Premise: A documentary about the rise and fall of Beanie Babies.
There isn’t a lot to say about this documentary. It’s pretty straight-forward. It seems that someone said, “Remember Beanie Babies? What was that?” then sought to find the answer. It can be hard to track a craze. It’s often the result of so many small occurrences snowballing at the same time. Tracking the Beanie Baby crazy reminded me a lot of when someone tries to find where a meme started. Generally, at some point, you just have to settle on an agreed source. This doc decides that the Beanie Baby craze started because of a group of moms in suburban Illinois, which, ok. Sure. I guess there’s some truth in that. Then again, one of those moms was a publicist for People magazine, so maybe they were just the highest profile or loudest early adopters. This aspect of the doc didn’t entirely sit well with me.
Once it gets past the origins, this does a pretty good job of documenting the phases of this craze. I was 10 at the peak of Beanie Babies. I was never a collector, but I remember the insanity. The Princess Diana bear and the Happy Meal Mini-Beanies were the benchmarks for me. I remember how nuts both were. I like how well the movie researches the mysterious Ty company and the savvy way the Beanies were marketed.
Obviously, the craziest thing is the secondary market that evolved. I think the movie could’ve found some more room to examine how it compared to the modern movements like crypto currency, NFTs, and “meme stocks”. Granted, Beanie Mania probably already pushed the limits of how much economics people want in their entertainment.
At only 80 minutes, this was an easy watch. For those too young to have experienced the craze, this somewhat captures that moment. For those who do remember it, it is a nice blast of nostalgia.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
No comments:
Post a Comment