United States of America Beanie Babies Official Original Nine Medal 1999 Proof Silver Medal 39.15mm (25.72 grams) BEANIE BABIES OFFICIAL CLUB ty, Stars on either side of heart logo. BEANIE BABIES 19 99 Flash ORIGINAL NINE, Flash the Dolphin beanie baby laying 1/2 left.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
Beanie Babies are a line of stuffed toys created by American businessman H. Ty Warner, who founded Ty Inc. in 1986. The toys are stuffed with plastic pellets (“beans”) rather than conventional soft stuffing. They come in many different forms, mostly animals.
Created in 1993, Beanie Babies emerged as a major fad and collectible during the second half of the 1990s. 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.
Nine original Beanie Babies were launched in 1993: Legs the Frog, Squealer the Pig, Spot the Dog, Flash the Dolphin, Splash the Whale, Chocolate the Moose, Patti the Platypus, Brownie the Bear (later renamed “Cubbie”), and Pinchers the Lobster (with some tag errors with “Punchers”). They were not in factory production until 1994. Sales were slow at first to the point that by 1995 many retailers refused to buy the products in the bundles Ty offered them while others outright refused to buy them in any form. Their popularity soon grew however, first starting locally in Chicago before growing into a national craze in the USA.
In 1996, Ty Inc. released a new product called Teenie Beanies, a miniature cutoff of the original Beanie Babies line. They were sold alongside McDonald’s Happy Meals to celebrate that product’s 17th anniversary. They also partnered with other companies.
Ty, Inc. stopped producing the product in December 1999, but consumer demand led them to reconsider. Production restarted in 2000 with a Beanie Baby named “The Beginning.”
In early 2008, Ty released a new version of Beanie Babies called Beanie Babies 2.0. The purchase of a Beanie Baby 2.0 provided its owner with a code to access an online Beanie Babies interactive website. The website has since been shut down.
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