Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast #54 - Bizarre Toys & Collectibles of the 1980s & 1990s

Episode #54 - Bizarre Toys & Collectibles of the 1980s and 1990s

On the last episode of the Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast, we talked about some of the famous cartoon and animatronic bears of the 1980s and 1990s. We went over Teddy Roxpin, the Care Bears and the Gummi Bears. I really enjoyed putting that show together so in that same vein, I thought today’s show could be sort of a branch off of that topic.  With that being said, on today’s show we will be taking a look at some of the more bizarre toys and collectibles that experienced some serious surges in popularity followed by a steadfast decline.  These are all items that both my sister and I enjoyed and collected, ones that in hindsight were all just, well, strange.  We will be discussing furbies, beanie babies and trolls. All of these creations have some fascinating backstories, so let’s get to it!

Oh and before we get into the show, if you are a listener in Maine and are in need of any photo services, please check out today’s sponsor, Amy Lewis Photography aka a natural-light portrait photography business owned by yours truly.  That’s right, besides being a podcaster, I am also a photographer and a Parent.  Basically my life can be summarized by 3- Ps.  Visit www.amylewisphotos.com for more information.  A vast majority of my listeners come from my 2nd home state, Maine. I take photos of families, seniors, couples, kids and more!  With that said, on with the show.  

So, grab your ty heart tag protector, your troll doll hair brush and some nail polish for your furbie’s toenails, here we go!

Hello and thank you so very much for tuning in to the Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast, a show inspired by, and in memory of, my big sister Rebecca and her love for all things pop-culture, especially the people, places and things of the 80s, 90s and early 00s.  My name is Amy Lewis and I am your captain aboard this pop-culture time machine. You are tuning in to episode #54- bizarre toys and collectibles of the 1980s and 1990s.  We begin our journey with everyone’s favorite audio-animatronic owl/bird/robot, the furby.

The Furby was first created in 1998 by Tiger Electronics, which was owned by Hasbro. It took over a year and a half to create due to the toys ability to move its eyes, open and close its beak and talk.  Furbies looked eerily similar to Gremlins, which were in a movie from the 1980s.  Like Gremlins, furbies were small, fur covered creatures with pointy ears, a tuft of hair at the top of their heads, with small feet sticking out of their rounded bodies.  When a furby was first purchased, it spoke “furbish” which was essentially gibberish.  As the owner of the furby spent more time with the toy, it would gradually start speaking more and more English.  We were all sort of convinced that Furbies got smarter and smarter as time carried on, but they were actually programmed to progress the more it was turned on.  COMMERCIAL CLIP HERE. 

Furbies made their first appearance at the American International Toy Fair in 1998.  By Christmas that year, they became the most in-demand holiday toy, selling millions during their first year of release. The supply could not keep up with demand so the prices for furbies started to go up.  Originally they were sold for about $35 dollars and as demand increased, the price went to over $100. 1.8 million units were sold in 1998 and 14 million sold in 1999.  In total over 40 million furbies were sold during their peak in popularity.

Furbies became so popular and so quickly that they were sold all over the world - their ability to speak was translated into over 2 dozen languages. There were a multitude of fur color and eye color combinations of the creatures, in fact there were over 1000 different versions of Furby.  To appeal to boys, furbies were also given the ability to burp and fart.  They missed out on an incredible marketing opportunity though…even with the ability to burp and fart, the toy’s name stayed the same.  What Tiger Electronics should have done though is referred to them as flatulence furbies.  Idiots.  

Also because of their incredible popularity, a made for TV movie was released.  It was called “Furby Island” and it tells the story of a girl, who, with the help of her family, rescues a group of furbies from a terrible villain. You know what else sounds terrible?  That made for tv movie.

