:47

great. Whenever everybody's like, oh,

28:49

websites. Exactly. They're

28:50

like the Internet is a fad. Alright.

28:52

And Selena is like, let's just

28:54

hire my brother who's also a college student,

28:57

we'll make it together. Like, we'll show you

28:59

and so they make this incredible

29:02

I'll send you the link. It's still available on

29:04

the way back machine. But, like, they make

29:06

this incredible website that is, of

29:09

course, all in

29:11

comic fans. She also creates the

29:13

website which becomes very

29:15

successful and becomes an amazing tool

29:17

for Thai Warner to never

29:19

have to talk to his customer base

29:21

again. Because what they do and

29:23

this is another Lena Original

29:26

idea, she should be she should be a

29:28

billionaire. No one should be a billionaire, but like, she

29:30

should. Yeah. Because tied does

29:32

not want to make any public

29:34

appearances, doesn't even wanna speak to

29:36

his customer base directly. So

29:38

they create this concept called the

29:40

info beanie. The beanie

29:42

babies talk to the customers, and this

29:44

is, like, widely

29:46

successful on the website.

29:48

They have the beanie babies keep

29:50

daily diaries for some reason that are

29:52

also posted to the website so that you have to

29:54

keep going back. Like, if you were

29:57

checking a website daily in

29:59

nineteen

29:59

ninety six. It was like you had to

30:02

kinda

30:02

put some muscle into it. You had to, like, log

30:04

on, which took a good five minutes. Yep.

30:06

And then, like, each

30:09

page had to load for a

30:11

while for you to get to, like, the

30:12

beanie diary that you wanted to

30:14

read. And so it's like a good fifteen

30:17

minutes of effort. To go. The

30:20

Naperville mummies are

30:22

happy to do it. So

30:24

the way that baby babies

30:26

become popular. Mhmm. They're out

30:28

for a couple years. They're moderately successful.

30:30

The company is doing

30:32

pretty good. And in

30:35

nineteen ninety five so a

30:37

couple years after, it's like, basically,

30:39

they blow up in the

30:40

holiday season between ninety five

30:42

and ninety six. Mhmm. Once it's ninety

30:45

six, there's no looking back

30:47

baby. The series of

30:49

moms, some are working moms, some

30:51

are stay at home moms, that

30:53

discover beanie babies in late

30:55

nineteen ninety five. And because

30:57

it's like the nineties was already kind of

30:59

a hot time to be a collector

31:02

in general, these kind of upper middle

31:04

class women get really

31:06

into collecting all of the

31:08

beanie babies. Because at that time, there

31:10

were few enough of them that

31:12

it was, like, you know,

31:13

possible to do. Right.

31:15

And, like, you know, when it's shopping,

31:18

which can become kind of directory when you

31:20

have to do it for your family all the time.

31:22

But like, in

31:23

this really exciting way

31:24

that has a lot of, like, adrenaline

31:27

and dopamine built in. It's like sports

31:29

shopping.

31:29

Right. And so it's like at this time in

31:32

ninety five, the idea that baby babies could

31:34

pay for college did not yet exist. exists

31:36

because these women started to

31:38

buy them up and we're trying

31:40

to build. Like, it was like a rival group

31:43

five or six moms that all lived

31:45

in the same area that started this

31:47

whole secondary market. Wow.

31:49

One of them happens to write

31:51

for people magazine, freelance. It

31:54

gets imagining people magazine. And so it's like

31:56

it builds really significantly, really

31:59

quickly. I don't know.

31:59

It's like it wasn't Time Warner's

32:02

idea. He later claims it was his idea,

32:04

but he just was so fixated on

32:06

the eyes. Being very particular.

32:08

But there would often be

32:09

two or three different versions of

32:11

the same stuffed animal because

32:13

Thai was like the eyes are in the

32:15

wrong place, you know, like, would call up

32:17

the manufacturer in Korea and be like, burn them

32:20

all. I need the

32:20

eyes closer or

32:23

further

32:23

away. Oh, it's a massacre. And so

32:25

if you had the one with the

32:27

eyes the wrong way, all of a sudden,

32:29

the moms are like, hey, that's

32:32

more valuable. They lit the rest of them on fire.

32:35

So because he's such a

32:37

willy wonka fucking

32:39

weirdo, he accidentally kind

32:41

of creates rare products.

32:43

And then, like, when they run out

32:45

of

32:45

products on this beanie baby

32:48

called LOVY the lamb in ninety

32:50

five, instead of admitting that

32:52

he just didn't order enough, he's like, lovey

32:54

is retired now. So now

32:56

there's this concept of a beanie baby being retired,

32:58

you have to buy it right away or it'll

33:01

disappear. Mhmm. I

33:03

like that he he seems to have,

33:04

like, blundered into making

33:07

his product more valuable through

33:09

sheer unhappiness. But

33:10

then later he's like, and that

33:12

was all part of the plan.

