Webkinz and Beanie Babies

Recently, in class and team discussion, the topic of Webkinz came up. Webkinz are a toy that I knew nothing about before discussing them in class, but the discussion made me realize how similar they were to a toy that was popular during my younger days. Beanie Babies were all the rage during my elementary school years, and they shared many similar aspects to Webkinz (minus the web aspect). Both "retire" certain toys to encourage them to be sold on the secondary market, and also to encourage people to snatch up the toys while they're still around. Both are meant to be collected by people. And both appeal to both kids as toys and adults as collectibles.

This really makes me think about what a brilliant marketing strategies both companies employ. By making certain items more rare than other items, it makes consumers almost compete to get them, and creates a huge sense of pride in the customers that are able to land the rare or retired items. Both also follow many of the things discussed in class. I recall that the back when Beanie Babies were big, word-of-mouth advertising was a huge aspect of their marketing. It was so big that when a store would get a new shipment with rare Beanie Babies, people would hear this through the grapevine so quickly that all of the good ones would be snatched up by whenever you made it to the store.

Heck, even I was sucked into this a little bit. OK, maybe that's an understatement. I recently found a website that I created that highlighted many different Beanie Babies, and even had rumors about happenings in the Beanie Baby world. I will warn you, this was created in my Elementary School days and it's quite a horrific sight. Enter at your own risk. Some may call this sad. Yes, it's definitely sad. But it also shows some very impressive marketing on the part of the TY company, and a definite model for how to successfully market a product that is really nothing more than a stuffed animal.