My sister fell right into the furby craze and had one of her own.  Seeing as how they first came out in 1998, she was either a senior in high school or had graduated already when she got one so she certainly didn’t fall into the typical demographic for consumers, but that’s one of the things I loved about her.  She thought furbies were cool so she got one.  And she could do an incredible impression of them, including their ability to say “Yum,” which she repeated over and over again.  She also painted her furbie’s toenails, I want to say the polish color was either silver or black.

By 2002, the Furby craze was over and they were discontinued. There have been several incarnations following the initial release, one in 2005, one in 2012 and one in 2016 which could be controlled by an app.  No matter how many new versions come out, nothing will ever quite match the magic of the initial release.  

While we are on the topic of sharps rises and falls, I’d be remiss if we didn’t discuss Beanie Babies.  Beanie Babies were created by Ty Warner who started his toy company, Ty, in the early to mid 1980s.  He is considered sort of a genius of sorts when it comes to plush, or “stuffed animals” as me and my sister grew up saying.  His business started out of his home in Oak Brook, IL which is a town or two over from where I grew up.  At one time, Oakbrook was home to Hamburger University, a branch campus of the school owned by McDonald’s.  I used to ride my bike there all of the time, jealous?  More on McDonald’s in a moment.   

Warner’s childhood was actually very traumatic as I came to find out.  HIs mother was allegedly schizophrenic and was often unstable and his father was abusive to his sister.  Warner also supposedly struggled with social anxiety and even during the height of his fame and wealth, he didn’t go out in public very much. He attended college for 1 year in Michigan and the only person he really spoke with frequently was his sister.  

Beanie Babies were first introduced in 1993.  At first, they were a collection of various little bears, in several colors, that were soft to the touch and filled with bean-like plastic pellets which made it easy to display the bears and position them sitting up.  Warner made some critical decisions which drove up demand early on.  First, he refused to sell the Beanie Babies in chain stores like Toys R Us and Walmart.  He also retired certain Beanie Babies with no notice, also driving up demand.  He would often hint at retirements on the Ty website.  This led to a market of rare Beanie Babies which drove up demand. Ty was one of the first companies to use a website to connect consumers with their products, it was incredibly successful even though only about 15% of the US population was using the internet in the mid 1990s.   

Soon, Beanie Babies were the hottest item on store shelves.  Many people believed they should invest money into purchasing Beanie Babies because they may be able to pay for their kid’s education with the earnings.  Most ended up with a pile of Beanie Babies that would soon be worth nothing, but some early traders of Beanie Babies could earn money, one used the funds she earned by re-selling Beanie Babies to pay for an adoption and another used funds earned to pay for their kid’s braces.  As a matter of fact, in the early days of Ebay, approximately 10% of all sales on their site were Beanie Baby sales. 

Warner was approached for partnership deals all of the time, but most of the time he turned them down.  However, when McDonald’s brought up joining forces, Warner decided to go for it.  He wanted to help expose BB to individuals with lower incomes and he thought if they were utilized for happy meal toys, he could accomplish his goal. However, although he probably did expose a whole new sector of the population to the world of BB, this further fueled the BB craze which was created by the people who could afford excessive amounts of the furry creatures.  COMMERCIAL CLIP.  Phones would ring off the hook at McDonald’s locations all over the country with collectors looking to get their hands on the latest BB.  

In 1998, Beanie Babies earned about 1.4 billion dollars from sales.  During the holidays that year, all of the Ty employees associated with BB got Christmas bonuses equivalent to their annual salaries and were also given a unique BB that would later be sold by several employees on Ebay, some for up to 5,000 dollars.  At the height of their popularity, Warner’s net worth was over 2 billion dollars.

My sister and I were given several BB during the height of their popularity. We even went so far as to buy protective cases for the Ty heart tags, just in case they ended up being worth a lot of money.  Even my Grandmother, who we call Obachan as she is from Japan, was a pretty avid collector of Beanie Babies.  

She takes meticulously good care of all of her belongings and as such, her Beanie Babies were all on display in fiberglass surround cases with the tags also protected.  She liked to show them to me and my sister:

“You see this ah purple ah one with the white rose on it?  That one is for Princess Di, she die.”

