Beanie Babies doc director on the 'group of soccer moms' who sparked the billion-dollar craze
Anyone who lived through the '90s will remember the Beanie Babies craze, but what — and who — exactly caused it?
The stuffed toys created by Ty Warner inspired a collecting frenzy in the latter part of the decade, with the company raking in an astronomical $1.4 billion by 1998. But for diehard fans, Beanies were more than just a collector's item: They were a financial investment. While the toys' retail cost was relatively low, rare Beanies often fetched exponentially higher resale values on a bustling black market, which, the documentary reveals, was fueled largely by a small group of Midwestern "soccer moms." And despite the fad's swift passing by the early '00s, rare Beanie Babies continue to sell for thousands of dollars to this day.
Now the toys and the hysteria they wrought are the subjects of HBO Max's eye‐opening, nostalgic, and endlessly entertaining documentary Beanie Mania. Featuring illuminating interviews with the collectors, influencers, and company insiders behind it all, the film delivers a layered and riveting look at how a children's toy spawned an unprecedented investment bubble at the dawn of the internet age.
Ahead of Beanie Mania's debut Thursday, EW caught up with director Yemisi Brookes to talk all things Beanie, the surprising twists the story took, and whether we could see another craze in the next few years.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What sparked your interest in making a Beanie Babies documentary? Were you a collector?
YEMISI BROOKES: No. [Laughs] Actually, as you can probably tell from the accent, I am not from here, and so I didn't really know a lot about Beanies at all. When I heard about this project and found out more, I thought, wow, this really was a huge phenomenon. I didn't think I had realized previously how big it was here. Whenever I would tell people this is what I'm making, everyone had a reaction. Every single person was like, "Oh my God, Beanie Babies! I remember those." When I was doing initial research, I was really fascinated by how much they took over, bearing in mind that they were just these beanbag-shaped toys, which were never meant to retail for more than $5. I just thought it was a really interesting way to kind of look at that period in time, and look at the whole economic bubble that it created.
Tell me about the women you discovered were at the heart of the craze?
Everyone always talks about the phenomenon of Beanie Babies, but actually, what created and drove that phenomenon was just a few women from this Chicago suburb. I found that really interesting because I didn't think that part of the story had really been told before. Essentially it was a group of soccer moms — so-called at the time — who mainly lived in Naperville, a suburb of Chicago. And they just started collecting Beanie Babies and then were really methodical about recording when they got them and making lists. If you look at the phenomenon in detail, without those women, it's unlikely that the phenomenon would ever have reached the height that it did.
hbo max 'Beanie Mania'
How did you go about tracking them down?
When I came onto the project, there had already been a little bit of development, so we knew a couple of key players, a couple of key soccer moms. And then beyond that, there are still so many Facebook groups of people who are still collecting, and [we used that] to get to the bottom of who are the big players. But what was interesting that we found was, amongst the collectors, there are kind of different tiers. And when you're talking to people, people will be like, "Oh, no, but this woman was definitely the big collector, you have to speak to this woman." And as I said, when we tracked it all back, it really did come out of this one cul-de-sac in Naperville and the surrounding areas. So yeah, that part was fascinating for us, and those women at the time were almost like celebrities. They were traveling around the world, they were speaking at events, they were selling, they were buying, they were writing price guides. So yeah, they were really big. Beanies was like a whole subculture.
Some of them made loads of money, and others went into extreme debt. Did you find any hesitation from some of them to talk about this stuff?
You know, what's funny is, again, sort of going back to my Britishness, I've lived in New York for seven years. And I'm pretty used to straight-talking New Yorkers, right? But what we found was because a lot of the filming took place in Chicago, [we were] dealing with Midwesterners, who are very modest. A lot of the women who appeared in the show really didn't want to take a lot of ownership for all this amazing work in creating the phenomenon.
One person who definitely didn't want to talk was H. Ty Warner, the creator of Beanie Babies and CEO of Ty Inc., who was later charged with tax evasion. The film points out that he only ever did one interview, even back in the heyday of the craze. Did you ever find out why that was, or get any sort of response from him about the documentary?
