Trivia / Beanie Babies

• Cash-Cow Franchise: The toy line now includes Beanie Baby adaptations of Hello Kitty, SpongeBob SquarePants, Shrek, Dora the Explorer, Blue's Clues, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Backyardigans, the live-action Garfield movies, the actual Garfield, the Ice Age films, the Madagascar films, most of Disney's franchises, Marvel Comics, PAW Patrol, Peppa Pig, and so on. Special Beanie Baby bears in honor of people, which started with the Princess Diana tribute bear. Some are exclusive to retailers such as Walgreens, while others are exclusive to certain areas.
  • To say nothing of the intentional release of design variations. For instance, Patti the Platypus comes in several almost-indiscernible color variations; Mystic the Unicorn had three design changes; Lucky the Ladybug can have 7, 11 or 21 spots (and they can be stitched-on felt or patterned fabric!).
• Content Leak:
  • Dottie II was leaked early via a banner at the 2023 New York Toy Fair.
  • Bananas II was also shown via a display at the same fair, though he was mistaken for Schweetheart by many.
  • From the same wave as Bananas II, Magenta II was listed on eBay before being officially announced.
  • Both Legs II and Hope II were leaked early via photos taken at a UK toy fair.
• Follow the Leader:
  • In the wake of the first wave of Beanie Baby success in the late nineties, many other beanbag plush toy lines suddenly came into vogue, such as Puffkins (which had a puffy Armless Biped design), Salvino's Bammers (beanbag bears themed after sports figures), etc. There was also a Darker and Edgier beanbag toy called "Meanies", which relied on grossout humor.
  • The success of the spin-off/successor line Beanie Boos lead to other plush lines incorporating large glitter eyes and chibi proportions into their designs, with one such example being Webkinz Next plushies.
  • Ty themselves are guilty of this on a few occassions:
    • Ty tried to compete with Webkinz via Beanie Babies 2.0, plush toys which had secret codes that could unlock an online pet in a virtual world.
    • Ty Girlz had design tropes akin to Bratz dolls, and connected to their own virtual online world similar to the likes of Movie Star Planet via a secret code.
    • In The New '10s, Ty released their "Squish-A-Boos" line of Beanie Boos, which are clearly designed to capitalize off of the popularity of Squishmallows. The line actually lead to a lawsuit from Kellytoy for copyright infringement, though it was unsuccessful. It did lead to the line being renamed to "Squishy Beanies", however.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • There is very little archived material of Beanie Babies 2.0 and Ty Girlz, online toys-to-life virtual worlds that were both shut down in 2013.
  • Speaking of Ty Girlz, the Sweet Sasha and Marvelous Malia dolls were pulled from shelves (and later released under the names Sweet Sydney and Marvelous Mariah respectively) due to accusations of Ty using the likeness of Barack Obama's daughters Sasha and Malia Obama for the dolls. The original Sasha and Malia dolls fetch a high price as a result.
• Kids' Meal Toy:
  • The Teeny Beanies line, smaller versions of pre-existing Beanie Babies with embroidered eyes instead of safety eyes that were produced from 1997 until 2000 for McDonald's. These are among the most infamous Happy Meal toys due to the fights that broke out over them, leading to police involvement and criminal charges. One McDonald's employee in Miami was even charged with stealing large numbers of Teeny Beanies from her restaurant to resell.
  • Following the retirement of Teenie Beanies, successors in the form of Teeny Beanie Boos and Teeny Tys found their way into Happy Meals in the mid-late 2010s. These were based off of Beanie Boos.
• No Export for You: Several Beanie Babies, Beanie Buddies, and Classic Ty plush are only available in certain stores, in certain countries, or at certain events.
  • There's a Loch Ness Monster beanie named "Mystery" who is only available in Scotland, and is among the most expensive Beanie Babies on the secondary market.
  • Beanie Boos are also not exempt from this, such as Loy the Akita Inu, who was exclusive to Japan, or Asia the Tiger, who was exclusive to... Europe.
  • The earliest example of this is a bear named "Maple" that was only available in Canada.
  • Oddly enough, Osito the Mexican bear was a US exclusive.
  • The Godzilla Ty Classic line, which consisted of the titular monster, Mothra, and King Ghidora, were only available in Japan.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Beanie Babies would often go through several different variants before making it to market, sometimes with drastic color differences compared to the final product. The site Rarest Beans documents several known prototypes that have found their way into circulation one way or the other. Some standout examples include Inch originally having a pastel color scheme and Nana (later Bongo) going through at least fifteen different color combinations.
  • Some Beanie Babies never made it past the prototype phase and ended up scrapped completely. Some of the most notorious examples include a vivid tie-dyed bear nicknamed the "Picasso Bear", a bear made with US dollar-patterned fabric (speculated to be a proto-Billionaire Bear), a shaggy bear◊ using similar fabric to the later Punkies line, and an unknown purple squid◊ whose design was never re-used for any other Beanie Baby.

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