33:14

Of course. So okay.

33:16

So now we're in, like, ninety six,

33:18

ninety seven, there's a steady

33:21

uptick in interest in beanie

33:23

babies. It starts in the Midwest

33:25

and slowly kind of expands. But class wise,

33:27

it stays basically in the middle

33:29

to upper middle class. No

33:31

one really has the time

33:34

or money to be doing this.

33:37

But this is also around the time where the

33:39

next woman in Thai's life

33:41

enters. He meets a

33:43

woman named Faith McGowan who was

33:45

hired. She's a single mom

33:47

of of two daughters. She's fourteen

33:49

years younger than him and

33:51

he hires her to adjust the light fixtures

33:53

in his McManchin.

33:55

She comes over to his house

33:57

hired to install these light

33:59

fixtures, and he's just, like, giving her so much grief

34:02

about it and being like,

34:04

just being horrible because he's horrible. Yeah.

34:06

And then at the end, it's like, do you wanna go to

34:08

a baseball I feel

34:09

that we've really hit it off. Oh

34:11

my god. And she's like, no

34:13

thank you. And then he

34:14

has her car blocked into his driveway.

34:18

Until she agrees to go on a

34:19

date with him. This is weirdly the kind

34:21

of story that inner culture can be passed

34:23

off as, like, the

34:26

successful start to a loving courtship,

34:28

which just is very worrying.

34:30

Exactly.

34:30

So Faith McAllen, she she passed

34:32

away, I think, close to ten years

34:34

ago now, but she had an unpublished memoir that is quoted

34:36

in this book. So I just want to give

34:39

a quick quote about their first

34:41

date from her

34:41

unpublished memoir

34:44

He talked about his sexually explicit references

34:46

speaking about Patty, his

34:48

cosmetic surgeries, and his lifestyle.

34:52

It warned that this man was very different, but I was struck by the

34:54

drama he created and his personal flair.

34:57

His unique presence and

35:00

obvious intelligence started to suck me into almost as was

35:02

auditioning for a part, end quote.

35:04

Right. So he is like radically

35:06

honest, but also is

35:10

constantly talking shit about Patricia even though

35:12

she's no longer in his life. He stays

35:14

fixated on her for years. Of course.

35:16

And this is like, I mean, a lot

35:18

of people clown in him for

35:20

this. I think that

35:20

there's far better things to clown on Time Warner for

35:22

it, but he he did start getting a

35:25

lot of cosmetic surgery. Pretty early

35:27

into becoming wealthy and, you know, some were

35:29

better than others and you can just

35:31

Google him

35:31

and form your

35:34

own opinion. Sort of

35:36

like Patty, a similar pattern

35:38

develops with faith. Faith never works for the

35:40

company. I think Ty sort of decides I'm

35:42

never gonna let a

35:44

woman work with me in an official capacity

35:46

again. Yeah. I'm never gonna let a

35:48

woman get close to

35:49

equity. Right? I mean, he's never been married in spite of the fact that

35:51

he decades long relationships with

35:54

women. And I do think it's like a

35:56

the finance thing.

35:58

But for faith, you know, he's very quick to

36:00

get people to be stuck with him, but

36:02

never financially independent, which

36:04

is like classic appreciation

36:06

to do. Yeah. He basically gets her fired from

36:08

her job because he calls her and he's like, great.

36:10

You have to demand a gigantic raise

36:12

or walk.

36:14

And, like, I won't respect you. If

36:16

you don't do,

36:16

you know and so she works at a

36:18

lighting fixture company, they're not gonna give her a

36:21

fifty thousand dollar raise. And so a sudden, faith

36:23

is out of a job and she and her daughters move to Tyse McManchin where

36:25

they stay for years. Great. And now

36:27

she asked to adjust

36:28

the lighting for free. Ex

36:31

exactly. And she gives tie a

36:33

lot of suggestions about

36:36

specific beanie babies about

36:38

the business There's a wild anecdote about her daughter

36:40

who was, like, nine at the time.

36:42

Ty was, like, trying to make a beanie baby that

36:44

was a ghost. But couldn't figure out

36:46

the design. And he's

36:48

like,

36:48

beside himself in

36:49

the McManchin. He's like, I can't make

36:51

a beanie baby ghost. And then his

36:53

nine year old sort of stepdaughter is like, what if

36:55

you did this? And she, like, draws a

36:58

prototype that he's

36:58

like, oh, that would actually work. And

37:02

so she designs this beanie baby. Originally, he

37:04

credits her on the tag. Later,

37:07

he says, remove the credit.

37:09

It was my idea. He's still

37:11

like an idea from a nine year old

37:13

girl, he's evil. Yeah. Wait.

37:16

And what beanie baby is this? Is there a ghost

37:18

beanie baby? The beanie baby's name is

37:19

spook. Ma'am, which yeah.

