Beanie Babies

When I was three years old my mom got me Lucky the Ladybug, my first Beanie Baby.  Lucky quickly became one of my favorite toys and after receiving her I wanted all of the Beanie Babies.  Back when I was growing up I would spend hours playing with my stuffed animals.  For some reason they were more appealing to me then regular dolls.  I suppose since they were animals it allowed me to use my imagination more.  Beanie Babies were a huge deal for me and for many other kids when I was in elementary school.  Beanie Babies were stuffed animals made by Ty Warner Inc. in 1993 with only nine different animals at the time and they eventually became extremely popular in the late nineties. There were several different animals and styles that you could collect and I wanted all of them.  The more Beanie Babies I had, the more crazy and exciting adventures we could go on.  Many parents got their kids Beanie Babies so they could collect them and have them be worth something someday, and many limited collections are very valuable.  Some rare collections can go from hundreds to even thousands of dollars in certain markets.  I, personally, wanted the stuffed animals with the sole intent of playing with them.  Their bright colors and individualized name tags were very appealing to kids because they all seemed to have their very own personality.   Beanie Babies were definitely a very popular childhood item, which relates to the reading by Stearns and Cross.  They state that “an array of new consumer products was aimed at children” (Stearns 3).  These stuffed animals were directly aimed at kid’s imaginations.  They also were not necessarily gender specified like dolls; boys and girls could both collect the stuffed animals without feeling pressure from friends or their parents for collecting them.