cover image The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute

The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute

Zac Bissonnette. Penguin/Portfolio, $26.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-59184-602-4

Bissonnette (Debt-Free U) does a masterful job of tracing the rise and fall of the Beanie Baby phenomenon of the 1990s, reminding readers that in 1998, a whopping 64% of Americans owned at least one of the small stuffed animals. Although Beanie Babies creator Ty Warner designed the toys for young children, the likes of Brownie the Bear and Chocolate the Moose soon became frantically sought-after possessions among adults, who viewed them as investments that could only increase in value. Warner, a marketing master, drove up sales by periodically retiring characters, a strategy that kept fanatic collectors buying Beanie Babies in bulk out of fear that supply would dry up. At the height of the craze, the $5 plushies were selling for hundreds of dollars. This cautionary tale of elevated consumerism, with collectors fretting over what they didn’t have rather than taking pleasure in what they did, serves as a useful history lesson for today, told with wit and subtlety. [em](Feb.) [/em]