37:22

Yeah. Not a thoughtful

37:23

baby baby name or either. No.

37:25

No. They're all pretty basic

37:28

and not all

37:29

of them aged particularly well. It's also

37:30

yeah. It's like stealing credit from

37:33

a nine year old is, like, literally something

37:35

a villain in a Disney channel original movie

37:37

would do. Mhmm. And also it's like just,

37:39

like, negotiate a little deal with her

37:41

and give her five percent and then

37:43

cert a colleague

37:46

fund, and that'll be great. And you won't you'll

37:48

be fine. In nineteen ninety

37:50

six, beanie babies are starting to do

37:53

really well. They're selling well. The secondary

37:55

market is forming, and Thai

37:58

decides that he wants Patty

37:59

involved in the

38:02

company again. My read of the situation. He just, like, wants

38:04

to be in control of --

38:06

Mhmm. -- these women kind of at

38:08

all times. And so he's, like, okay. Let's bring Patty

38:10

back in.

38:12

Maybe it wasn't fair the way she was cut out. Wow.

38:14

And he proposes that

38:16

she come back to

38:18

the company, comes back to

38:20

tie, but to run, tie UK. So

38:23

basically, he's like, you're

38:25

hired again, but I'm shipping

38:27

you away from me. And

38:30

she lies and rallies out and she says, how

38:32

the hell far away do you want me

38:34

to go? Today or, like, whatever. That

38:38

was good. But she comes back because it's like she liked

38:40

working in plush. She just hated

38:42

ties. So she's like, alright. I'll move to

38:44

London. And

38:46

So she's back in the company. This is such a great story

38:48

because we all understand the product.

38:50

It's not like, you know, the

38:52

Murdoch or something where

38:54

you like kind

38:55

of get the day to day.

38:57

It's truly just being bagged toys.

38:59

It's so now

39:02

we're getting into, like, nineteen ninety eight, what

39:04

is happening in the meantime is like, the

39:06

secondary market has formed -- Mhmm. -- there's

39:08

now a greater demand for

39:10

beanie babies It's in the

39:12

news of, like, moms

39:14

are showing up. With their kids

39:16

to, like, hallmark stores, they're

39:18

lining up around the corner. It's like the Harry

39:20

Potter books, shit like that. Like,

39:22

everyone is so amped on them. It

39:24

sort of made its way across the

39:26

country. There's all of these

39:28

demands towards tires. Like, You have to

39:30

license do some licensing, but he hates

39:32

licensing, he won't do it. You've gotta make a

39:34

deal with Walmart or sell him to a big

39:36

store, but he doesn't like big stores, so he won't

39:38

do it. They want him to make a cartoon. He's like,

39:40

no. Like, in a way that I think

39:42

actually did serve the business for a long

39:44

time, like,

39:46

he only wants to sell beanbags and, like,

39:48

retire them. And now

39:50

there's the website. And so there's people

39:52

logging in to dial up Internet

39:56

multiple times a day to see what the info beanie

39:58

has to say about

39:59

new releases or maybe about just

40:02

hanging out.

40:04

It depends. Lita

40:06

Trivedi is, like, updating the website

40:08

between classes. She's still in college. Oh

40:10

my gosh. She's still making twelve dollars

40:12

an hour?

40:14

Lita, no. Oh, no. Gets royally fucked.

40:16

It makes me so

40:18

mad. Yeah.

40:18

Speaking like class wise, this

40:20

was fairly contained for a long

40:24

time. It basically sticks in the middle and upper middle

40:26

class. But now everyone has heard of beanie

40:28

babies and there's a demand kind

40:32

of across class lines to have them. Like everyone

40:34

wants to have them. And so there's this increasing

40:36

pressure on Time Warner to make

40:38

them available to

40:40

everybody. In the meantime, we have

40:42

the the Naperville neighborhood

40:44

moms are I mean, at

40:46

this point, there is talk

40:48

of, like, beanie babies

40:49

are becoming really, really valuable.

40:52

There's this story about like a specific

40:54

elephant beanie named

40:56

peanut. Yes.

40:56

I remember the beanie from my beanie book. Kind of

40:58

like the

40:59

first virally, like, valuable

41:01

beanie baby because it came

41:03

in dark blue. But then they

41:06

made it light blue. And if you had a dark

41:08

blue peanut, oh, baby, you're

41:10

getting a jet ski

41:12

or whatever, the reason that this information that, like, oh, you can if

41:14

you get enough beanie

41:16

babies, Jamie's mom, like,

41:18

you will

41:18

be able to retire and send

41:20

your child trend to college is

41:23

because the Naperville moms, like this

41:25

group of, like, five or six women,

41:27

they do become pretty wealthy off of it. Mhmm. But

41:29

only because they were the first to it, and they all

41:32

sort of developed these different ways

41:34

of monetizing it.

