They were small, floppy stuffed animals with catchy names like “Legs the Frog,” “Squealer the Pig,” “Brownie the Bear,” “Flash the Dolphin,” “Splash the Whale,” “Patti the Platypus,” “Chocolate the Moose,” “Spot the Dog” and “Pinchers the Lobster” and they each came with a witty poem on their tags.

They were the nine original Beanie Babies to hit the shelves and even though I was working off the measly budget of a 10-year-old, I owned them all.

Ty, Inc. introduced Beanie Babies to consumers at the 1993 World Toy Fair in New York, but the small plush toys did not become “all the rage” until around 1996. And as shoppers were hunting the world for the retired, elusive characters and checking retailers for the new additions to the family, I was doing the same.

OK, so my mother, grandfather and grandmother were helping because I couldn’t drive, but I begged and pleaded until they broke down and carted me around on Beanie hunt after Beanie hunt. 

Finally, when I had too many to keep in bed with me, my grandfather built a custom Beanie Baby house for their storage. When my collection outgrew that, I started placing them carefully in a large basket, making sure each one could be seen adequately.

By the time I finished middle school, I had a fantastic collection of brand new and retired Beanie Babies, all of which still had their tags because I was convinced they would be the source of great fortune one day. 

Unfortunately when I started high school, it was no longer “cool” to have a whole heap of Beanie Babies lying around as well as a special few to cart back and forth to class. So when I redecorated my bedroom to be more mature and suitable for a young adult, I stuffed all my carefully displayed Beanie Babies in to a huge RubberMaid tub and shoved the tub in the back of the spare closet in the house.

I had completely forgotten about that green tub holding more than 100 childhood treasures, until last week when Mom called. In the process of replacing the floors upstairs, she decided to clean out what remained in my old room and move everything from the “guest room” into what is now the new guest room (a.k.a. still my old room). Inevitably, she found the shunned Beanie Babies, in the corner of the closet and told me to do something with them.

A recent immersion into online transactions had me thinking about the fortune I could make off of my collection, only to surf the Web and discover Beanie Babies are selling for less than it costs to ship them to the buyer. Their lack of value was a discovery that broke my childhood heart and shattered my dream of making millions selling stuffed animals. 

Disappointed, I started to think if I knew anyone who had children that I could disperse my inanimate friends to, but could not drum up enough people to divvy up the stash. 

But then, a light bulb moment struck and the thought of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center in Portland popped into my head.

Having been a patient in Boston Children’s Hospital when I was 5 made me think the hospital in Portland would have plenty of children who would appreciate the gift of a Beanie Baby. 

With a quick email to the development office of the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital I had set a time and date to drop off a good chunk of my childhood, and as I transferred the toys from the huge container—which I have no idea how I ever moved by myself—into smaller boxes, I resisted examining each one because it is a lot easier to hold onto childhood relics than to say goodbye. 

— Emma Bouthillette