beanie bbs were once one of the most sought after toys in the world we could be millionaires a trading frenzy in the 90s saw five dollar toys resell for thousands of dollars you just have to have a lot of patience and money but the bubble inflated by their mysterious inventor burst in spectacular fashion leaving collectors with piles of almost worthless animals so what happened how did a cute bean bag go from internet sensation to neglected keepsake this is tai warner who back in the 90s was the willy wonka of toys he founded thai inc in 1986 just outside of chicago and his first creation was a lifelike cat stuffed with beans joanie hirsch blackman was one of the only journalists to ever interview warner as she recalls his sales methods were quite eccentric he would walk in holding this cat in his arms and when people thought it was real then he knew he had done what he had hoped to do tai then experimented with smaller animals less lifelike but with plush material vibrant colors and loosely stuffed to make them easy to handle in 93 warner released his first nine beanie babies lena trevetti joined the company in 1992. it would often give warner creative input he was sort of trying to contemplate in his own design and creative process you know should these eyes be green or should they be blue what do you think with a price tag of just five dollars werner hoped that the toys would have wide appeal but beanie babies were far from an instant hit there were a lot of people that were just like no no i don't want those this won't work in my store that didn't stop warner from innovating though he would constantly tweak designs colors and names even after animals were already in circulation by creating variations and even halting production of some animals altogether what tai was actually doing was laying the groundwork for a market of rare collectibles only a few thousand of the original peanut the elephant were made before the updated version hit the shelves then all of a sudden those dark blue elephants are worth thousands and thousands of dollars because they're not available and there's only a handful of them that are in the marketplace he's just taken off and he's over five thousand dollars now isn't that cute would you rather have a new car or peanut the elephant tai's financial records have never been made public but according to author zach bissonnette's book the great beanie baby bubble in 1995 the company generated sales of around 28 million dollars by then there were over 50 different beanie babies there are zoo animals farm animals cats dogs bears and they are very very very cute and thanks to a new innovation in computer networks the beanie baby craze was about to go digital lucky for warner trevetti and her brother who also worked a thai had taken an early interest in the internet and convinced him to go online the website creation process took a little time because at the same time i was learning what the internet was trevetti is credited with developing the first business to consumer website at a time when only 14 percent of u.s adults had internet access the internet turns beanie babies into the hot commodity trade of the late 90s to prepare for high easter demand in 1995 tai filled three 747s with stuffed toys from korea where they were manufactured and later that holiday season the company's warehouse in illinois shipped 15 000 orders daily to retailers across the us warner became a master at manipulating the market every six months he would retire beanies from the product line sometimes he chose to discontinue the lowest selling animals to boost interest and then get rid of inventory or he'd target one with an already scarce supply to create a buying scramble a lot of times it would be hours and hours that people would spend driving around looking for a specific beanie baby shop owners referred to shipment days as mob scenes where customers would buy more than 50 beanies at a time warner achieved all this without needing to pay for advertising or selling beanie babies in big chains like toys r us and walmart the strategy of mystery and scarcity was intentional people became eager to cash in on the craze with some even creating copycat versions these are all counterfeit beanie babies and some of them are so well made self-confessed super fans leon and sandra have a collection of over 8 000 beanie babies in their north carolina home it got to the point where we had so many we thought why don't we just collect them all leon schlossberg's fascination for thai products didn't take off until the early 2000s but he remembers the midwest as the epicenter of the frenzy you had a dedicated group of fans mostly based in chicago or wisconsin that thought they were onto something and they started porting beanie babies by 1996 forbes estimated ty's revenue jumped to 250 million dollars then came another innovation that would push demand for beanie babies even higher after trevetti pitched the idea warner added poems and birthdays to each animal's tag it was just a matter of how do we make these special and how do we make them even more collectible werner liked the idea so much he asked if she could write a poem for every animal in the collection 86 in three days if you read the poem for ziggy the zebra he's a soccer referee so then if you're trying to buy a gift for someone who plays soccer then all of a sudden this zebra is the thing to get in 1997 tai secured a deal worth over 100 million dollars with mcdonald's featuring a new beanie spin-off teeny beanie babies real thai beanie babies in a mini size to toss talk or just plain love the promotion was supposed to last five weeks but the supply of 81 million was gone in just one we would go to mcdonald's we'd take turns and we'd buy the limit which was five mcdonald's estimated that one in every three americans had a teeny beanie baby inside their house it got to the point where kids couldn't get them anymore it was all part of the adult you know collecting and making money when mcdonald's repeated the promotion a year later one employee even went to jail for stealing six thousand dollars worth of teeny beanies by now the internet was exploding trading on ebay was taking off and suddenly there were millions of highly sought after beanie baby toys being traded globally listings ranged from five dollars to twelve thousand dollars fans would obsessively surf the site for clues about the next discontinued animal that would inevitably skyrocket in value what you need to do is get lucky which ones do you think are going to retire kiwi the two cans retirement announcement increased site traffic by 3 500 percent it was mind-boggling some of the things that we had to do to keep the site up and running within the secondary market of trading between collectors werner was no longer in charge in may 1997 ebay auctioned off 500 million dollars worth of the plush toys accounting for more than six percent of the site's total sales later that year warner released a purple bear honoring the late princess diana and the combination of a limited edition with the death of a beloved princess caused mayhem retailers could only order 12 princess beanies each demand was so high fans were paying up to 2 000 at auctions trade shows began cropping up across america and collectors even began publishing beanie baby catalogs media hype just lent more credibility to the value guides and guess who was putting out all the value guys people that were selling beanie babies for the most part beanie baby fever then spread into the sports world in 1998 fans were lured to stadiums with giveaways from nearly 20 of the 30 major league baseball teams by the end of the year ty's sales surpassed 1.4 billion dollars he came out with this bear which was made exclusively for thai employees to celebrate the first year that he exceeded a billion dollars in sale in a usa weekend poll estimated that 64 of americans owned at least one beanie baby one divorcing couple had so many they needed a judge to fairly split their collection worth up to five thousand dollars at the time that same year warner made the forbes 400 list with an estimated net worth of 5 billion dollars but it was becoming clear that the fuel driving the beanie baby's craze was running out then warner decided on his biggest gamble yet announcing that the production of beanie babies would cease a millennium eve but not before they released a final bear named the end and for the first time the retirement announcement didn't lead to inflated values in the secondary market after teasing the end of beanie babies werner continued to put out new product lines they're just so famous why would you get rid of something that is your namesake basically but by then the plush animals had become ubiquitous and kids were beginning to turn their attention to the next must-haves like furby and pokemon sales declined by more than 90 percent in the early 2000s forcing warner to put his own money into thai inc and by 2004 he claimed losses of more than 39 million dollars suddenly investors and collectors who had hoped to make a living out of trading plush animals found themselves with inventory that was not worth what they once paid then in 2009 came beanie booze a modern redesigned version of its predecessor with bigger eyes and bolder colors but some believe it wasn't the beanie babies that went down in popularity it was the interest in trading them we coined a new phrase as the rise and fall of the beanie gamblers because the speculative craze just bottomed out and crashed now the father-daughter duo hopes to preserve the memory of beanie bbs for future generations by opening a museum i mean they're all so cute and these things are cute they're adorable it used to not be proper for a guy to see this but it hasn't been cheap we've probably put in close to about 175 thousand dollars does that number include shipping and handling no that number does not include shipping and handling this is an 11th spot lucky lucky the ladybug loves the lotto someone must win that's her motto but save your dimes and even a penny don't spend on the lotto and you'll have many