41:36

It also sounds a little bit like

41:38

Lularoe based

41:38

on that, where it's like the

41:40

way to win at the game is to be one

41:42

of the first

41:43

eight people who hears about it Right.

41:45

And then everyone else is kind of screwed. And you just buy

41:47

a bunch of shit,

41:48

and then you don't know why. Exactly. And so

41:50

it's, like, some of them were making money

41:53

on actually, like, reselling beanie babies.

41:55

There's also beanie babies have a huge

41:57

role in the success of eBay

41:59

because eBay is launched in

42:02

ninety five and in the early years of eBay, one ten

42:04

sales on eBay were beanie babies.

42:06

Oh my god. They're like,

42:10

what Kanye was to Adidas.

42:13

Yeah. And and, you

42:15

know, also experience a significant fall

42:17

from grace and right fully

42:20

sell. But, yeah, like, some of them are selling

42:22

on eBay, and that's how you sort of

42:24

get these, like, juiced up

42:26

valuation prices where I think the common

42:28

misunderstanding is, like, this

42:30

beanie

42:30

baby is worth three hundred dollars

42:32

when it's, like, well, no. Someone just

42:34

listed it for three hundred dollars. Did anyone buy it? Like,

42:36

I feel like that is often kind of

42:38

confused and and this is, like, mostly

42:42

women that were developing those price guides that you were talking

42:44

about. Mhmm. And Ty does not

42:46

make money off of that. The

42:49

moms do. And so they're

42:52

sort of develops this upset

42:54

and litigiousness between Thai

42:56

and the moms. The ironic part

42:58

being that only reason his product is successful

43:00

is because of them. But now they're making a

43:02

bunch of money off the side. There's an

43:05

example of a woman named Mary

43:07

Beth Sobelowski -- Mhmm. -- she

43:09

started this magazine called Marybeth's

43:12

beanie world that at its

43:14

peak was

43:16

circulating to the tune of one million copies a month. my god.

43:18

It was really big.

43:21

And so, Ty, Slaps her

43:24

with a lawsuit. He says knock

43:26

it off, Mary Beth. He was, I

43:28

guess, within his rights to do it, but what

43:30

horrible PR are? Yeah. So

43:32

when Mary Beth like he

43:34

feels becomes a little too wealthy off

43:36

of promoting his products. Oh my

43:38

god. She slaps her with a lawsuit. She has to

43:40

change the name of the magazine to

43:42

Mary

43:42

Beth's Beenback World. Oh, whatever. That's so and

43:44

then I guess makes it sound like it's for cornhole

43:46

enthusiasts and, you know, who benefits

43:48

really? I

43:50

wish her the best. The beginning of

43:52

the ant, in my opinion, though your mileage

43:55

may vary, is in

43:57

nineteen ninety

43:59

seven, at the peak of like beanie baby demand

44:02

-- Mhmm. -- Thai

44:04

capitulates and agrees

44:06

to do the teeny

44:08

beanie promotion with McDonald's.

44:10

Now, this is the first time

44:12

that beanie babies have kind of been

44:14

made available to everybody. Now, anyone who can

44:16

afford a happy meal can have a beanie baby.

44:19

If you watch like the

44:22

news brought cast of the first teeny beanie release, is

44:25

genuinely terrifying. I'm

44:26

thankful to have no

44:28

memory of this happening. Not

44:31

quite so many memories, but oh, my god. I

44:33

know my mom did it. She was

44:35

into it. She was

44:36

like getting trampled in a McDonald's of

44:40

terrible haircuts. Storming the

44:42

best deal to, like

44:44

either way. Okay.

44:46

So teeny beanies come out.

44:48

Now the market is absolutely

44:51

flooded. They are small. They're different from regular

44:53

beanie babies, which was like done

44:55

for cost and also

44:56

to hopefully

44:58

retain the original value of regular beanies. But

45:01

now that beanie babies are

45:03

accessible across class

45:06

lines, everybody is like, alright, you know what? I'll start collecting

45:08

beanie babies as well. If anyone was on

45:10

the fence, teenie babies made it

45:12

so that everyone wanted one.

45:14

Did they exist outside of McDonald's? Or was it, like, a limited like,

45:17

we're gonna have the teeny beanie happy

45:19

meals briefly, and then they're gone? Like,

45:21

how did that work? So

45:23

it's it is still the Thai

45:26

Warner ethos of creating

45:28

as much scarcity as he

45:31

can. So it's only -- No. --

45:33

spark McDonald's. You have to have

45:35

it at McDonald's. They're only available for

45:37

a limited time. So if

45:39

you were a seasoned beanie mom at this

45:41

point, you're like, okay. So I have to drive

45:43

to fifty McDonald's. Right. There are, like, news local

45:46

news interviews with kids who are like,

45:48

I feel sick. Okay. I'm on a spot for pretty happy meals,

45:50

and I feel fucking sick.

