Two Beanie Babies in a cherry tree in Ueno Park, Japan

Whatever Happened to Beanie Babies?

The Leonard Lopate Show | Jun 16, 2015

Zac Bissonnette analyzes the Beanie Baby craze of the 1990s in The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. In just three years, collectors who saw the toys as a means of speculation made creator Ty Warner, an eccentric college dropout, a billionaire. Bissonnette draws on hundreds of interviews, including a visit to a man who lives with his 40,000 Ty products, and an in-prison interview with a guy who killed a coworker over a Beanie Baby debt.

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