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rachelmcg2004's review against another edition
| DNF'd at 29%
When I found this on one of my friend's reading challenges, I expected a cool tale of various shady marketing strategies and an explanation of the calculated measures taken to make Beanie Babies rise to the top of the marketing chain. I did not expect to be served the picture of a callous, narcissistic, utter trashbag of a human that is Ty Warner. That man is a horrible, evil person, and though I am not even halfway through this book I am absolutely done with learning any more about his life. Ugh.
People are always talking about protecting your peace. Well, I am going to protect my peace by not learning more about the disgusting slimeball that is Ty Warner.
✌
When I found this on one of my friend's reading challenges, I expected a cool tale of various shady marketing strategies and an explanation of the calculated measures taken to make Beanie Babies rise to the top of the marketing chain. I did not expect to be served the picture of a callous, narcissistic, utter trashbag of a human that is Ty Warner. That man is a horrible, evil person, and though I am not even halfway through this book I am absolutely done with learning any more about his life. Ugh.
People are always talking about protecting your peace. Well, I am going to protect my peace by not learning more about the disgusting slimeball that is Ty Warner.
✌
fuzzyhead's review against another edition
4.0
The events described in this book are stranger than fiction. A soap opera star spending his kids' college money on thousands of Beanie Babies? Families using disguises to circumnavigate per-customer limits during the Teenie Beanie promotion? An eccentric New Jersey couple becoming millionaires by self-publishing a devastatingly inaccurate Beanie Baby Handbook?
Part of the reason I found this book so fascinating is I remember this craze so well. (I even had the infamous handbook.) I was five or six when I was introduced to beanies, and I loved the whole thing. They were cute! And for me, they were primarily toys. I brought them to school, threw them up in the air, and sometimes (gasp!) the tags fell off. And yet, there was a tiny part of me that thought, hey, maybe these will be worth something someday. Of course, I was just a dumb kid, and in retrospect, it's amazing just how many adults bought into this whole thing. As this book points out, many people, thinking they were making an investment, were brought to financial ruin over stuffed toys.
Unfortunately, Ty Warner declined to be interviewed. Through interviews with former acquaintances and business associates, Bissonnette presents Ty as a controlling perfectionist, difficult to work with and even more difficult to live with. Bissonnette also profiles the earliest collectors, some of whom, leading up to the peak of the craze, really were able to resell beanies at a remarkable profit. (Of course, most people chose to hoard the beanies, thinking by now they'd be worth thousands. A quick trip to the "Bean Bag Plush" section of ebay proves just how wrong they were.)
It's a quick, fun (and yet rather depressing) read. It's also a cautionary tale. "Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute" sums it all up pretty nicely.
Part of the reason I found this book so fascinating is I remember this craze so well. (I even had the infamous handbook.) I was five or six when I was introduced to beanies, and I loved the whole thing. They were cute! And for me, they were primarily toys. I brought them to school, threw them up in the air, and sometimes (gasp!) the tags fell off. And yet, there was a tiny part of me that thought, hey, maybe these will be worth something someday. Of course, I was just a dumb kid, and in retrospect, it's amazing just how many adults bought into this whole thing. As this book points out, many people, thinking they were making an investment, were brought to financial ruin over stuffed toys.
Unfortunately, Ty Warner declined to be interviewed. Through interviews with former acquaintances and business associates, Bissonnette presents Ty as a controlling perfectionist, difficult to work with and even more difficult to live with. Bissonnette also profiles the earliest collectors, some of whom, leading up to the peak of the craze, really were able to resell beanies at a remarkable profit. (Of course, most people chose to hoard the beanies, thinking by now they'd be worth thousands. A quick trip to the "Bean Bag Plush" section of ebay proves just how wrong they were.)
It's a quick, fun (and yet rather depressing) read. It's also a cautionary tale. "Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute" sums it all up pretty nicely.
jameshousworth's review against another edition
4.0
An interesting, quick read! What I thought was most interesting was how the author showed that the more the beanie baby craze grew, the less kids got to actually play with them. So weird to have a bunch of middle-aged people obsessing over hundreds of stuffed animals their kids are forbidden to touch...
I also found it interesting that almost all stuffed animal tycoons, it turns out, had really traumatic childhoods that caused them to form extremely strong attachments to stuffed animals for comfort at an early age (Ty Warner included). Kind of sad.
Lots more interesting stuff in there - definitely worth the read!
I also found it interesting that almost all stuffed animal tycoons, it turns out, had really traumatic childhoods that caused them to form extremely strong attachments to stuffed animals for comfort at an early age (Ty Warner included). Kind of sad.
Lots more interesting stuff in there - definitely worth the read!
claireviolet's review against another edition
3.0
in hindsight i really should have assumed that beanie babies was freaks all the way down. i was hoping this would have grabbed me a little more than it did, but still interesting even if i wasn’t super entertained the entire time.
erincataldi's review against another edition
4.0
I have been dying to read this book since I first read the reviews in Library Journal and Kirkus. I am soo glad that the hype didn't let me down, I found this book endlessly fascinating. The amount of research that went into this book is staggering and I have mad respect for author, Zac Bissonnette, who made an old obscure topic, relevant, funny, and intriguing again. He talks about the founder, Ty Warner, the history of the company, the start of the craze, the madness ensuing, and the inevitable burst that left thousands in debt. It was a strange, wild, ride and learning all about the way the market and speculation drove beanie sales was fascinating. An interesting pop culture and financial read, full of random tid bits, factoids, and ridiculousness that you should not live without.