45:54

There's, like, news footage from

45:55

a helicopter of, like, a McDonald's

45:57

truck, I guess,

45:59

accidentally, like,

46:01

A couple hundred teeny babies fell off in the

46:03

middle of the highway and it's helicopter

46:05

footage of

46:06

moms stopping in the middle of the

46:08

highway and sending their children into five lane traffic

46:10

to get teeny babies. It was

46:12

a big deal. It's a whole thing.

46:14

You can feel whatever way about.

46:18

This is, like, part of the sort of Karen origin

46:20

story. It is. It absolutely Nineteen

46:22

ninety seven, some child into traffic.

46:26

Right. Worth it.

46:28

And also at this point, there's kind

46:30

of like they're launching new beanie babies

46:33

so frequently that completionists

46:36

kind of start to give up because

46:38

there's no way I could possibly

46:40

have every single beanie baby. It

46:42

was easy to collect when there's twelve

46:45

now there's like, you

46:46

know, at least a hundred,

46:47

probably a couple hundred. It's like the

46:50

Robert Altman movies.

46:52

You're like, whatever. So in the middle, you're like, I'm sure some of

46:54

these are good, but it's

46:56

kinda not my business.

46:58

But before that happens, they kind

47:02

in ninety eight, ninety nine. Mhmm. And that brings

47:04

us back to the story

47:05

of one tie Warner. You

47:09

know, they've made so much fucking

47:11

money. He's hired all these people. And Christmas

47:13

Eve, nineteen ninety eight, kind of

47:15

an iconic day.

47:18

He In the nicest thing

47:20

I've ever heard of him doing, he

47:22

gives everyone a holiday bonus of

47:24

their salary -- Right. -- again --

47:26

Great.

47:27

-- which is cool of him to

47:29

do, and also just an example of how much money they were making in

47:31

nineteen ninety eight. Also, maybe a bacon

47:33

bear wearing

47:34

a, like, grim reapers robe

47:37

like, showed up to him in a dream and told

47:39

him he'd be dead by next Christmas if

47:41

he wasn't more generous. They

47:43

really scrooge him. But

47:46

meanwhile, in his personal

47:48

life, you know, Patty and Faith

47:50

have been pitted against each other in

47:52

Ty's life for

47:54

years now. On the same day, the same day of the

47:56

party, the

47:56

double your salary party --

47:58

Yeah. -- faith finds

47:59

out that Thai is cheating

48:02

on her with Patty

48:04

-- No. -- in a

48:06

hotel nearby -- Oh. --

48:08

and Ty lies

48:10

about it. Patty, yells at faith, punches tie in

48:12

the face. Mhmm. I

48:14

mean, because faith for

48:16

someone who very bullied into

48:18

this relationship, is faithful to him the whole

48:20

time, and he strung her along

48:22

for years being, like, you know, we

48:24

just need to get to this place with the business and then

48:26

we're gonna get married and you will be

48:28

financially secure. They never get

48:30

married. That also happened with Scrooge. That's

48:32

what that whole sad sawing in the middle of

48:34

the month that Christmas Carol is about. This

48:36

is really a lot of parallels.

48:38

Okay. So face does

48:40

make at least

48:42

one effort to get a formal title at the company because she's doing

48:44

so much. It's unclear exactly what

48:46

she was doing, but she was certainly, like,

48:48

giving constant

48:50

creative input to tie who's always

48:52

having a meltdown about something creative. Of course. He says all

48:54

you did was pick colors,

48:56

you know, fuck off, and

48:59

So she never formal title. Eventually, I believe

49:02

it is her who leaves him

49:04

and he sort of sets her up in a

49:06

Santa Barbara McManchin and

49:08

tells her to go away. Got

49:10

it. But she is really

49:12

sad

49:12

and she dies still loving him. It really

49:14

sucks and it makes you very sad.

49:18

And faith is awesome. One thing she says

49:19

about Thai and her unpublished memoir is

49:22

nothing is ever enough and nothing is ever

49:24

good enough

49:26

because Ty's soul is empty. Oh,

49:28

wow. And then Patty,

49:30

you know, while she's more

49:33

of a brassy broad. She says about Thai. The

49:35

hardest part of having a relationship with Thai is

49:38

realizing that he never cared about

49:40

you. Oh,

49:42

god. I feel like that's, like,

49:44

the one size fits all, like,

49:46

horrible billionaire bio too where,

49:48

like, it's just so predictable that you

49:51

just have to, like, amass as much as

49:54

possible, amass power, amass

49:56

capital -- Mhmm. -- and,

49:58

like, take all the credit for it and also, you know,

49:59

often rely on the

50:01

unpaid labor of women because that's just like

50:03

a thing that we do culturally that naturally

50:05

carries over into

50:08

this. Yeah.

