90s kids all had at least one Beanie Baby growing up. 

Some kids loved their Beanies so much that parents had to industrially launder their soiled toys, washing bits of peanut butter, yard mud, and dog slobber out of the fabric. Conversely, other children were persuaded to put tag covers on their plushies to «preserve the value,» carefully handling their Beanie with as much TLC as they could muster. And then there were the collectors, locking away their Beanies in a glass case like they were as valuable as the Mona Lisa (lest we forget the divorcing couple sorting their Beanie Baby collection in court). Back then, everyone was convinced that a well-kept Beanie collection could pay for their kid’s college education and collectors turned feral to get their hands on the rarer, limited-edition ones. However in hindsight, it’s become clear that the real desire to jump onto the Beanie Baby bandwagon was the fear of missing out aka «FOMO.»

Once the trend puttered out, so did the perceived value of the toy. Suddenly, this college fund investment wasn’t so secure, and we were all reminded that a Beanie is, at the end of the day, just a kid’s toy. But like all gravitational trends, the spirit of the Beanie Baby never truly left us. It was just biding its time to come back stronger than ever—this time, in the form of a Labubu doll. 

Via u/fooldistrict