Elizabeth Banks was too busy in the ’90s to be collecting Beanie Babies.
The actress stars as Robbie in the upcoming “Beanie Bubble” flick, which premieres on Apple TV+ on July 28.
A synopsis reads: “Ty Warner [Zach Galifianakis] was a frustrated toy salesman until his collaboration with three women grew his idea into the biggest toy craze in history.”
Banks spoke about the film during a recent chat with ET Canada’s Carlos Bustamante, with her admitting she was too busy doing other things to care too much about the ’90s and early 2000s craze.
The “Cocaine Bear” director said, “I was a 20-something on a different trajectory. I had no real… I was not looking at toys in my 20s. I was partying in New York City, if I’m being honest.”
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Banks had admitted earlier on in the chat, “I don’t actually have a collection of Beanie Babies, I’m sorry to say. I was a little old for the Beanie craze.
“My brother had around probably around 20-25 Beanie Babies. And I don’t think he ever like, did eBay or any of that stuff. You know, we definitely didn’t have… we had the dial up connection in the late ’90s still I remember. You know, we were poor, so we didn’t have any fast internet. I don’t recall my family really ever dabbling on the eBay of it all.
“But my brother had to have them. You know, you took them to school and I remember you like, laid them all out. I can tell you that with my own kids, we still buy Ty products. So I still have like slippers. You know, they have these giant eyeballs now. And yeah, you know, he’s got a whole new collection of things that my kids have to have.
“There are literal ones that look like beanbags. They don’t even have arms and feet. They’re just eyeballs on beanbags that my kids had to have. And they have like the slippers and all sorts of things. And so I still remember going through airports when my kids were a little younger and feeling like, if they were cranky, that’s what we would pick up for the airplane ride. We would like go in and, you know, they had the kiosks in the store.”
Banks said of understanding people valuing such things, “I also totally understood the sense of community that it gave to people, this sense of belonging, and that they had found something that nobody else saw value in. You know, there’s a real psychological experiment going on here with the Beanie Baby craze, right?
“And just this idea, and I see it with kids, you see the virality of things all the time amongst kids. You know, my kids, it’s you had to play Minecraft or you had to play Fortnite or you had to have Pokemon or whatever it was, you know.
“So I think that always, again, comes back to a sense of belonging, a sense of community, a sense of ‘I’m cool, I’ve got the thing that everybody has.’ And that’s what I think drove the craze as much as making money.”
