I Ranked My Beanie Babies

I swear I found them at my parents' house

If you’re anything like me, you had your mom drive you to the corner of 75th and Lemont (Four Corners) to purchase glorified bean bags for $5 apiece. Beanie Babies: I had some, I wanted more, and so did everybody else I knew.

In his entertaining and well-researched book, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble (2015), Zac Bissonnette dissects the Beanie fad, tracing its origins all the way to the suburbs of Chicago, where I lived. If you want a thoughtful interpretation of “what it all meant,” read that. But if what you want is to see a bunch of Beanie Babies get ranked by a guy who usually talks about what Simon & Garfunkel liked to wear in 1967, stick around.

DISQUALIFIED

Inch the Inchworm

My first Beanie! Ah, the good old days – back when you gleefully snipped swing tags and thought nothing of it. Dumb fucking move, Pat. Despite his rare felt antennae, Inch is worthless now.

THE BAD

Buzzy the Buzzard

Jesus Christ. God fucking damnit. What the hell?! I don’t know what a real buzzard looks like–or even what purpose a buzzard serves on this godforsaken planet–but I do know that this Beanie disgraces every real buzzard both living and deceased. My god.

Lizzy the Lizard

Excuse me while I barf up the fruit snacks I just ate. Lizzy is trash, literal trash. As in roadkill. She looks like she got run over on the highway–and not by some Japanese hybrid, either. I’m talking a Mack truck. Made in the USA, baby. Lizzy got run over with literally zero fanfare in some dusty corner of Utah. Just flattened into a lizard pancake and left there for the buzzards to pick at.

Pinchers the Lobster

I used to eat lobster, now I don’t. I used to collect Beanies, now I don’t. Pinchers has no place in my life anymore. I’ve moved on from him. He’s a distant memory–and not a good one, either. I regret inviting Pinchers into my home. I regret our courtship. I regret thinking I could save him. I regret.

Erin the Bear

I just think green is sort of a wack color. Next.

MIDDLE-OF-THE-PACK

Velvet the Panther

Velvet has a fuzzy nose. You can rub it up and down your cheek in a pleasing way. I experimented and discovered a vulnerable spot just below my ribs. “Love handles,” I believe people call them. I passed Velvet’s nose over my handles of love and felt sort of ticklish. I did it again, and I laughed for what seemed like the first time in months. My empty, sweltering apartment felt like it was filled with people, friends of mine, guests. But then I remembered I was alone and couldn’t go outside.

Nanook the Husky

Imagine for a second that you own a big, beautiful husky with luscious fur and a regal demeanor. You take him out for a walk around your neighborhood, and a handful of people compliment him on his beauty. You’re filled with pride. The next day, the same thing happens! The novelty is starting to wear off, but not by much, and you make chit-chat with everybody who stops to admire your dog. A weeks goes by, a month. It’s February. You just want to walk your dog in peace, but these motherfuckers keep stopping you on the street to say how much they love your dog. You finally crack. “If you think he’s so gorgeous, why don’t you fuck him?” you tell a neighbor with whom you’ve had a handful of pleasant conversations. He laughs nervously and retreats. Good, you think, but for the rest of the day, you grow more and more embarrassed, ashamed, and even angry with yourself. You’ll either have to apologize to the guy, pretend like nothing happened, or avoid him. So you pretend nothing’s happened, except every time you see him, you behave in a crasser way than you normally would, hoping to make it seem like that first bad interaction was a true representation of your personality. For example, you call him a “cocksucker” when he reveals himself to be a Packers fan. Just appalling behavior. You stop walking your beautiful dog as regularly as you should, and the dog’s health declines. You could’ve adopted a mutt like everybody else, but no, you wanted a husky. You found a breeder; you paid top dollar. You brought a cold weather dog to a climate with crushingly hot summers. And why? Why? Why? For the attention! You did it for the attention! Cute Beanie Baby, though.

THE BEST

Bongo the Monkey

Bongo is the extremely cute and huggable plush friend that we all need in our lives right now. Take Bongo in your quarantine-weakened arms and squeeze him with all your might. Release that pent up tension. Allow the corners of your disgusting chapped lips to lift. Now purchase a tube of Burt’s Bees and apply until your lips become supple again. Then kiss Bongo on the lips in your front window so the neighbors can see.

Spinner the Spider

Somebody has to go to bat for Spinner, and that somebody is me. Look at Spinner. Look at him, you clown! Do not turn away! Do not shun the arachnid world! Do not ingest Spinner in the middle of the night as you would an ordinary spider!

Legs the Frog

Legs is the best Beanie Baby. Yes, he’s green. An abhorrent color, green. The color of vomit, cacti, broccoli, and other unmentionables. Yes, he’s flat like Lizzy the Lizard. Another victim of the industrial age, of driving, of automobiles. Automobile exhaust rises into the atmosphere and settles there, becomes permanent. A factory in China manufactures Beanie Babies for the Ty corporation. Smokestacks belch all day long so that children may enjoy Legs in America. America, where for three or four years in the 1990s adults spent untold sums on Beanie Babies and made a billionaire of Ty’s eccentric CEO, Ty Warner. Ty Warner: g—gle him. Sergey Brin: g—gle him. G—gle Amancio Ortega, g—gle Bernard Arnault. G—gle Mukesh Ambani and Steve Ballmer. The western United States are burning. Forests are on fire. People have lost houses, lives. When will it end? Legs the Frog is green, and those trees were green, too. They were green, just like Legs. Follow the smoke.