By Lee Dresselhaus / L’Observateur / June 2, 1999

So here we go. This is a True Story. I see that a woman in Hershey, Penn., anurse, has committed a heinous crime. She stole from a 12-year-old girlwho was recovering from heart surgery. Now, that’s bad enough, but insome circles it’s what she stole that makes the crime even worse.

She stole the Beanie Baby “Halo, The Angel Bear”. And when she wasconfronted by police she fought them. Over a Beanie Baby. I don’t get it.Have you ever seen one of those things? Actually, until recently I hadn’t laid eyes on one. I’d heard of them, but I’d never seen one, or if I did Ididn’t know what I was looking at. Just today, I happened to be listening toa conversation between two of my female co-workers who collect them.

Being the curious kind of guy I am, I butted in and asked about the wee beasties. One of the ladies had a catalog with hundreds of the things listedalong with their market value and she proceeded to educate me. During thecourse of my first class on Beanie Baby 101, I made two amazing discoveries.

One: Those are the ugliest things this side of Howard Stern.

Two: Some of them are worth more than my car.

That’s right. Those things look like five-inch-long, radiation-transformedmonsters in a bad fifties B-movie, and some of them are worth thousands, yes, thousands of dollars. They are about four inches long, look like roadkill in various stages of fresh death or decomposition, and apparently (and somewhat unbelievably) they are extremely hot collector’s items.

This has got to be a girl thing.

I looked through that catalog and was introduced to the following: There’s a flattened-out thing that looks like a road kill bear cub named Blackie.

Price-$350. There’s the brown version of the flattened-out bear namedBrownie (apparently nobody said the names had to be imaginative). Price:$4,175. Yep. Read it again. I told you some of them are worth more than mycar. There’s a goofy-looking thing that looks vaguely like a dinosaur calledBronty. Price: $1,075. There’s a thing called Caw that looks like adisgruntled, psychotic crow. Price: $680. There’s something that looks likea mutant dead platypus named Patti. Price: $1,030. And there’s one that Ithink is supposed to be a butterfly. It’s called Flutter. I can’t tell you whatit really looks like because this is a family newspaper and I don’t want the editor yelling at me. Again. Anyway, the thing that looks likea…well…Flutter is worth $1,075. And there’s a little dog named Tiny thatlooks like the Taco Bell dog on crack. He’s new and has no value as of yet.And finally, the most expensive..a four inch thing that looks like a de-boned blue elephant named Peanut. Price: $5,000. Now, that’s just for thedark blue one, not the light blue.

Now, having listed some of the little critters and their prices I would like to comment on the whole thing. Get away from me, you idiots.Who in the name of Captain Kangaroo ever came up with this idea? And what makes these things worth the price of a college education? Like I said, it has to be a girl thing because when I asked my co-worker these questions she said, “They’re cute!” No guy would ever collect anything based on its degree of cuteness. The stuff people pay money for. It’samazing.

Tell you what. I’m gonna start my own line of stuffed creatures and getrich off of gullible people. I’ll call them the Gotchastupid Babies. I’ll startwith a skinny, shaky monkey and call it Detox. I’ll follow that one with thepolitician baby. It’ll have a huge shock of well-groomed white hair and I’llcall it Sleazy. And how about one with a dirty t-shirt and a pot belly thatbelches when you squeeze it. I could call it Bubba Baby. Of course therewould be the one with three-inch rollers in her hair, a hot pink house coat, and fuzzy slippers. That would be the Embarrassing Mom Baby. And finally,an overdressed lawyer doll that you can call anything you want as long as you pay it. All these can be yours for a very reasonable price which will beapplied to a very worthy cause. My care and feeding. Whoever came up with the Beanie Baby collecting idea sure has a sharp sense of opportunity. They also have extremely good vision.They saw those Beanie Baby collectors coming a long way off.

Lee Dresselhaus is a regular columnist for L’Observateur

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