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About Ty:

A special beanie focus about the man who made beanies..

Ty Warner is a very private man, who doesn't like being in the spotlight, here are a few facts about the creator of the best collectibles ever! He gets my vote any day! I think he is a genius, and very creative.

H. Ty Warner was born in Illinois on September 3rd 1944. His mother's name was Georgia and his fathers name was Harold, he sold jewellery. He was named after his dad's baseball hero, Ty Cobb and US President Harry S. Truman. The 'H' in Ty's name doesn't stand for anything, just like the 'S' in Harry S Truman. He has one younger sister named Joyce.

Ty Warner attended St John's Military academy in Delafield, Wisconsin. There he played Baseball, Football and Basketball. He attended Kalamazoo college in Michigan, where he majored in Drama. His ambition was to become an actor.

After a year of jobs such as shelf-stocking groceries and selling cameras door to door, he decided he would rather make money than wait for an acting career that might never come.

Ty learnt marketing and decided to sell stuffed toys. He would dress eccentric-looking and drive around in a white Rolls-Royce to grab peoples attention. He learnt his company (Ty Inc.) from an old employer called Dakin, which closed in 1995 after 40 years as a plush toy leader. In 1980 Ty Warner got bored and left the company. He moved to Sorrento, Italy , where some friends lived. While living in Italy, Ty couldn't help noticing that the Italians produced  some very nice stuffed cats. That made up his mind to go back to the States . He wanted to make and sell cats. He was a cat lover and had two of his own, a mixed gold Persian named Nokomis, and a white Persian called Yoda.

He returned to the States in 1984 and by 1985 Ty Inc was born. His stuffed cats were a great success. It all started with a white Himalayan cat called Angel. He went to the Atlanta gift show and sold $30,000 worth of cats in one hour-10 colours of the same cat, each with its own name. At this point he hired two employees, Anne Nickels and Patricia Roche, who both still work for him today.

His small company expanded into making more animals, monkeys, dogs and bears, then farm animals and jungle animals. In 1993, Ty introduce Beanie Babies. He wanted to make something in the $5 bracket, something that was good quality. He knew what he wanted to make, he wanted them to be soft and squishy and decided to use PVC pellets, that he was using in the feet of his larger plush animals.

He started with 9, Legs, Pinchers, Cubbie, Patti, Spot, Chocolate, Squealer, Splash and Flash, using the same designs from his larger Plush toys.

Picture courtesy of Beanie Mania II

Beanie Babies started showing up in stores in 1994 and took a while to take off (but look at them now!). Ty thinks that this was because there were only 9.  So every 6 months another 9-12 were released and as the range grew so did their popularity. It was late in 1995 when Beanie Babies got too popular for Ty to keep up with demand. Seven years and hundreds of beanies later, Ty is still top with collectors all over the world...

WAY TO GO TY!