In the late 1990's, I was a stay-at-home mom with three little kids. I can't remember the first time my daughter came home from school talking about Beanie Babies, but soon enough we were drawn into the craze. I can specifically recall the day that I was drawn in myself - our hot water heater broke, and after the mess of cleaning up the flooded basement I took a lot of comfort from taking a trip to McDonald's and picking up a small plush turtle for myself during the first Teenie Beanies promotion.
This was also around the time that our family got our first computer with Internet access. Beanie Babies was arguably the first Internet-driven toy craze, and I found myself involved up to my eyeballs. Since I was stuck at home most of the day, the emerging Beanie Babies Internet community gave me the opportunity to have discussions during the day that didn't involve diapers or apple juice; I was hooked.
But being hooked had its benefits. Through my involvement in the community, I eventually became a staff writer for Mary Beth's Beanie World Magazine (later changed to Mary Beth's Bean Bag World, for legal reasons). Being a staff writer involved a certain amount of travel, mostly to conventions in the Chicago area (where the magazine was based). During one of these conventions, Mary Beth had all of the writers autograph these Beanie World globes, and she gave one of the ornaments to each of us. The ornament still hangs in my bedroom as a sweet souvenir of a truly special time in my life.
