Get serious about your investments; buy more Beanie Babies
by Dave Barry
    Let's talk about how you can get rich by investing in Beanie Babies.  For the benefit of those of you who live in primitive rain forest tribes, I should explain that Beanie Babies are little beanbag critters with cute names such as (these are real names) Smoochy the Frog, Spunky the Cocker Spaniel, Claude the Crab, Weenie the Dachshund, Floppity the Bunny, Tank the Armidillo, and (last and definitely least) Chops the Lamb.  Beanie Babies are manufactured in China for a U.S. company called Ty Inc. which is so originally named after the owner, Ty the Extremely Rich Person (there is no recorded existance of a Ty Beanie Baby yet).
    Beanie Babies were originally intended as fun playthings for children, but as the old saying goes, "Whenever you have something intended as fun playthings for children, you can count on adults to turn it into a grotesquely obsessive over-commercialized hobby."  So now Beanie Babies are big business, with grown men and women fighting over them and paying thousands of dollars for certain rare models, such as Peanut the Royal Blue Elephant (not to be confused with Peanut the LIGHT Blue Elephant which only a total loser would pay thousands of dollars for).
    Unfortunately, the Beanie Baby craze has attracted some "bad apples."  I have here an Associated Press story stating that in Andover, Mass., police caught somebody trying to sell a stolen Happy the Hippo for $900.  The story also states that a couple in Nashua, N.H., allegedly bought Beanie Babies with forged checks, then sold them and used the proceeds to buy heroin.
    Fortunately, not all of the people involved with this craze are criminal heroin addicts.  Many of them are merely insane.  If you don't believe me, just trot into an Internet chat room and watch.  As I write these words, Ty Inc. is about to release a new batch of Beanie Babies, and in the various Beanie Baby chat rooms the serious collectors are speculating feverishly about what type of animals they will be.  One person will post a message saying something like, "I heard that the new group will be Wart the Toad, Hefty the Cow, Siphon the Tick, Stench the Dung Beetle and Mucous the Oyster."  Another fan will respond with: "I question the accuracy of your list, because a VERY highly placed source has informed me that the new group will be Suction the Remora, Chuckles the Scorpion, Yap Yap the Neighborhood Dog That Makes You Want To Buy An Uzi, and Segment the Tapeworm.  And on the debate rages, far into the night.
    Recently, at a business function, I met a high-ranking corporate officer whose wife, a grown woman mind you, collects Beanie Babies.  The man told me that on a recent business trip he had purchased her Strut the Rooster (needlessly to say, Strut the Rooster is very rare).  He knew it was one she didn't already own, but when he gave it to her, she scoffed at him, because she specializes in jungle-dwelling beanie babies such as: Freckles the Leapord and Ziggy the Zebra; and whoever heard of a rooster in the jungle for God's sake?
    Anyway, my point is that Beanie Babies are viewed by many collectors as a serious financial investment (Ross Perot currently has 83 percent of his money invested in Beanie Babies, with $276 million in Bongo the Monkey alone).  This is not just some "passing fad" like the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of some years back, wherein people spent hundreds of dollars for a bunch of hideously ugly dolls, only to discover, after the frenzy died down, that they had purchased a bunch of hideously ugly dolls.  This will not happen with Beanie Babies!  Beanie Babies are different!
    Why do I say this?  Because I purchased one.  I was at a McDonald's getting some coffee, and they had a promotion on Beanie Babies, and I decided to invest $1.89 in Inch the Inchworm.  I'm sure it will be worth a lot of money, although it did suffer one setback when my dog got ahold of it...One day, while looking for food, which is pretty much all she ever does, she came across Inch the Inchworm.  Apparently at some point, perhaps million of years ago, dogs and inchworms had a bitter dispute, and my dog had not forgotten it.  I heard this "whap-whap-whap" sound coming from the living room, and I found my dog shaking poor Inch the Inchworm violently by the neck so as to kill him and then eat him.  (and if you think a dog can't eat a beanbag, you know nothing about dogs.)
    But I'm not concerned.  I'm very confident that Inch the Dog-Spit-Drenched Inchworm will only appreciate in value, and that soon I'll be able to retire as a millionare.  Why do I say this?  Because I'm going to pour this hot McDonald's coffee on my thighs.

 Back to main page