Collectible Cloney Babies

We all have seen them, in real life and in fiction. These collectible toys that somehow go viral on the news. People yell if some are removed from the box. In some cases, there are fistfights or even riots. Soon we see the nightly news and wonder how someone could get sucked into such a fad.

Then we hold one. And suddenly we want it.

Collectible Cloney Babies are a type of toy that people want. It doesn't matter if they can be played with or not. We need the toy, to collect them all. Some consumers want bragging rights. Others are blinded by the brand status.

Criteria for this type of toy collection are as follows:
 * 1) There is more than one with variety, as part of a collection. (Mind there are some exceptions if the toy is extremely rare and one-of-a-kind, like with the Tickle-Me-Wiggly.)
 * 2) They have a Periphery Demographic with both kids and adults. Kids want to play with them, while adults want to collect them.
 * 3) They go viral, and some become hard to find. In a few cases, people may get into fights over them. The demand seems to supercede the supply.

One addendum is that sometimes toy companies or individuals try to leverage this trope, but fail. It can be hard to guess what people want out of a product.

Sometimes toy companies will deliberately invoke this, to make more money. Psychologists have studied this phenomenon, about how marketing takes advantage of the human need to collect.

Advertising

 * Burger King had its line of collectible toys that came out with different merchandise options, depending on the film and media released at the time.
 * McDonald's went above and beyond, with Monopoly sweepstakes that people could use to win real money, in addition to toy lines. The documentary McMillions revealed that the sweepstakes became the center of a scam where associates Simon Marketing embezzled $24 million and laundered the winning pieces to boot.

Anime and Manga

 * The Way of the Househusband reveals that Tatsu's wife Miku is a fan of a magical girl anime called Policure. Some manga and anime chapters feature him tracking down merchandise for her, from Blu-Ray to action figures. When a kid he's babysitting breaks Miku's favorite action figure by accident, Tatsu tells him they have to "bury the body" before Miku comes home. (She figures it out anyway.)
 * Mikoto Misaka of A Certain Scientific Railgun goes out of her way to collect "Gekota" toys and goods, to the point where she spends an entire afternoon trying to get a particular badge from a vending machine, and she's very upset when she loses one toy to a preschool girl who actually plays with it. This is just the Gekota toys; she doesn't care about other stuffed animals.
 * Yu-Gi-Oh Season 0 and the manga featured this with Capsule Monsters, Capmon for short. They would come from a vending machine, with the luck of the draw determining what monster level and type you get. Part of the fun is the randomness, and that you use these monsters to battle:
 * In the manga, Mokuba used a Capmon battle as a pretense to kidnap Yugi and get revenge for his big brother Seto. He deliberately goads Yami Yugi to come out and fight, believing that since he has stronger monsters, he'll win. Yami Yugi proves him wrong, but lets him off with temporary, mild hallucinations.
 * In the anime, someone gifts Miho a Gacha box loaded with Capsule Monsters. The capsules are filled with jewels, and Miho reveals a university student, an avid Capmon collector named Warashibe-kun, was hitting on her. Yugi happens to know him, and catches up with Warashibe-kun after school to ask him about it. Miho isn't impressed with the CapMon she sees, saying they aren't that cute for collecting, and gets creeped out when Warashibe stages a meeting with her, calling her his "Capmon Queen". Yugi beats him in a Capmon duel when he poisons Anzu, Honda and Jounouchi and blackmails Miho.
 * Duel Monsters in season 1 and subsequent series also engages in this. Some packs do have rare cards, like Exodia or the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Some episodes have Jounouchi and Honda asking Yugi's grandfather if new sets have come in or not; he chuckles and says not yet, most of the time. Seto Kaiba starts his rivalry with Yugi by trying to steal his grandfather's Blue Eyes White Dragon after the man refuses to sell it to him, explaining that the card has sentimental value. (It's because the card belonged to his best friend, who gave it to him after they nearly died while exploring a pyramid.) Kaiba doesn't learn; in Battle City, he says that losers in duels need to forfeit their rarest card, hoping this will help him acquire all the God cards that Isis Ishtar told him about when visiting Japan.

