Please chime in and voice your opinion on the following topic! Send your thoughts to MsJanie@comcast.net

Do you consider Beanies a FAD, CRAZE, NOVELTY, FETISH, MANIA, IDEE FIXE OR MONOMANIA?

As I was writing this evening's newsletter something occurred to me and I thought I would pose a question to my readers.

Many consider Beanies collectible and some refer to them as a fad. In my opinion a FAD is a passing impulse. The more I thought about the subject the more intrigued I became. I did some research and came up with a list of words with definitions that may help you determine what classification Beanies fall under.

I will be posting a separate page with your responses. Please feel free to elaborate and share your thoughts. I'm sure some of you will use your imagination and creativity to come up with some hair-raising descriptions, stories, examples, etc. LOL

Have fun,
Ms. Janie

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FAD - A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze.
A hobby; freak; whim

Craze - chic, cry, enthusiasm, fashion, fever, furor, in-thing, infatuation, kick, mania, mode, monomania, novelty, passion, preoccupation, rage, the latest, thing, trend, vogue, wrinkle

Mania - aberration, bag, bee, bug, compulsion, craving, craze, craziness, delirium, dementia, derangement, desire, disorder, enthusiasm, fad, fancy, fascination, fetish, fixed idea, frenzy, furor, grabber, hang-up, idée fixe, infatuation, insanity, jones, lunacy, madness, monomania, obsession, partiality, passion, preoccupation, rage, thing, tiger.

Novelty - change, crazy, creation, dernier cri, freshness, innovation, last word, modernity, mutation, newfangled contraption, newness, oddball, oddity, original, origination, permutation, recency, recentness, sport, strangeness, surprise, unfamiliarity, uniqueness, vicissitude, weird.

Fetish - amulet, bias, charm, craze, cult object, desire, fixation, golden calf, idol, idée fixe, image, juju, leaning, luck, mania, mascot, partiality, penchant, periapt, phylactery, predilection, prejudice, preoccupation, prepossession, proclivity, propensity, stimulant, superstition object, talisman, thing

Idee fixe - exaggerated reaction, fear, fixation, hang-up, idea, idée fixe, insanity, mania, obsession, phobia, preoccupation, repression

Monomania - Pathological obsession with one idea or subject
Intent concentration on or exaggerated enthusiasm for a single subject or idea.

Don't forget!!! Send your thoughts to MsJanie@comcast.net

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Responses
Hi,

I have never stopped loving beanies. I must admit I only started collecting when the popularity was at the highest, then I had to get the ones I missed. I had all but the royal blue peanut at one time. It's a long story why I don't now. This is the first collectable that I fell in love with and I will always love them. Some people think it's strange that I still want them, but those people were just out to make a million dollars and I feel sorry for them.

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Yo to Ms Janie,

When I started in beanies for the gr'sons, and after 6 months, bought me my first one, to the tune of having over 180 beanies, don't remember how many attics and much less on the buddies, I would have said then that I had a permanent membership in the Beanie Ford Clinic....they had to lock windows and doors to keep me from making my daily run to stores that sold. Since then, after conducting 101 classes on brown nosingretailers, most of my fave retailers quit carrying TY products, the gr'sons got past the stage of wanting anymore, and I graduated to just getting bears. Back then, my condition would have been termed
"Monomania". With allergies, I have to have mine either behind glass or acrylic, and I do display them, I know space is GONE, so therefore, it has to be a special bear, ie, Decade or Cracker Barrel in order forme to purchase...but I still keep up with the beanie news, so I fit into the catagory of "Novelty".

Thanks for the fun way to let other beanie friends know which category they might think they fit, and a special thanks, once again, for your elaborate time and effort in keeping your newsletter with such wonderful items. I'm not sure which sections I like the best, but read it all except the "ad specials on Beanies for Sale".

Penny, Nashville, TN

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Hi Ms Janie I definitely consider Beanie collecting as Mania. If there is one I want I'll mortgage the house to get it, ha! Actually I probably have a small house mortgage tied up in them, but still love getting them
the same as when i started in '97. I now have a former spare bedroom turned into a beanie storage room (the bed had to go) company now has to sleep in the sitting room, LOL!!!!! Have a great day, your newsletter is
such a bright spot in my day, regards, Rose in Tenn.

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Hi Ms. Janie:
I have been collecting Ty Beanie Babies since 12/97 and now have a total of 651 and also have 219 Ty Beanie Buddies. I love each and every one. To me, they are collectibles - not for monetary value but just the joy they have brought to me and a number of other people I know who love them. And they make wonderful gifts.

