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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tommaso who wrote (67195)	9/2/1999 3:56:00 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

More signs that cash will soon need to be withdrawn from the stock market... Beanie Babies To Be Retired by 2000 By MARTHA IRVINE Associated Press Writer CHICAGO (AP) -- The message -- ``all Beanies will be retired' -- came in a flash on Ty Inc.'s Web site and then disappeared, startling and confusing the Beanie Baby legions. Could it be that the Oak Brook, Ill., toymaker is really bringing an end to the Beanie Baby, one of the hottest toy crazes of the decade? Or is it just a marketing ploy? Either way, toy experts say company president Ty Warner is likely to revive a market that has steadily been losing interest in the cuddly animal toys. ``Ty Warner is a very smart man. He knows how to create a product. He knows how to create demand,' said Leonard Tannenbaum, president of Collectingnation.com, which has an auction site dedicated to reselling the toys that first started a craze when they hit the market five years ago. Tannenbaum said bid volume was up 75 percent Wednesday, a day after Ty officials posted the message on their Web site. The privately-owned company has distributed more than 100 characters, from dinosaurs and teddy bears to birds and zoo animals. The company's revenue was estimated at just $1.7 million in 1995 but had ballooned to $674 million by last year, according to NPD Group Inc., a market research firm. Discontinued, or retired models have been the hottest sellers, leading some toy industry experts to believe that Ty Inc. is simply trying to rekindle interest in the newer and perhaps oversupplied toys. ``Beanie Babies right now are really being bought ... by the pure collector, whereas they were the rage a year ago,' said Jim Silver, publisher of The Toy Book, a New York-based trade publication. Beanies initially became popular because their price of $4 to $5 was affordable for most children. Later, they became valuable collectibles for adults who could sell a single toy for as much as $1,000. The lengths people have gone to get Beanie Babies are legendary. Consider the former bank president and his wife who were charged in Wisconsin earlier this year with embezzling millions of dollars -- a good chunk of it used to buy Beanie Babies. In Salinas, Calif., a woman admitted using stolen credit card numbers to feed her habit of buying Beanies. And last year, people lined up to hand over their firearms in a Guns for Beanies promotion sponsored by the Kankakee, Ill., police department. Tannenbaum said prices were up Wednesday but were not skyrocketing, since many collectors were still holding back on putting their Beanies up for bid. Anne Nickels, a Ty spokeswoman, had little to say when reached Wednesday at the company's headquarters. She confirmed that the message posted on the Web site was legitimate but declined to say why the company made the decision -- or whether the company would be making any new Beanie Babies after the first of the year. ``The newsflash is what it was. We have nothing further to add to it,' she said, adding that Warner, who is attending a gift show in Tokyo, was not available for comment. While collectors puzzle over Ty's cryptic statement, there could be a sign from the company in the name of one of its soon-to-be released bears. The bear is called ``The End.'