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The Beanie Bubble explores the fiasco behind the Beanie Baby craze in the 90s. The film, directed by Kristing Gore and Damian Kulash, is an adaptation of Zac Bissonnette’s 2014 book The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute.

Everybody had to have a beanie: In 1993, the creator of Beanie Babies, Ty Warner (Zach Galifianakis), gave the toy market a limited edition plush toy worth USD 5. The toy transformed into a fad due to its scarcity and exclusivity, morphing it into a rare item. It eventually became available for resale on the internet on sites like eBay at skyrocketing prices.

The film depicts Ty Warner as a creepy and immature tycoon, while Robbie (Elizabeth Banks) and Sheila (Sarah Snook) are his two girlfriends who seemingly are unaware of the position Ty is putting them in even though they overlap throughout his success.

These characters are based on Warner’s real-life partners, along with the addition of Maya (Geraldine Viswanathan), a composite character representing the intelligent young people whom Warner exploited for their web-savviness.

“How insane is it that USD 5 bean bag animals were treated like gold by people for three years?” Kristin Gore tells Forbes.For the first time, this transparent market was accessible to anyone. You could buy something at a gift store for USD 5 and then say, “I could sell this for USD 25 or USD 30 or up to USD 5k or USD 10k. It got a little out of control, and that was really intoxicating,” she says.

A significant portion of the film focuses on infographics illustrating Beanie Baby sales figures, archived news footage of crazed shoppers, and Beanie-related milestones, such as the company’s early endeavors in e-commerce. The film also channeled marketing films like Air, Tetris, Flamin’ Hot, and Blackberry.

The film attempts to extract social significance from this seemingly insignificant moment in time but struggles to provide substantial insights. It concludes weakly by suggesting that there will always be another fad, mentioning crypto and NFTs.

WHERE TO WATCH- You can catch the series on Apple TV+.

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