50:08

So if they peak in ninety eight, ninety

50:10

nine sort of represents this

50:13

sudden kind of not

50:15

quite free fall that happens in two thousand, but

50:18

there's all of a sudden doubt. Maybe we're not

50:20

sending our children to

50:21

college off of

50:23

eighty babies they're losing their retail

50:25

value or, like, resell value because they always

50:27

do cost five to six

50:30

dollars at

50:32

stores. Price never really increases. It's the resale values that are constantly

50:36

fluctuating. So it's like

50:38

a combination of the market is

50:41

too flooded. People can't keep

50:43

up with collecting, and

50:46

Thai is getting known to be so

50:48

litigious that like the company doesn't have an amazing reputation

50:50

because he's sue's Mary Beth.

50:52

People don't like that.

50:54

He's sue's a company

50:56

called holy bears. He sues like a

50:58

Jesus beanie baby rip off. And

51:00

it's like, do you really think that they're like

51:02

infringing on your profits at the stage in

51:04

the game? It looks better

51:06

to say nothing. Right. They

51:08

continue to do the teeny bitty promotions

51:10

annually, which

51:12

are successful, but, like, again, it's like they've peaked.

51:14

There's really nowhere to go from here.

51:16

Mhmm. Sales of ninety eight are one

51:20

point four billion. Tye is the only

51:22

shareholder, so he makes five hundred

51:24

billion dollars.

51:28

It's absurd. But by

51:30

ninety nine, he's sort of

51:32

trying to find a way to contain the

51:35

secondary market and isn't successful at

51:37

it. He retire a bunch of beanie

51:39

babies to to, like, spike

51:42

sales.

51:42

Mhmm. It sort of works, but not really.

51:44

Mhmm. He fucks around with the website kind

51:47

of considerably to get people to try to, you know,

51:49

engage more over there with the

51:51

info beanies. It works but, like,

51:54

not really.

51:56

Mhmm. And in nineteen ninety nine, he sort of realizes, like,

51:58

this may not last forever. I need to start

52:00

investing in other things. So what he

52:02

does is he

52:04

buys the four seasons in New York, which he owns to

52:06

this day. What? Had

52:08

Ty actually done right

52:11

by

52:11

Patricia or by faith, he

52:13

may not have been able to afford the four seasons.

52:16

And so it's like that sort of trickled down

52:18

of like, by fucking over

52:20

various people, in his

52:22

life. Yeah. He acquired the four

52:24

seasons and he's currently worth over three point four

52:26

billion dollars because that was a

52:28

good investment that he couldn't have made if

52:30

he hadn't thrown

52:31

so many women off the lifeboat.

52:34

Meanwhile, you know, people are kind

52:36

of jumping ship at Thai

52:38

Incorporated right and left. Lena

52:40

Trivedi leaves because she is

52:42

still paid. Twelve dollars an

52:44

hour. She goes

52:46

to an executive and says, I

52:48

want a salary of a hundred twenty thousand dollars,

52:50

which I think is, like, good for

52:52

her. And also she's created so

52:54

much value for this company. Yeah. And

52:56

they basically tell her to fuck off.

52:58

And so she leaves the company and, like, has a series

53:00

of rough years. She's doing great

53:03

now. She's an author of children's

53:05

books. She was in the recent

53:07

beanie babies documentary. She doesn't seem to

53:10

hold ill will towards Ty in a

53:12

way that

53:14

I find really

53:16

stunning on her part. I would be so salty

53:18

forever, but she seems like she's

53:20

moved on. Yeah. Ninety nine,

53:22

there's a decline and Thai decides

53:25

you know, he makes kind of the

53:27

final bad decision of the beanie baby's

53:29

craze -- Mhmm. -- which is to

53:31

drive up sales, he's gonna

53:33

say, beanie

53:33

babies are over forever.

53:36

Wow. He

53:36

takes a poll on the

53:39

beanie baby's website that

53:41

says Do you think we should retire beanie

53:43

babies forever? And

53:45

you have to pay fifty cents

53:47

to vote? Wow.

53:50

He makes a bunch of money off of people just being like, we like these.

53:52

It's it's just like such

53:54

a sensitive ego monster. Maybe

53:57

he invented being scam me on social media, which, you know,

53:59

nobody

53:59

needed to invent that. So it's --

54:02

Yeah. -- so what he

54:03

does is he he says

54:05

he's gonna retire everything,

54:08

basically. Wow. And the scam

54:10

plan was he's gonna retire the brand,

54:12

which will drive up sales. Then

54:15

in, you know, early to mid two thousand. He'll

54:17

say, okay, we're bringing them back. And he was hoping

54:20

that this would revitalize the business.

54:22

Everyone at the company was like, do not

54:24

do this.

54:26

This is the worst you

54:28

throw pennies at Tollbooth workers.

54:33

He's like, I got this far by

54:35

not listening to anyone and

54:38

by believing that all the good ideas I

54:40

stole from people were actually mine.

