The Great Beanie Baby Bubble
Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute
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- $ 24.900,00
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- $ 24.900,00
Descripción editorial
“Fascinating, strange, sad, funny, and entirely engrossing, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble is a smart, engaging book that’s as much about the odd saga of these plush toys as it is about the nature of obsession and desire.”
—SUSAN ORLEAN, author of Rin Tin Tin
New York Times bestselling author Zac Bissonnette explores what happened when a $5 stuffed animal took over America and turned a college dropout into a billionaire. Now a major motion picture starring Elizabeth Banks and Zach Galifianakis, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble tells the story of the most extraordinary craze of the 1990s.
In the history of consumer crazes, nothing compares to Beanie Babies. With no advertising or big-box distribution, creator Ty Warner – an eccentric college dropout – became a billionaire in just three years. But the end of the fad was just as swift and extremely devastating, with "rare" Beanie Babies deemed worthless as quickly as they'd once been deemed priceless.
Bissonnette explains how and why the Beanie Baby craze rose and fell, and explores the rise of ecommerce and eBay. Through first-ever interviews with former Ty Inc. employees, Warner's sister, and the two ex-girlfriends who were by his side as he became the richest man in the history of toys, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble tells the inspiring yet tragic story of one of America's most enigmatic self-made tycoons.
Perfect for collectors, investors, and fans of marketing and business books, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble explores the mass hysteria that captivated America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