Film

 * Jingle All the Way is a black comedy take on this trope, where two dads compete to get the last action figure of their sons' favorite superhero. It gets to the point where they have a public fistfight in the climax dressed as said hero and villain respectively.
 * Spy Kids references this in a disturbing fashion; Floop turns captured OSS agents into the Fooglies for his show, and then merchandises them as toys. Juni even owns a few, which he takes with him on the mission. To intimidate Gregorio, Floop uses his technology to turn Felix into a Fooglie, and says he can't wait to put his toys on the Christmas market.

Literature

 * The Berenstain Bears parodied this with Beary Bubbies in "The Mad, Mad, Mad Toy Craze". Both Brother and Sister Bear become obsessed with collecting Beary Bubbies, to the point that they do extra chores around the house to earn extra allowance money, and bumming rides from their parents to stores that have them. They aren't the only ones; a trip to a big mall reveals that. Thing is that the authors emphasize that you can't even play with a Beary Bubbie as you would with a regular plushie, meaning all you can do is look at them or brag about how many you have. The ending page is the Bears looking at their collection and asking Was It Really Worth It?
 * Harry Potter references this with Chocolate Frog cards in the first book. Ron explains that some cards are rarer than others, and collecting them can give you bragging rights. He's been searching for Agrippa.

Newspaper Comics

 * Peanuts: Charlie Brown in the 1950s got into a variant, a Davy Crockett phase thanks to the Disney miniseries of the same name. He got a hat, records, and the lot. In the end, he gave it up, asking when the fad would end.
 * FoxTrot
 * Jason once tried to make Slugman merchandise that he hoped people would buy, namely Slugman suction ornaments. They didn't take off, for obvious reasons.
 * Peter accidentally got Andy addicted to Bitty Babies after bringing a fast food version home. She soon bought so many that Roger had to stop her before she sold the car to fund them. (Quincy ended up convincing her to sell them to a dealer, by eating some of the rarer ones.)
 * As a Brick Joke, when Peter went to the same fast food chain via drive-through, the exasperated retail worker told him they were out of Bitty Babies and stop being weird. Peter meekly said he just wanted a burger and fries.
 * Eileen blackmailed Jason into being her field trip partner in exchange for a rare Pokémon card that he was seeking. To make sure he didn't skive off, she handcuffed herself to him during a planetarium show.
 * Pearls Before Swine
 * Rat once created a line of Beefy Babies, toys made out of beef. Due to Early Installment Weirdness, Pig also got the idea to make tuna babies. Federal regulators stepped in because people complained that the beef got bad and rotten after being outside for a few days, and forcing Rat to stop production. Rat isn't amused, saying it's obvious that beef isn't going to last forever.
 * Parodied when Stephen did an arc about Toby the agoraphobic tortoise and told Rat he wasn't appearing again. Rat accused him of wanting more marketable plushies like for Pig. Cut to Stephen buried in Pig plushies.

Theatre

 * Hatchetfield
 * Black Friday has the Tickle-Me-Wiggly, a new toy that is in so much demand that the one Lex plans to auction online could fetch up to 7000. Any adult who sees a Tickle-Me-Wiggly wants one, no matter the cost, and some resort to murder to get it on Black Friday, the day of the year when every adult. (Wiggly is actually an Eldritch Abomination using this hatred to emerge on Earth in a new form and Take Over the World.)
 * The Nightmare Time episode "Watcher World" has Blinky doing the same thing in the titular theme park, with Blinky plushies. Bill bankrupts himself trying to win a Blinky doll for Alice from a "Test Your Strength" game.

Video Games

 * In Undertale and its companion game Deltarune, Alphys collects merchandise from the Kissy Kissy Mew anime franchise. In the Switch version, you can even get into an optional boss battle with one at the Dog Shrine.

