Beanie Babies were the 'It' toy of the '90s. There was a dark side behind the cute craze.

If you didn't own a Ty Beanie Baby in the mid-1990s, where were you? 

The rise and fall of the Beanie Baby toy empire, the charismatic founder Ty Warner and the women who worked with him are subjects of the new part-fictionalised Apple TV+ movie The Beanie Bubble. 

Starring Zach Galifianakis, Elizabeth Banks and Sarah Snook and directed by Kristin Gore and Damian Kulash, the film was inspired by a 2015 book by Zac Bissonnette, called The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute.

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I watched the movie as a Beanie Baby fan and proud owner of 'Chipper the Chipmunk' and lapped up all the quirky details about the soft toys and everyone involved in their creation. 

The rollercoaster success and ultimate collapse of an adorable brand that for a brief period sent the world into a frenzy. But there were some unknown, darker aspects of this colourful and cute craze that mesmerised a generation.

The rise and fall of the Beanie Baby empire.

According to Digital Spy, Ty Warner started his toy empire in 1986 after he founded Ty Inc. to manufacture and sell a range of colourful plush cats, which were under-stuffed with plastic beans, and therefore much easier to pose and cuddle.

In 1993 at the World Toy Fair in New York, Warner launched his first round of 'Beanie Babies', a variety of smaller-sized soft toy animals that could easily fit into school bags. By 1995 the inclusion of the red and white 'Ty label' with a birthdate, name and poem along with the explosion of Beanie Babies online made them into a collector's item and international toy craze. 

While the website was key to the success, it was also the launch of eBay at around the same time that sped up demand for the Beanies.

“Now, eBay is such a behemoth and everything is online, but [1995] really was this intersection,” The Beanie Bubble director Kristin Gore explains in an article for The LA Times. 

“eBay would not have existed without Beanie Babies — it would have gone under. It essentially became a clearinghouse for Beanie Babies.”

Thanks to eBay collectors among other factors, Warner became a billionaire and Beanie Babies were a household name linked with major brands like Mcdonald's and Wrigleys. 

But by 2000 the fun was over and thanks to some bad decisions and a changing market, sales decreased by 90 percent and the 'Beanie Bubble' well and truly burst. 

The women behind Beanie Babies.

While Ty Warner's name is forever associated with Beanie Babies, both the 2015 book and movie reveal the secret stories of three women behind the brand who the enigmatic Warner did not credit or treat very well.

“It’s an incredibly wild and absurd story about this insane speculative craze that is super colourful and interesting,” director Kristin Gore says in The LA Times.

“But it was the women’s stories behind the phenomenon that really spoke to us, and that’s what we wanted to make the movie about: who we value in our culture, what we value, and the female relationship to the American dream.”

The women Gore mentions are Robbie, Sheila and Maya who each in their own way help to turn Warner's fledgling Beanie Baby brand into a global empire before being discarded.

While the characters of Robbie, played by Elizabeth Banks, Sheila by Sarah Snook, and Maya by Geraldine Viswanathan are fictional (the directors changed their names for legal reasons) they are based on three real women—Patricia Roche, Faith McGowan, and Lina Trivedi.

Patricia Roche (Robbie) dated Warner and was a partner in Ty Inc and reportedly the muse behind the Beanie Baby Patti the Platypus. According to Time Magazine, Roche went on to become a wealthy wholesaler of Ty products in the UK. 

Faith McGowan (Sheila) was Warner's former long-term partner and a lighting designer who moved into Warner’s mansion. Like in the film, her daughter inspired a “Spooky” Beanie baby that Warner eventually removed her name from. 

Maya's character is based on online marketing genius Lina Trivedi, who wrote the original poems that were featured on the Beanie Baby tags. Trivedi was famed for the development of the Beanie Baby website, the world's first business-to-consumer website, which helped to cement Beanie Babies as a mid-90s phenomenon. 

In the film, Maya is paid an hourly wage of just $12 for all her innovative work, while Warner is earning hundreds of millions of dollars.

Book author Bissonnette says in The LA Times, that the portrayals of the three women in the film are realistic of their real-life counterparts. 

“Anyone who wants to know what the actual, exact distinctions were, you would probably just have to read the book,” he says. “But, yeah, the broad strokes of it are there. Those were the relationships.”

“We saw in them a similar pattern of falling for something, throwing themselves into it, believing it, and then this disillusionment with what happens,” Gore adds.

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What happened to Ty Warner?

Zach Galifianakis plays founder Ty Warner, the very rich man with a troubled childhood at the centre of the Beanie Baby empire. The movie tracks his humble beginnings from a quirky toy maker grieving his father's death to a billionaire Beanie Baby tycoon. 

He is portrayed as a charismatic but child-like man, obsessed with plastic surgery who does not credit or support the women who help him achieve his enormous success. 

His creative eye and very specific demands on his team are well documented.

“He had his staff up until 4am debating what colour of ribbon the rabbit would have," a source told The New York Post. 

“They would finally arrive at the colour and the employees would think they could finally go home. Then Ty would say, ‘Wait, what if you changed the way you tied the ribbon on the rabbit?’"

Since the bubble burst in 2000, Warner has lived mostly out of the public eye but on July 28, 2023 he made a short statement following the release of the film:

"I applaud the filmmakers for capturing the unprecedented energy and excitement – though not the facts – surrounding the original release of Beanie Babies 30 years ago.

"The movie is, by its own admission, partly fiction. But, like the filmmakers, I am in the business of dreams, and I admire their creative spirit. To the fans and collectors of Beanie Babies who have been there for the last three decades, thank you for all the love you have shown."

While Warner's Beanie Baby bubble burst in 2000, and he was convicted of tax fraud in 2014, the almost 80-year-old's net worth is more than $1.7 billion.

But a recent lawsuit filed by his ex-partner of 20 years, 85-year-old Kathryn Zimmie, reveals an alleged darker side to the toy tycoon.

According to the suit, Zimmie alleged that when she said she was leaving Warner, he placed his hands around her neck and told her, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“Warner squeezed Zimmie’s throat so hard that she realized that her life was in danger if she ever left him,” the lawsuit alleges.

Warner has denied the claims through his lawyer and still continues to make his beloved Beanies.

Laura Jackel is Mamamia's Senior Lifestyle Family Writer. For links to her articles and to see photos of her outfits and kids, follow her on Instagram and TikTok.

Feature Image: Getty/ Instagram/ Apple Tv+ / Canva.