I think that's just kind of always been his way; I don't think it's anything new. He just has never particularly created publicity. He doesn't like to be in the public eye. Of course, we wrote him a letter and told him we were making this documentary and we would love for him to be a part of it. And he sent a very polite email back and said, "That's a pass from me."
Was there something you learned in the process of making this documentary that really surprised you?
Watching back the archive footage and seeing how mental and nuts it was, was really something. There were people trampling each other to get Beanie Babies, and you're like, this seems mad, but there is this sort of collective insanity. I definitely, because I didn't live through it here, hadn't realized that. That was surprising to me.
Then I think the other thing was understanding how much work these women had put into this. This was beyond a hobby. This was beyond a full-time job, and I think we capture a little bit of that towards the end of the film when [collector] Mary Beth is quite affected. And she says, "I wonder if this just went too far. And, you know, I had young children at the time, and I hope that I gave my children enough." Because she was so in this kind of bubble of it. So, I think that was interesting to see how much these women who created that secondary market had really given to it because there were no lists of all the Beanie Babies, and they just created them themselves. And they were calling around the country to try and find out where they were, and traveling around the country, and cataloging. And, you know, the internet was in its infancy, but they all kind of had this AOL dial-up and were fielding hundreds of queries every single day. It really was like a moment in time for them as well.
Tim Leedy/getty Beanie Babies sell at the Leesport Farmers Market stand in 2004.
Besides all of the interviews, another fun part of the film is the slow-motion scenes and glamour shots of the Beanie Babies themselves. Was it fun to collect some for that and then get to throw them around a bit?
Yeah! I worked on this documentary for 10 months, so by the time we came to filming all those little kind of slow-mo parts, you just become a bit of a Beanie nerd. We had this kind of art department who were brought on just to try and buy a load of Beanies so that we can use them as props. And that was really funny and nostalgic for them. We found this one guy on Craigslist. He was in Staten Island. I can't remember what the exact number was, but he was like, "I've got 400 Beanie Babies, please just come and take them." So the art department went and got all of these Beanies. That was a really fun filming day, just throwing Beanies around. Then me and the crew took our favorite ones home. So yeah, that was a good day's work.
In the film, you ask a subject what their favorite Beanie Baby is, or one that best represents them. So, let me ask the same question of you. Do you have a favorite?
I mean, I can't believe how in-depth… I can go so granular with it. This could be my special subject now, Beanie Babies. And I'm just looking at them now because they're actually in my living room. But there's one called the Peace Bear, which has tie-dye fabric. It's like a traditional bear shape and it has a little peace sign. And I mean, listen, the trend has come back around hasn't it, for kind of '90s things and tie-dye? So that one feels like very 2021, but that was kind of my favorite.
And then I was so excited because, in that haul that we got from Staten Island, there was a ladybug, which had no spots on it. And I've never seen that one before. The thing about these Beanie Babies is that the rare ones quite often were the ones which went wrong in the factory. For example, there's a kind of duck which was manufactured in China accidentally without its wings, and that one made it all the way across to the US. It didn't have its wings, and people would go crazy for that one because it felt like a real rarity.
The film ends on a forward-looking note. Do you think we could be headed for another Beanie craze? Is this doc the start of one?
[Laughs] I'm not sure. So Peggy, who is one of my favorite characters from the film, she's an authenticator, and she has been doing that for years and years and years. You send her your Beanie, and she will feel it and touch it and look at it and see if it's fake. And then if it's not, she'll send it back to you with a certificate of authentication, if that's the right word. But she told me that the amount that she's authenticating is massively going up. So that makes me think that maybe it's going to be kind of back on the rise. As I said, all things '90s are quite fashionable and cool at the moment. But I'm not sure, because I also feel like everyone that you talk to is like, "Oh, my mom has a Tupperware bin of them at home. We're just waiting for the right time to sell." So I think maybe the market is flooded, but we will see.
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