Fascinating: "Beanie Babies were made by Ty, a company in Westmont, Ill. Ty didn’t actually manufacture Beanie Babies — that was outsourced to China — but it did everything else. The previous year, Ty’s executives began an extensive campaign to identify the nation’s most influential specialty gift and toy stores. Then, rather than advertise Beanie Babies to the public, executives quietly distributed small numbers of them to these retailers, often extracting a promise they would not sell more than a few Beanies to any single customer. Ty fiercely controlled retailers’ inventory of Beanies based on a complicated formula that was updated with each day’s sales and trends. If a store degraded the Beanie brand by discounting the toy or employing unfriendly salespeople, Ty would cut them off. As particular animals — like Peanut the Elephant — became popular, Ty ceased manufacturing them altogether. When Wal-Mart and Toys ‘‘R’’ Us asked to carry Beanie Babies, Ty refused...." "Ty’s executives made hundreds of tiny shifts in their manufacturing, marketing and distribution over the years, turning what began as a fad into a perennial best-seller, one that earned hundreds of millions of dollars each year and helped Ty employ thousands of people." …see more