“You see this ah white ah one, with the flag?  That is for Japan.” Some ah day, deez might be worth a lot of money.

They kinda cute, no?  They are kah-wah-ee, haha.” 

Warner had a reputation for having a short fuse and being a bit greedy.  For example, after some of his staff set up a booth at a trade show, he destroyed the booth feeling like it didn’t look like what he envisioned or didn’t look just right.  The staff members had spent all night putting it together.  He sort of went on a rampage and was apparently swearing at the staff about the booth.  Maybe if some of the employees threw a BB at his head he would have stopped.  Have you ever taken a Ty tag to the eye?  It’s not pretty.  Or maybe they could have pulled a Rosie Perez and thrown a chicken wing at him like she did to Don Cornelius.   Another example of his bizarre behavior came when his father passed away.  He waited to tell his sister about their Dad’s passing until after he had a chance to clear out (and perhaps either save for himself or sell) his father’s rare antique collection.  

Besides Bears, eventually TY released other animals in their BB line.  At one point there were frogs, dolphins, and birds among many others.  

Warner knew that at some point, the BB bubble was going to burst and by 1999, popularity was starting to die down.  The company was about to halt production of new Beanie Babies, they even went so far as to create a BB called “The End.”  The company asked the public if they should continue to produce BB and the response was overwhelmingly YES.  So, although there is no longer a BB craze, they continue to be created to this day.  

Warner would go on to get into some trouble with the law for tax evasion.  He also seems to have spent a lot of money on plastic surgery.  Perhaps creating BB and attempting to look younger are part of how Warner dealt with his traumatic childhood.  Despite all of the ups and downs of his success, Warner has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity including organizations that are helping people in Ukraine and the company created a special BB named Max and 100% of the proceeds are going to an organization called Next for Autism.  According to their website: 

 “NEXT for AUTISM transforms the national landscape of services for people with autism by strategically designing, launching, and supporting innovative programs. We believe that individuals with autism deserve to live fulfilling, productive lives, supported by excellent services and connected to their communities.”  I am definitely partial to their mission because my oldest son is living with Autism.  I can certainly appreciate someone using their earnings to help others, especially a disability that is so often misunderstood. 

If you are interested in learning more about BB, check out the book- “The Great Beanie Baby Bubble:  Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute” by Zac Bissonette. HBO also recently released a documentary called Beanie Mania on HBO Max.  God, I wish I had a subscription to that!  Ugh! You should also check out a hilarious sketch that aired on SNL somewhat recently.  In the skit, a young couple quit their jobs because they had invested in Beanie Babies, thinking it was their life savings and they could live off of it.  Their friends inform them that BB are essentially worth nothing now and the couple freaks out and smashes the bookcase they have full of BBs.  

And on that note, let’s move on to the infamous Trolls.  You know, the tan, plastic figures with the crazy hair?  They actually date back to the 1950s and a Danish Fisherman named Thomas Dam who was also a woodcutter.  Dam wasn’t a huge fan of fishing, even though his father was one.  He didn’t find it all that interesting, he wasn’t quite strong enough for the rigors of fishing and he was more interested in art.  He would often get distracted when he was in school with drawing.  Prior to these roles, he was a baker but he lost his job when the local flour factory closed during WWII.  He actually shoveled snow to earn extra money for his family.  At night he would carve wood as he sat by his fireplace, trying to think what he could do to help support his family financially.  He created a troll-like doll (not exactly what they look like now) for his daughter when he couldn’t afford to buy her a traditional Christmas gift.  He called the troll he gave her a “good luck troll.”  

He often cut other creatures and figurines.  His wife encouraged him to sell them so he went to the nearest city and sold them door to door.  Thomas Dam sold all of the figurines during this initial experiment.  They would continue to sell like hotcakes and he became well-known in nearby communities.  Which makes me wonder, did his wife say - Damn, Thomas, good job!

