TY Warner, you owe me $1800

Coming home for Thanksgiving brought me back to my 90's childhood more than I ever imagined it would. This afternoon, as I was leafing through my family albums for some good ol' fashioned nostalgia, I stumbled across an album featuring photos that I had totally forgotten about. It seems, that in my childhood, dedicating an entire 24 roll of film to pictures of my sisters and I with our beanie babies was a sensible thing to do. The pictures featured us sitting in, around, among, and maybe even on, our beanie babies - and quite frankly, angered me to look at.

Here, I'll share one with you.... On the surface, this picture is a little but cute right? (sorry for the bad quality)

But I encourage you to look deeper, and you will see how this picture is alot nauseating. Keep in mind readers that this photo was taken sometime closer to the beginning of my BB collecting days. I know this because our beanie babies still fit on a shelf. Not long after this "photoshoot" was completed, our collection grew too large for that small shelf, and moved on to bigger and better storage : one of those net thingy-mah-jings that hanged from the ceiling of my bedroom.

Now this is the very reason why this picture makes me go BLAH. This photo is pictorial evidence of the utter obsession I - and many other kids of the 90's - had, with coloured bags of , well....beans..with googly eyes, tails, and red TY tags sewn on them. This picture alone features roughly 27 of these bagged beanie animals that I (err...my parents) actually spent money on. And this is nowhere near how many BBs I had at the end of my collecting days. In fact, by the time I had purchased my last BB, I boasted a collection of about 150 plush toys. If I remember correctly, beanie babies costed between $10-$15 in the 90's, but for the sake of this next experiment, let's say the average cost of a BB was...$12.

Though math has never been my strong point, I do know that $12 X 150 = ALOT. ($ 1800). GAH! One-thousand,-eight-hundred-smackers gone from my life forever. Here are the reasons why I'm bitter:

$1800 = a good fraction of a semester's tuition
$1800 = approxiametely half a year worth of grocery shopping
$1800 = around 30 tanks of gas
$1800 = about 765 bus fares
and the shocker $1800=...........900 2 dollar drinks.

Oh - and that 2 minutes just wasted of my life calculating that, I'm pissed about that too.

When I collected beanie babies, I totally thought they were going to be worth something some day. I bought tag protectors (because they were more 'valuable' with their red tags in tact) I kept them on display and out of harm's way, I dilligently examined each tag for the silver stamp to indicate their autheniticity before purchase, and I even spent hours arranging them according to natural habit (water animals, rainforest animals, farm animals) Hahah, maybe that last one was just because I'm a geek. Whatever the case, I have been sadly misinformed...as my BB's are now estimated to be worth about $1.25 a piece. (Just check your e-bay account)

Don't get me wrong readers, I loved the 90's. But I definetely do not love Ty Warner for inventing beanie babies during the 90's. (Either that, or I'm mad I didn't come up with the idea first.) Maybe then I'd be sitting where he is...#49 on the "400 Richest Americans List". And, I hope, in all his richness, if he ever stumbles across this rant - that he is so moved he decides to give me back my $1800. C'mon Ty, that's freaggin pocket change for you!