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Collectible Cloney Babies: Difference between revisions
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== [[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. Unlike other collectibles, though, Cabbage Patch Kids were manufactured with a process that randomized each doll, making it essentially unique; the psychology behind their collectability was less about finding specific rare varieties and more about acquiring dolls with features or combinations of features that appealed to the collector.
* 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 Card Game|''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.
* Even earlier than CCGs -- and one of their ancestors -- were bubblegum cards, most prominently baseball cards. Until ''Magic'' appeared in the 1990s, if you heard about a trading card being sold for an outrageous amount of money, it was almost certainly a rare card for baseball player.
* During the 1960s and 1970s Topps (publisher of almost all baseball cards) released ''[[w:Wacky Packages|Wacky Packages]]'' gum, which had stickers parodying various consumer products instead of cards. Because the stickers were, naturally, stuck to things by the kids who bought them and were consequently destroyed by wear-and-tear, very few of the original stickers have survived, and command high prices from collectors in the 21st century. And because of their popularity (and of course nostalgia), the line has been revived and/or reissued several times over the ensuing decades, although no single revival run was anywhere as close to large as the original release.
** ''Wacky Packages'' was so successful that some of Topps' competitors [[Follow the Leader|issued their own parody sticker lines]]. Usually featuring notably lower-quality art and looking visibly shoddy compared to the high-end cartoon art used by ''Wacky Packages'', lines like [http://www.bubblegumcards.org/Crazy%20Covers/CrazyCovers.html ''Crazy Covers'' from Fleet] (which parodied various magazines and comic books) still garnered their own devoted followers and have their own obsessed collectors half a century later.
** A rejected artwork for ''Wacky Packages'' went on to inspire another successful line of sticker trading cards from Topps in 1985 -- the ''[[Garbage Pail Kids]]'', which parodied the Cabbage Patch Kids and was successful enough to spawn a spin-off movie in 1987. The ''Garbage Pail Kids'' line has had several reissues/revivals over the years and, as might be expected since it has an entry on this page, remains a favorite of collectors.
* Disney enamel pins have become this for adults. Even Lindsay Ellis aka [[The Nostalgia Chick]] has mentioned that she got into the trend.
* For a few years, Comparethemarket.com gave customers meerkat toys as part of [[Compare the Meerkat|their viral marketing campaign]]. Initially the toys were chosen at random from a small group, and high prices were reportedly paid on the second-hand market by people trying to collect them all. The excitement fizzled after a while, but prices seem to have risen again since the promotion ended in 2018.
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