54:42

So don't worry. About it.

54:44

So, yeah, I think I

54:45

know what I'm doing. We're

54:47

gonna say that all the beauty babies are gonna

54:49

be retired. And then a couple weeks later, we're

54:51

gonna say, just kidding. Thanks for the

54:54

sales. They're back. Consumers

54:56

do love to be lied to to their

54:58

faces in a way they're very aware of.

55:00

We just love it. So he goes to and faith

55:02

are still together at this time. And

55:04

he goes to faith saying,

55:06

I need to design the final

55:09

beanie baby. And that's where our friend at the end

55:11

comes. You just, like,

55:14

whipped him into frame in an in an

55:16

amazing way.

55:18

Listeners. The end is

55:20

the classic bear. It is pitch

55:22

black. It's kind of ominous. Yeah. And

55:24

it's got a little firework

55:26

on his chest and it says the end. The idea little stuffed bear

55:29

whose name is the end -- Mhmm.

55:31

-- is

55:31

just very horary to

55:34

me. So

55:34

It is very sinister. I think

55:36

in an appropriate close to the decade,

55:38

Tai says that beanie babies are

55:41

ending December thirty first, nineteen

55:43

ninety nine. Alignment the

55:46

world. Exactly. Something just to

55:48

kinda give they're like and also

55:50

this. But Faith writes

55:52

the first draft of the

55:54

poem inside of the end. I

55:56

think hers is superior.

55:58

Are they a

55:59

fad? Were

55:59

they a trend? Or

56:01

were they a way to show love

56:03

to a friend, wishes for happiness, Thai

56:05

continues to send from the

56:07

beginning to whenever the end. Wow. Tye

56:10

says, fuck that poem and he

56:12

writes this. And he

56:13

says, all good things

56:15

come to an end. It's

56:17

been fun for everyone. Peace and hope

56:19

are never gone. Love you all

56:21

and say so long. Faith was

56:24

so much better. It was. Tice has no

56:26

dimension. This is a man who is not

56:28

in talk I feel like he just didn't want

56:30

it to be called a

56:32

fad canonically. Yeah.

56:34

Yeah. So we have the

56:36

end. And also, just for your reference,

56:38

I had to take off my plastic

56:41

tag holder to read

56:41

that poem to you. So you're welcome. It just lost

56:43

-- Oh

56:44

my god. -- serious,

56:46

retail. You

56:50

know, that that is kind of the story of the fad.

56:52

He does do, you know, according to

56:54

plan, he says the beanies are

56:58

back in early two thousand. Everyone's pissed off

57:00

about it like you were saying, they

57:02

feel lied too. Sales

57:04

go way way down. And

57:07

it's bad. And the company sort of takes a turn from

57:09

there. He he tries to launch

57:11

a few new lines, hoping that

57:13

they'll be as successful my

57:16

favorite of which I had some of these are called the

57:18

beanie kids. Feedback on the beanie kids

57:20

is they look so scary. So

57:24

it's like an actual human in beanie form.

57:26

So that doesn't work. Thai

57:28

is, you know, sending off

57:30

his employees to go to

57:33

these. only sold in these small stores and they start

57:35

to, like, take on these, like, mafia

57:38

style intimidation tactics that don't

57:40

work or

57:42

they're, like, you know, the stores are like, oh, we're not we don't actually we just

57:44

want the beanie babies. We don't

57:46

actually want the beanie kids.

57:48

Mhmm. We don't want and they're sort

57:50

of like you're gonna wanna

57:52

buy some of these beanie kids. Yeah. Baby

57:54

babies just go away at any second.

57:58

Intimidating. The manager in

57:59

the hallmarks store.

58:02

Alright. That you buy

58:04

these baby kids or your

58:07

brains will be scattered across that

58:09

contract. How about that? Right. Ty basically

58:11

becomes a full time

58:14

hotelier. Now he and faith separate

58:16

at some

58:18

point Mary Beth's bean bag world goes under an o one,

58:20

you know, along with life

58:22

as we knew it. Yeah.

58:25

Shrek is released. The target demo moves on to the deal

58:28

is catalog. Right. Like,

58:29

people move on from beanie babies, but the

58:32

company stays

58:34

afloat enough. Ty

58:36

does everything he says he would never do

58:38

in that beanie babies, the current beanie

58:40

baby iteration, which are

58:41

called beanie booze. Now

58:43

you can get tie products literally anywhere if

58:45

you've seen the like, it's like one of those little

58:47

stuffed animals with the big old eyes. They're very

58:49

cute. But that's

58:52

like a beanie babies company. It's what they do now. You can get them literally anywhere,

58:54

so they're not exclusive anymore. They

58:56

also do licensing. You can get Paw Patrol

58:58

beanie babies. Right. So, he

59:02

did go down road.

