The Beanie Baby Craze :: Beanie Babies Obsession Essays

The Beanie Baby Craze â€Å"When you have something intended as innocent fun for children, you can count on adults to turn it into an obsessive, grotesquely over commercialized ‘hobby’† It all started with Cabbage Patch Kids, parents paying top dollar for those plastic headed and not so cute dolls. The next big wave to hit was the Tickle Me Elmo a character from Sesame Street, who you could squeeze and it would laugh and jiggle. And now we are in the midst of a tidal wave, that’s right, the Beanie Baby Craze. These small bean bag animals, which were first produced in 1994 by the Illinois based Ty Co., are a huge hit with children and adults alike. People of the Beanie Baby movement will go to great extremes, and pay an obscene amount of money for one of these small animals, taking this â€Å"hobby† past the line into absurdity. A couple years ago when I was at a BBQ picnic, a little girl came up to me and tossed me a fish beanie baby, having never seen or heard of them I looked it over for a bit, then I lobbed it back to her and she ran off throwing it up in the air and dropping it each time. At that time I would never have thought that people would go mad over them. I feel a certain obligation to shed some light on the strange even ridiculous behavior that some of you display while partaking in this madness. For instance, there have been stories of people following the UPS deliverers around town to see which store will be getting the latest beanie babies. When they do find a store that carries the new ones usually others have also, creating a mad rush to get the one that they want. Children have had these toys snatched right out of their little hands in this frenzy, arguments even fights have erupted. Some of you Beanie Baby followers will even try deception to get as many of them as they can. A clerk at a toy store recounts a day when they had received a big shipment of new beanie babies. To be fair, a three Beanie limit had been established. One customer had bought her three, went home changed clothes, put on make-up, and changed her hairdo and went back to get three more.