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queenluaHilariously, this book strains to be a Business Case Study Book, in the vein of, I dunno, Liar's Poker or something—but that's not what it's actually about. Like, sure, the author periodically cites some research on "how financial bubbles work," or Malcom Gladwell bits (obligatory "l o l"), but—if you've read the Wikipedia page for the Dutch Tulip bubble before, none of that will surprise you.
See, the book cannot help being actually about Ty Warner himself, and—turns out TY WARNER IS SUCH A BIZARRE FUCKING DUDE? And that's what's made this book such a wild read; it's the Ty Warner Biopic As Told By Several Exes And His Estranged Sister And All His Former Employees. He's so fascinatingly strange and breathtakingly audacious that you gotta keep turning pages. Random tidbits off the top of my head:
* He dropped out of college to become an actor; failing at that, he became a salesperson for Dakin (plushie company), and within three years, he was making more money than the CEO purely due to how damn good he was at sales. In his first year he made over 200k. Like goddamn the guy had a talent
* He named one of the first Beanie Babies after one of his exes, and put a little poem on the tag deliberately meant as a veiled insult to her (god what a petty bastard).
* He often dated the same women as his father (?!?!?!? WHAT? the book does not clarify whether this meant, like, at the same time, or...)
* In general there's just a soap-opera tier messiness to his personal/dating life (including a pretty awful childhood), which can range from "infuriating" to "kind of sad actually," like... the dude often clearly wants to connect to people, but just self-sabotages fantastically, all the time.
* He once he offered to take his girlfriend's kiddo out for ice cream. Dude rolls up in his motherfucking Rolls-Royce, and when the kiddo gets in the car, he says, "wait, you have money for the ice cream, right? if not, go back inside and ask your mom for money, 'cause I'm not paying." Kiddo does so & mom coughs up the five bucks or whatever. Man was literally making like 400k a year at this point. Fucking incredible.
* But like, once one of his line employees got diagnosed with cancer, and the next day he showed up at work with a list he'd researched of the best specialists and said, pick one, I'll cover everything, so he wasn't always an asshole...
* (In general, the trend seems to be "Ty could be quite generous to The Little Guy / people beneath him, but my God is he a dick to everyone close to him")
* He seems like some kind of plastic surgery addict??? He gets all kinds of plastic surgeries that I did not even know were possible??? CHEEK IMPLANTS??? He freaked out his girlfriend's kids because he changed appearances so much.
And you've got to love his ex, who he inexplicably called up several years after their messy breakup to say "hey can you run Ty UK for me," and she accepted, and they made hella bank together, but apparently all their meetings were them just fucking swearing and yelling at each other all the time. Like, there'd be some conference call, and all the other whipped exec-types would be all deferential and cautious when trying to criticize Ty's ideas, and his ex would just be like "Shove it up your ass, Ty, this is a dumb fucking idea and you're gonna ruin the company." I... I would read a whole book about that, actually. "How two exes who fucking hated each others' guts nonetheless forged a business empire while bitching at each other the entire time." Free novel idea in case anyone wants it.
There's also plenty of fun anecdotes about the Beanie trend in general, ranging from soccer mom early collectors to This One Really Fucking Intense And Mildly Frightening Man who, to date, is still determined to open a Ty Museum with his fucking massive collection. (I particularly loved a story about the random part-time college-student who ran the Ty website in the 90s. She thought it'd be fun to do a "these Beanie babies are retiring soon" announcement... with a 40min Shockwave animation (!!!)... lovingly hand-drawn and voiced by her and her brother... and the sheer level of demand crashed the website for several hours... ah, 90s web nostalgia.) It's fun, I had fun, and it's a good read if you like messy reclusive CEO bitches & also have some Beanie nostalgia.
See, the book cannot help being actually about Ty Warner himself, and—turns out TY WARNER IS SUCH A BIZARRE FUCKING DUDE? And that's what's made this book such a wild read; it's the Ty Warner Biopic As Told By Several Exes And His Estranged Sister And All His Former Employees. He's so fascinatingly strange and breathtakingly audacious that you gotta keep turning pages. Random tidbits off the top of my head:
* He dropped out of college to become an actor; failing at that, he became a salesperson for Dakin (plushie company), and within three years, he was making more money than the CEO purely due to how damn good he was at sales. In his first year he made over 200k. Like goddamn the guy had a talent
* He named one of the first Beanie Babies after one of his exes, and put a little poem on the tag deliberately meant as a veiled insult to her (god what a petty bastard).
* He often dated the same women as his father (?!?!?!? WHAT? the book does not clarify whether this meant, like, at the same time, or...)
* In general there's just a soap-opera tier messiness to his personal/dating life (including a pretty awful childhood), which can range from "infuriating" to "kind of sad actually," like... the dude often clearly wants to connect to people, but just self-sabotages fantastically, all the time.
* He once he offered to take his girlfriend's kiddo out for ice cream. Dude rolls up in his motherfucking Rolls-Royce, and when the kiddo gets in the car, he says, "wait, you have money for the ice cream, right? if not, go back inside and ask your mom for money, 'cause I'm not paying." Kiddo does so & mom coughs up the five bucks or whatever. Man was literally making like 400k a year at this point. Fucking incredible.
* But like, once one of his line employees got diagnosed with cancer, and the next day he showed up at work with a list he'd researched of the best specialists and said, pick one, I'll cover everything, so he wasn't always an asshole...
* (In general, the trend seems to be "Ty could be quite generous to The Little Guy / people beneath him, but my God is he a dick to everyone close to him")
* He seems like some kind of plastic surgery addict??? He gets all kinds of plastic surgeries that I did not even know were possible??? CHEEK IMPLANTS??? He freaked out his girlfriend's kids because he changed appearances so much.
And you've got to love his ex, who he inexplicably called up several years after their messy breakup to say "hey can you run Ty UK for me," and she accepted, and they made hella bank together, but apparently all their meetings were them just fucking swearing and yelling at each other all the time. Like, there'd be some conference call, and all the other whipped exec-types would be all deferential and cautious when trying to criticize Ty's ideas, and his ex would just be like "Shove it up your ass, Ty, this is a dumb fucking idea and you're gonna ruin the company." I... I would read a whole book about that, actually. "How two exes who fucking hated each others' guts nonetheless forged a business empire while bitching at each other the entire time." Free novel idea in case anyone wants it.
There's also plenty of fun anecdotes about the Beanie trend in general, ranging from soccer mom early collectors to This One Really Fucking Intense And Mildly Frightening Man who, to date, is still determined to open a Ty Museum with his fucking massive collection. (I particularly loved a story about the random part-time college-student who ran the Ty website in the 90s. She thought it'd be fun to do a "these Beanie babies are retiring soon" announcement... with a 40min Shockwave animation (!!!)... lovingly hand-drawn and voiced by her and her brother... and the sheer level of demand crashed the website for several hours... ah, 90s web nostalgia.) It's fun, I had fun, and it's a good read if you like messy reclusive CEO bitches & also have some Beanie nostalgia.
