This Teenie Beanie Baby by Ty is in overall good shape BODY: The body has no tears or rips. SWING TAG / HANG TAG: The swing tag has some bending and cracked pigment but readability is not affected. TUSH TAG: The tush tag has a fold, some light pigment fading, and some very light edge and corner fraying. THIS IS FROM A NON-SMOKING HOME! Please note that this item is being stored in a household with cats. The cats will not be allowed access to this item, and every effort will be made to keep stray hair and dander off of it. However, it is unlikely that it will be 100% free of cat allergens. It will be checked and spot-cleaned before shipment. Please view ALL listings photos, and do not hesitate to write for more information.
HAPPY™ is a RETIRED Teenie Beanie Baby® made for McDonald's!
INTRODUCED: 1993
THIS IS FROM A NON-SMOKING ENVIRONMENT!
© Ty Inc., Oakbrook, IL. U.S.A.
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History of Ty Beanie Babies:
Beanie Babies are a line of popular stuffed animals, made by Ty Warner Inc., which was later renamed as Ty Inc. in late 1993. Each toy has an inner "posable lining" and is stuffed with plastic pellets (or "beans") rather than conventional stuffing. Depending on the year made, these pellets or beans were made of either PVC (polyvinyl chloride) or PE (polyethylene), giving Beanie Babies a flexible feel. In a rare interview Warner said, "The whole idea was it looked real because it moved.”
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"). In 1996, Ty Inc. released a new product called Teenie Beanies, a miniature offshoot of the original Beanie Babies line. They were sold alongside McDonalds Happy Meals to celebrate that product's 25th anniversary. Ty, Inc. stopped producing the product in 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 was called Beanie Babies 2.0. The purchase of a Beanie Baby 2.0 provided its owner with a code to access a Beanie Babies interactive website.
Beanie Babies began to emerge as popular collectibles in late 1995, and became a hot toy. The company's strategy of deliberate scarcity, producing each new design in limited quantity, restricting individual store shipments to limited numbers of each design and regularly retiring designs, created a huge secondary market for the toys and increased their popularity and value as a collectible. Ty systematically retired various designs, and many would rise in value the way that early retirees had. The craze lasted through 1999 and slowly declined after the Ty company announced that they would no longer be making Beanie Babies and made a bear called "The End". Some time after the original announcement that the company would stop production, Ty asked the public to vote on whether the product should continue; fans and collectors voted "overwhelmingly" to keep the toys on the market.
Since the beginning, Beanie Babies have included two tags for identification: a heart-shaped "swing tag" at the top, and a fabric "tush tag" at the bottom. Both tags have been redesigned completely over time. Between 1994 and 1996, the swing tags had "To" and "From" blanks in them for use as gifts. Starting in early 1996, the tags include four-line poems related to the Beanie Baby, and a date of birth for the toy. The poem and birthday concept was created by Lina Trivedi who is credited as authoring the poems on the first 136 poems that were introduced to the marketplace. It was not uncommon for Beanie Babies to be accidentally shipped out with incorrect or misspelled tags, which sometimes increased the toy's value. On occasion, the poems, birth dates and even the names have been changed on certain Beanie Babies.