This article is about the Illinois toy company. For the now defunct New York based toy company, see Tyco Toys. For other uses, see Ty (disambiguation).
Lina Trivedi was a college student when she worked at Ty Inc.[when?] She approached Warner to talk about a new development that existed on college campuses called the Internet. She indicated that, while the Internet was primarily a research tool, college students were starting to make personal websites. She thought that creating a website for Beanie Babies could present an unprecedented opportunity to engage the market. She brought to Ty's office a 14.4k modem and demonstrated how the Internet works. Warner was intrigued and gave Trivedi a free license to create a website using her judgment and skills.[1] By the time the first iteration of the Ty website[2] was published in late 1995, only 1.4% of Americans were using the Internet.[3] The population of people using the Internet grew exponentially in the following years, along with the popularity of Beanie Babies.
Ty was the first business to produce a direct-to-consumer website. This was a major contributing factor to the early and rapidly growing popularity of Beanie Babies. All Beanie Baby hangtags had the website URL and a call to action printed underneath the poems and birthdays that commanded audiences to visit the company website with text that read "Visit our web page!!!" This effort evolved into the world's first Internet sensation.[4]
Fundraising
Ty has been involved in a large amount of fundraising, with the proceeds donated to various causes. Some of this has been raised from the sale of certain Beanie Babies. It has also been raised through other means, such as voting for a fee.[5]
During the wake of Beanie Babies' success, Beanie Baby-centric publications were issued. One of the largest was Mary Beth's Bean Bag World, a monthly magazine dedicated to Beanie Babies and competing plush toys. It ran from 1997 to 2001.[9]
In August 2021, Beanie Babies was the season 1, episode 4 feature on Vice Media's Dark Side of the 90s entitled "Beanie Babies Go Bust".[10]
A documentary film about Beanie Babies, titled Beanie Mania, was released on December 23, 2021, on HBO Max.[11]
^Wolkoff, Melanie (December 2000). "The Girl With The Midas Touch, What Lina Trivedi Touches Turns to Gold – Just Ask Ty Warner". Mary Beth's Bean Bag World. 4 (#3). H&S Media Incorporated: 56–59. ISSN1520-7005.
^Bissonnette, Zac (March 2015). "The $12-per-hour Sociology Major Who Made Ty Warner a Billionaire in 1999". The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute. Penguin Books. pp. 107–121. ISBN978-1591846024.