Beanie Babies

The Mono Monday theme today is to choose an invention from any time in history. Thanks to laurie54 for hosting.  I chose something that was handy - my small collection of Beanie Babies. 

Beanie Babies are a line of stuffed toys created by American businessman H.Ty Warner, who founded Ty Inc. in 1986.  Created in 1993, Beanie Babies emerged as a major fad and collectible during the second half of the 1990s.  The toys are stuffed with plastic "beans" rather than conventional soft stuffing. They come in many different forms, mostly animals.  Beanie Babies are deliberately under-stuffed. This led to a criticism that the toys looked "cheap" -  however, this set them apart from most stuffed animals on the market which could not be posed easily

Ty, Inc. was the first business to produce a business to consumer website designed to engage their market. This is a major contributing factor to the early and rapidly growing popularity of Beanie Babies. They have been cited as being the world's first Internet sensation in 1995. They were collected not only as toys, but also as a financial investment, due to the high resale value of particular ones.  Ty, Inc. stopped producing the product in December 1999, but consumer demand led them to reconsider and production restarted in 2000.

I walked to the village this afternoon to pick up a parcel from the Post Office, drop off a bag of clothes at the charity shop and do some food shopping.  It was dry when I left the house but it started raining heavily while I was out.  Didn't last long though.


Steps today - 7,737