Remember the Beanie Babies
I got my first job in 1996 while in high school, and I kept it through my college years. I have a lot of fond memories of working under the golden arches. Some days of the week I would open the restaurant and arrive at 4:00 in the morning; other days I would close and leave at 2:00 a.m. When the place was already exceedingly messy at day’s end, we’d occasionally engage in some late night food fights. My specialty was filling one palm with hot fudge, the other with hot caramel, and attacking the face and hair. Of all the memories, though, none return to me as frequently as those few occasions we sold Teenie Beanie Babies in the happy meals.
Whenever I hear the word consumerism I recall arriving at McDonald’s, two hours before we opened, to see cars already lining up in the drive-thru. I think of the drive-thru line a couple hours later, stretched out of the parking lot and down the street a couple blocks. I remember the police soon coming to direct traffic.
During the Beanie Babies promotion, we couldn’t distinguish rush hours from regular hours. There was no down time. From opening to closing, the lobby was packed with people, most of them more intent on acquiring every Beanie than on getting any particular meal. When customers came through drive-thru at midnight and ordered several happy meals with cokes, we knew the order wasn’t for their kids.
We sold each Beanie type until we ran out of it, then we started selling the next toy. Duck, then goldfish, then turtle, etc. We’d usually get through a few different stuffed toys in a day. A customer could probably have stopped in at morning, noon, and night and have been able to buy each of the toys, but some really devoted customers, unwilling to take any chances, would stay whole days. It was surreal seeing the same faces first thing in the morning that we’d seen the previous night when we locked the doors.
These really devoted customers would wait in line for the 45 minutes it took to get from the back to the front. If, when they arrived at the register, we were selling the next toy, they would purchase it and happily return to the back of the line or sit down for a short break. If we were still selling a toy they had already obtained, they would likewise return to the back, hopeful that when they reached the front again we would be on the next toy. I sometimes felt as though I should pour libations over each new box of beanies I opened.
The phone rang non-stop. We eventually stopped answering it – doing so was a full-time job – and recorded an answering machine message explaining what Beanie we were currently selling. Occasionally, to lighten the mood, we recorded fake mocking messages full of profanity. I’m not sure if customers accidently heard any of those. I’m sure we wouldn’t have cared.
Sure, I had my obsessions as well, so I can’t be too hard on the collectors. Around the time of the Beanie Babies promotion, I spent every waking hour not at work immersed in Final Fantasy VII, avidly intent on getting every last item and character ability. But I didn’t spend a ludicrous number of hours waiting in line to purchase the game!
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My mother got into Beanie Babies. Today we now have several garbage bags full of semi-cute stuffed animals some of which she paid upwards of $100 for and which now probably all retail for $4.99. She has a mental illness though so that’s how I excuse her!