Western Animation

 * Animaniacs: One episode of "Pinky and the Brain" had Brain weaponize this, using trading cards sold with sausages, to encourage kids to buy propaganda for his latest Evil Plan to Take Over the World. It backfires horribly; since they're in medieval Germany, the parents start a lynch mob and end the episode preparing to burn the titular characters at the stake.
 * Arthur
 * Woogles become this in "Arthur Rides the Bandwagon". Arthur at first scoffs at the idea of Woogles, saying they look "dweeby". Soon enough, however, everyone in his class has a Woogle; by the time Arthur has a nightmare about being ostracized due to not having a Woogle, they're all sold out of the stores. Muffy has the rare ones, and has a guidebook on how much each is worth; the one she offers to sell to Arthur is worth thirty dollars. Grandma Thora tries to explain that it's just a fad, using David's pet rock as an example, but Arthur doesn't understand until he makes bottlecaps the new trend.
 * D.W. gets into a not-My Little Pony franchise of unicorns in "D.W. Tricks the Tooth Fairy." The plot starts when her mother tells her that it would take months for her to save her allowance to by a clothes toy barn that comes separately. Realizing she can't earn that much money in time and her birthday already passed, D.W. opts to try and lose a tooth so that the tooth fairy will give her money.
 * Dexter's Laboratory had an episode where Dexter and his friends went to a local comic convention, only to end up in the wrong area. Rather than join a room of space nerds, they end up in a land of doll collectors, who yell at them for ripping a box open. Though Dexter defeats their champion in a fair fight, they have to leave disguised as collectible dolls to enter the space area. And it turns out they look like collectible figures from said space franchise...
 * A Gravity Falls ad for Journal 3 in real life parodied this. Kristen Schaal, who plays Mabel tried marketing customizable book sweaters for the journals. Jason Ritter, who plays Dipper, asks what kind of "creep" would buy them. Answer Cut to show creator Alex Hirsch saying, "I'll take ten" before upending a shelf of journals. Kristen grins and says there are a lot of creeps in the world, and she's counting on them.
 * Kim Possible showed off DNAmy's Cuddle Buddies. She actually tried to sell life-sized versions legitimately.
 * In Sabrina the Animated Series, "Brina Baby" involves Sabrina's inner child Brina getting loose when she takes an oath to give up magic and becomes a workaholic. Among Brina's pranks include stealing all the Itsy Bitsy Babies in town and piling them in the Spellman household. Even the cop who has been checking on the Spellmans finds his Itsy Bitsy Babies missing, and he had trackers planted in them.

Real Life

 * Beanie Babies are the Trope Namer. They went viral in the 1990s when the main company started manufacturing rare ones that would have a limited run, fueling collector demand. In addition, they were the first American company that sold directly to consumers, which helped fostering demand. Some documentaries and books accuse founder Ty Warner of deliberately creating a bubble that would burst, without any care for the people that put their life savings into collecting and reselling.
 * Cabbage Patch Kids were another one that followed this trend. You could find a baby and collect it, with varieties.
 * American Girl is the expensive version, with some dolls being retired over time like Addie and Kirsten. The company does supplement this by offering other products like books, retail, and tea parties at their in-person stores.
 * Collectible Card Games:
 * Pokémon trading cards were this for '90s kids. People would play for their cards and try to collect the rarest ones. Some in the 2020s will retail for as much as 2,000 dollars for one card!
 * Similarly, some Magic: The Gathering sets and cards can fetch a high price. Some collections cost as much as $4000. Hasbro has come under fire for sending the Pinkertons, historical mercenaries, after YouTuber Dan Cannon for receiving a May collection two weeks early and terrorizing his family.
 * Disney enamel pins have become this for adults. Even Lindsay Ellis aka The Nostalgia Chick has mentioned that she got into the trend.