59:05

Patty eventually leaves

59:07

the company and basically makes

59:09

Ty agree to never speak to her

59:12

again. I mean, she

59:14

suffered a lot of abuse under him and

59:17

was screwed over financially quite a bit, but I do appreciate

59:19

that it seems like she ended

59:22

that on her

59:24

terms. It's

59:24

get

59:25

into it in the book. But basically,

59:28

she makes ties sign something to

59:30

say, like, leave me alone. Love it.

59:32

And I believe that she is still alive

59:34

and well Thai

59:36

is sued or he he has to

59:38

go to court in twenty thirteen because he's

59:40

kept over a hundred million dollars

59:42

in a Swiss bank account. Of

59:44

course. He's taken a court, but they're like,

59:47

he could spend as much as five years in

59:49

prison. He gets two years of

59:51

probation based on the

59:53

Charitable donations he made over the years and also

59:55

the fact that he was humiliated in the

59:57

press, so he doesn't have to go to jail. It

59:59

makes

59:59

no sense. I love how you're super rich,

1:00:02

they're like, well, you experienced

1:00:04

embarrassment. So that's penalty enough, really.

1:00:06

And

1:00:06

it's like, yeah, only rich people

1:00:09

suffer ill effects from being charged with

1:00:11

a crime. It's like everyone else just has a normal

1:00:13

time with that. It's easier if

1:00:15

you

1:00:15

have no money. So

1:00:18

these days, Ty is he's seventy eight

1:00:20

years old. He still owns the four

1:00:22

seasons, but I wanted to kinda

1:00:24

leave it. With Joy Warner, who is

1:00:26

his sister, they were

1:00:28

never close. Ty was never close with

1:00:30

really anyone in his

1:00:32

family. But you

1:00:34

know, joy in spite of the fact that she lives, I

1:00:36

think, in a pretty remote area and, like,

1:00:38

runs a, like massage parlor and,

1:00:40

like, has a lot of dogs I

1:00:43

think she lives on, like, a ranch.

1:00:46

Ty, even though he is a billionaire, has

1:00:48

previously refused to help

1:00:50

pay for surgeries that she's needed. He's a very mean

1:00:52

person. Mhmm. However,

1:00:54

because Ty

1:00:55

was so withholding,

1:00:58

and shitty and evil to women throughout his life, his entire life.

1:01:00

In a little twist of poetic

1:01:02

irony when he dies, his sister,

1:01:05

Joy, will inherit three point

1:01:07

four billion dollars. Yes.

1:01:10

Because that's what happens if you

1:01:12

never get married or create heirs, tie.

1:01:15

Sorry, Ty. And that is

1:01:18

the story of of

1:01:20

beanie babies. Sarah Marshall. Oh my god.

1:01:23

Actually, we didn't even talk about the princess Diana.

1:01:25

I know. Did you have one of those? Yes.

1:01:27

I had it in an acrylic

1:01:29

clear box,

1:01:30

which I now feel

1:01:32

sad

1:01:33

about thinking about my poor little purple

1:01:36

princess Diana commemorative

1:01:38

bear, which

1:01:40

from an adult perspective seems

1:01:42

rather ghoulish to me to do that.

1:01:44

I agree. But, you know,

1:01:46

to never have been played with

1:01:47

so sad.

1:01:50

They

1:01:50

gave the money to whatever the official charitable

1:01:52

foundation for Princess Diana was. But

1:01:54

even so, I'm like, no, I think that

1:01:56

that was fucked up.

1:01:57

It's a bit intense. Yeah.

1:02:00

Yeah.

1:02:00

If you have a

1:02:01

perfectly preserved for

1:02:03

history, beanie baby, somewhere still

1:02:06

in a closet, like,

1:02:07

maybe take it out and play with it and it can fulfill

1:02:09

its toy purpose. That's my dream. Yeah.

1:02:11

And also for people to

1:02:13

be adequately compensated

1:02:16

for their labor.

1:02:17

That's my other one. You might as

1:02:19

well play with your

1:02:21

beanie babies because spoiler

1:02:24

alert. That's about all their fucking good

1:02:26

for

1:02:26

us. You're not part of

1:02:28

anybody.

1:02:32

Thank

1:02:32

you so much for listening

1:02:35

to

1:02:35

our show. Thank you so much

1:02:37

to Miranda Ziegler

1:02:40

for editing. Thank you to Carolyn Kendrick, my producer, without

1:02:42

whom the wheels of this bus would

1:02:44

fly off, and I would

1:02:46

screech down the highway,

1:02:48

making sparks. Thank

1:02:50

you so much again to Jamie Loftus,

1:02:52

who is so wonderful. Thank

1:02:54

you Jamie for everything you do.

1:02:57

Thank

1:02:57

you again for being here with

1:03:00

us listening,

1:03:01

learning, talking

1:03:04

about toys.