I have shelves in several rooms - I am talking to the ceiling - and a number of the large plastic containers - plus 3 curio cabinets (floor kind) - and have a number on top of my buffet (in acrylic cases). Read your wonderful newsletter and check Ty.com every day - sometimes several times a day.
So - whether that makes the beanies a fad, craze, fetish, etc., I consider them collectibles. Plan to leave them to my 2 great- granddaughters and a great niece - and hope they will have the joy from them I have had.

Have a great day. Enjoy your newsletters so much - and you are always right on top of the news. Also hope you are beginning to feel a lot better.
Dottie W.
TX

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Hi Ms. Janie - This is wonderful for me. My daughter was in drug rehab and I had become consumed with her disease. I needed an outlet and my neighbor was already collecting Beanies. One day she showed me what she had found (1998) and I was hooked. This is a Mania for me. I truly do "need" my Beanies and I have stood in line, made many dozens of phone calls, and driven way out of my way to get my "fix." I am happy to say that my daughter has been clean and sober for 5 years now (yea!) but I seem to still need my Beanies - each and every one. Do you think they will come up with Beanies Anonymous someday? What stories will we have to tell.
Love your newsletter - look so forward to it each time it comes out.
Have a wonderful, sunny day.
beaniegal

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Beanie Collecting started as a Fad. I thought the cats and dogs were cute, friends bought them for me as gifts. I bought them. Then it be came a fetish. The fetish quickly turned into obsession. Now I collect all of them cats, dogs, bears, bugs, what ever Ty releases I have to have it. The only thing my obsession has not reached to having to have the international exclusives. The new materials have taken a Fad and made it an obsession.
Have a great day!

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I think it is a craze myself, as beanie popularity seems to be diminishing rapidly.
Lori =^..^=

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Ms. Jane

First let me say that if I did not get your newsletter I would have stopped collecting a long time ago. Ty releases and retires to quick from Ty Store that I would be lost without you. I no longer collect the whole line but I do collect the bears. I never acted like a wild person collecting but I did adjust my budget to get what I wanted. I guess you could say it started as a fad but turned into a job. I already had a job and decided that I would collect just for the fun of it.
Marie

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I consider my collection to be an investment for my grandchildren or great grandchildren (maybe I'm a dreamer)
It is a hobby that both gives me pleasure when my wishes are fulfilled, anxiety waiting for my orders to arrive and disappointments when I miss out on getting some of them. It is fun and exciting.
It is a great idea to give them as gifts for special occasions.
It has even gotten expensive for we Canadians as we have to order them from U.S now and oh! the postage and handling and dollar exchange rate is unreal.
A $5.00 e-beanie and Beanie-of-the-month costs as much as $25.84 each.
Maybe you could say it is habit forming. Has anybody come up with a cure?

:-) June :-)

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Hi Ms Janie, When I first started with beanie babies, they were a good collectible for me! I hunted, called, traveled close and far, hunting for these cute little bears and other critters in the line. As they became numerous in our home I began to think they might be a fad! But then I would see other Ty beanies I just had to have! Today I have so many, too many to properly display, so I keep the special ones to me out and call them 'collectible' and the others are in boxes, part of a 'fad'. I guess they could be called a 'fad collectible'. Love your news each day, Ray inTN

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Hi Ms Janie, I have collected Beanies for about 8 years. Originally I collected all that were put out by Ty but finally (when we downsized with retirement) I switched to just the bears and the Holiday beanies. I have driven all over looking for these for myself and my grandchildren and have even bought on eBay and also traded on your site. Now I find that I have NO more room so I have made the decision to stop collecting!! They just come out to fast and furious and I won't collect if they have to be stored in a container. No enjoyment there. The last few weeks of passing on the new ones have been difficult but I will survive! Joanne

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I think Ty hurt the market in 99 and has been trying to breathe life back into it ever since. I give them credit for trying and still collect but not like I use too. His product is still priced well and can't be beat but they lost a lot of respect from their retailers and collectors and lets face it, a beanie is just a beanie, we lived without them for years and if choose too we could do it again.

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Good morning Ms Janie
After reading your newsletter this morning it certainly got me thinking about our hobby of collecting beanies. As you know Dave and I have been collecting for just over 3 years now and have over 820 beanies and buddies in our collection. This is a subject I have discussed at great lengths with many friends and family members and we have our thoughts on collecting.

Ever since I was a child I have always collected things, I believe we all have the characteristics of our star signs and being a typical Aquarian I enjoy collecting things perhaps out of the ordinary, but what is out of the ordinary and what gives you the urge to collect??????