Eventually Dam was commissioned for larger projects.  For example, a Swedish department store asked him to make a sculpture of Santa Claus.  This led to an additional window display which included Xmas elves which were essentially the precursor to the infamous and official troll doll.  Customers loved the dolls and requests to purchase them came flooding in.  

The original Troll dolls were time consuming to make so Dam shifted the design from hand-carved wood to a rubber material.  

The design pretty much stayed the same - the Trolls were sort of so ugly they were cute.  They had big ears, a big nose and bright eyes.  Part of the reason why Dam created Trolls is because Trolls are actually a huge part of Danish mythology.  A small factory was built in 1961 and utilized PVC plastic which is still used today. Further, sheepskin was used for the hair.  Dam created a company called “Dam Things” to market the Trolls.  I wonder if parents in the 1960s thought to themselves, I’m tired of seeing these damn things.  Anyways.

As popularity increased, knock-offs were created left and right during the troll heyday in the 1960s.  There were Fauni Trolls and Lucky Schnoooks.  Even Lady Bird Johnson was a huge fan of trolls.  Thankfully Dam things at one point settled copyright infringements so no one could create Troll-like dolls or sell Troll merchandise without permission.  I bet Thomas was tired of people impersonating his damn things.  

Eventually the fad faded but once the kids who got trolls as gifts in the 60s became parents in the 80s and 90s, trolls made a comeback.  And me and my sister fit right into that demographic.  We fell in love with trolls and I remember our grandmother (not our Japanese grandmother this time, but our Polish one) taking us to gift shops near our house to hunt for the newest trolls.  I believe we had some plain sort of basic trolls, and also a troll with goggles, a snorkel and flippers, a skateboarding troll and a troll with a rain jacket and rain hat on.  I imagine we had about a dozen or so trolls and for the life of me, I have no idea where they are.  Whenever I find and open that box though, I’m sure I’ll be startled when a bunch of wide eyed, wild-haired rubber dolls are all staring at me.  Trolls reached their 2nd peak in the early 1990s and we were there on the summit, you feel me? See what I did there?

Despite the peak in popularity for Trolls being long over, there continues to be interest in the colorful creatures.  For example, there is a woman named Sherry Groom who has over 8,000 dolls - her collection is called the “Troll Hole” where visitors can see the figures as well as 10s of thousands of troll memorabilia.  The museum is located in Ohio and is open Tuesday through Sunday.  General admission is 12 dollars!  There is a coffee shop on site and an adult show after hours.  According to their website: If you thought Trolls only looked funny, you're in for a treat.It turns out that they all think they're comedians! Rated PG-13.” There has also been a resurgence in awareness of Troll intellectual property with the release of the Trolls movie in 2016.  The movie stars Anna Kendrick and my imaginary husband Justin Timberlake in the lead voice over roles. Timberlake was nominated for an Oscar for his song- Can’t Stop the Feeling, which I swear EVERYONE made a dancing video too.  Also, Trolls - World Tour was released in 2020.

Thomas Dam passed away in 1989, sadly he didn’t get to see the resurgence of popularity of the troll dolls or some other legal and financial troubles his company would get into.  However, decades later, the Trolls movie premiered in his home village of Pandrup which was a first for a major Hollywood movie. 

 Dam’s descendants reaped many of the benefits of the film’s success.  Hot Damn, we rich!  They all cheered when they received royalties from the success of Trolls.

I hope you have enjoyed this look back on some of the more bizarre toys and collectibles of the 1980s and 1990s. What seems so bizarre now to me as an adult was so fun and exciting to me and my sister as kids.  Learning more about the backstory with these relics of my childhood proved to be quite fascinating and I feel like what we discussed was just the tip of the iceberg.

I hope you will join me for my next show where we will be discussing one of the most fascinating and talented alternative rock bands of the past 30 years, Radiohead.  Until then, BK, BS and HOTYM.