The original Beanie Babies were created by Ty, who claim rightful ownership of the name and of all of the designs of their various "beanies". There have been imitations by other companies that jumped onto the idea of creating beanbag-like stuffed animals, however, including one imitator who even produced a tie-dyed bear (reminiscent of Ty's "Garcia"), as well as parodies such as the "Meanie Babies".
Starting in late 1996, a craze of collecting beanie babies began. In a buying frenzy reminiscent of the Cabbage Patch Kid mania of the early 1980s, several speculators purchased these collectibles en masse in hopes of making a fortune years later from being able to sell rare specimens. Estimates of the number of each beanie baby that would survive years into the future were much lower than the reality, however, and much like the Cabbage Patch Kid phenomenon, so many people had simultaneously gotten the idea of buying beanie babies to become rich later that the collectibles were not destined to acquire the rarity that was predicted. Like the Internet stocks of the period, this was a good recent example of an economic bubble.