I started collecting Rubbers (Erasers) as a child, all sorts of shapes, sizes, colours and some had a fragrance to them. When family members traveled the world they would bring me a couple home. At junior school one day we all got to take something in that we wanted to talk about and I took my rubber collection in and it was the best all my friends had ever seen.
To this day I still have them all in a box safe in our attic, I could never part with them. I know where each one was from and which family member it was off and so on, they are all special and have links to my childhood.

When I was 11 my passion for collecting turned to Princess Diana, a hobby I enjoyed with my Nanna, we would sit for hours collecting pictures from magazines and cut them out and place into scrap books. Princess Diana was a fairytale Princess I guess the sort of person every little girl at my age wanted to be. This collecting of pictures, memorabilia and so on of Diana still is strong this day. All my dreams came true when she and Charles visited Warrington and I wrote her a letter and 2 weeks later a letter came back to me from Buckingham Palace, that is my true pride and joy. The day Diana died I broke my heart, my Nanna had sadly already passed away and it brought all the memories back of days with my Nanna spent collecting pictures, going to but magazines and so on. A lot of people have said to me pictures and books I have will be worth a fortune but to me they are priceless and I could never ever part with them, it is a part of my life that collection.

I also collected pictures and magazines of the singer Madonna, I now have pictures and books that have become rare but again I will never part with them, her music and the age I was in the 80's all has significance to different stages of my life. I can hear a song and think "gosh that year I did this........." Music gives memories too and again all the collection is safe in the attic.

I guess my biggest collection is our beanie collection, I say "ours" as it truly is mine and Dave's collection. I love the cute ones and Dave loves the ugly ones LOL!!!!!! At the moment we are trying to get all the new shelving for the collectibles room sorted as with just moving house all the beanies had to be packed away. I can't tell you the frustration of not having the collection on display as it was. I hate the thought of not seeing my special bears or just picking a beanie up that I like, I miss Bushy the lion beanie, the one that started this all off for me. I miss Doby the Doberman, as she is for us a little memory of our family dog Jenna. I miss Amber the cat, again a memory reminder of Amber our beloved pet cat we had to have put to sleep in February. I miss seeing the Wales bear, a reminder of the day I met Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's Butler......truly amazing that day was.

The excitement when new beanies come out runs through you with excitement, you know you'll be taking a trip to your favourite retailer and spending a couple of hours with a coffee and donuts and a good beanie gossip, meeting other collectors as they come to pick up their bears. It is a hobby that has a very sociable side to it. We have limitations now as we used to collect all beanies and all buddies, buddies take up so much room so I sold all the animals except for the cats and lions and we stick to cats, big cats and bear buddies now and we try to get every beanie baby we can, after all that is what we have the most of and it is our beanie baby collection.

Obsessed - yeah I guess we are, we have seriously sat there and had the conversation "should we stop" and the truth is we can't, we don't know why............is that sad? is that madness? is that behaviour that is not normal? If people want to stop smoking there is help, they can buy a patch or go for counselling...........what do you do if you want to stop collecting???? Thing is though we don't want to stop. It is a full time hobby, reading, keeping files updated, staying in touch with beanie friends over the world - over the world!!!!!!!!! Wow isn't it amazing that you can collect a soft toy that puts you in contact with people in America,
Australia, Japan, what other hobby can do that?

A passion, indeed it is, I love my beanies, they are all significant, I can sit and look and think Dave and I have built this collection together, we have spent precious time travelling, having days out, spending quality time with my parents at beanie fairs, yes we gave the bug to them too.

When the Champion bears came out I had to have the full set, well it was a collection within a collection and it frustrates me missing 2 of the Issy bears out of the full set and I didn't want that to happen again. I look in wonderment at my Dad's full Issy collection and longingly look at the 2 I need - maybe one day.............

A fad it is not, a novelty it is not, weirdness yes maybe to some people I mean a lot of people I know think I am mad at 30 years old collecting cuddly toys...........and as for Dave well.............the guys he works with think it is my collection only!!!!!!!!!!!! Hee hee

For me collecting is something I have always done since a child, I think it is important to have a hobby, it relaxes you and takes your mind of other things. Things I collect are special to me and mean something, it's nice to watch something grow and spend time over. Whether it is rare, valuable, hard to find, expensive are words that don't mean anything to me as I would never part with any of my collections. They all mean too much and that is priceless!

My definition for collecting is simple - Creating memories as you go, a collection can grow and grow...obsession, frustration and excitement are emotions that fit like a glove, and precious time spent with people and doing something you love!

Well I guess that is my inner psychological collecting theories uncovered, I look forward to reading other peoples reasons for collecting too..............
Beanie hugs
Karen and of course Dave (UK) - Dave's definition is simple "mad!!!!!!!!"
hee hee