Volume 33, No. 16
April 20, 2008
Animal Instinct
He was a plush
toy tycoon, but there was nothing soft and cuddly about his marketing
techniques.
In 1980, Ty
Warner left a San Francisco stuffed animal company to start his own. He
soon set his products apart by filling them with plastic “beans” which
gave them a unique look and feel. Calling them Beanie Babies, Warner
adopted a clever strategy.
Instead of
targeting the national retailers, he put the toys in small specialty
stores. Even they had restrictions. No single shop could carry all the
Beanie Babies or sell more than 36 of each character per month. As soon
as the toys caught on, collectors considered them hard to come by so
they snapped them up.
Adding to the
mystique, Warner routinely “retired” characters, sometimes after they’d
been on the market a long time, and sometimes soon after their
introduction. Unsure how long supplies would last, collectors bought
quickly. And since Warner often made changes to individual characters —
changing their colour, for example — diehard collectors often bought
several versions of the same animal.
Soon, buyers
were lining up for hours before stores opened and some even pursued
delivery trucks suspected of carrying Beanie Babies. In West Virginia,
security guard Harry Simmons fatally shot his business partner during
an argument over their collection.
At the height of
the craze, McDonald’s put a “Teenie Beanie Baby” in each Happy Meal.
Avid collectors jammed the restaurants, buying Happy Meals, tossing the
food and getting back in line. In ten days, McDonald’s gave out 100
million — one for each child in America.
But by mid-1997,
fans despaired of collecting the whole set and sales slumped. So the
company announced it was retiring all theBeanie Babies on
December 31st, after the introduction of a black bear named “The End.”
Sales surged once again. Then, on Christmas Eve, Warner supposedly
relented, saying people could pay 50 cents and vote on whether the
Beanie Babies should be saved. To nobody’s surprise, the phoney
retirement was called off and there was yet another sales rush. But
the fad was finally finished. Beanie Babies are still made but
collectors who once thought they’d make a killing are dumping their sets
on the Internet for next to nothing. As for Ty Warner, he made $6
million while the craze lasted.
In many ways,
this sorry saga is symptomatic of today’s materialism. The truth is,
happiness and security can be found all around us — in faith, love,
service to others and our divine reason for living. But our culture has
convinced most people that true satisfaction is found in collecting
toys, everything from cars and cottages to the latest in consumer
electronics. Rather than encourage us to enjoy what we do have,
marketers condition us to think we’ll never really be happy until we
have the whole collection.
In the search
for fulfilment, we must act now, while supplies last. Better be the
earliest to get the latest, because things are always changing. Why
settle for a basic cell phone when colours, design and features keep
evolving. Cars and clothes are the same. Even with the coolest stuff,
that’s the con in contemporary: everything’s temporary.
Yet, in our
compulsion to have it all, we often pay a ridiculous price, not just in
money but in terms of stress, inner peace and family sacrifice. We pay
with our time and, sometimes, integrity. Though many of us console
ourselves with the notion that we’ll make up for it later, the pay off
never comes.
“True religion
with contentment is great wealth,”the Bible says. “So if we have enough
food and clothing, let’s be content... Tell [those who have money]
their trust should be in the living God, who richly gives us all we need
for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good... and give
generously to those in need... so they may take hold of real
life.” (1 Tim. 6:6-8, 17-19)
One day, all our
toys will be “retired” — for real, and for good. Until then, happiness
can’t be found in things. Anybody who tells you differently doesn’t
know beans about life.
By Rick Gamble.
Published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the followers of
Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. Reprint at will in
not-for-profit publications. To subscribe to this free weekly article,
send a note to Rick at
rgamble@bfree.on.ca
EDITOR’S NOTE:
This week, I was
blessed by a thought-provoking article written by a good friend of mine,
Henry Schlarb of Ottawa, Ontario. With his permission, I’m sending this
along. Enjoy.
The Flap Of A
Butterfly's Wings
When it came to
predicting the weather, Dr. Edward Lorenz was a butterfly among the
caterpillars.
In 1961, Lorenz
was unique among meteorologists; he was also a mathematician. He also
was one of the few people at the time that actually had a computer in
his office, using it to write programs that would, he hoped, one day
help predict the weather as accurately as one plus one equals two.
During the course of preparing for one of his computer “runs” he decided
to take a shortcut and use some data from the middle of a previous run
to retrace the remainder of the run.
The output that
he got back from the computer at the end of the run was nothing like he
expected it to be. These were the same numbers that were generated as
part of the whole program, yet the results were so different when they
were used to begin the program. In trying to find the cause of
these differing results, he found that he had made an error in one digit
in one of the initial pieces of data.
And then a
thought entered his mind. If these wildly differing results could come
as the result of a single digit being out of place, would it ever be
possible to accurately predict the weather? The title of the paper he
delivered in 1972 summarized it quite nicely: Predictability: Does
The Flap Of A Butterfly's Wings In Brazil Set Off A Tornado In Texas?
The science of Chaos Theory was born. In a nutshell, Chaos Theory states
that very small changes in the initial conditions of anything can lead
to results that are out of proportion to the initial act.
While this all
sounds very fancy, we all live with the principles of Chaos Theory every
day.
Shakespeare’s
Richard the Third cries out “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”
Imagine losing a whole nation for the lack of a horse!
How many times have
we said to ourselves “If only I done something, this would or would not
have happened?” And the difference between doing something and not doing
it may only be a matter of seconds.
Jesus observed
that the widow who gave the smallest amount of money out of her poverty
gave more than any of the richer people that preceded her. The riches
she gave were only possible because she decided to do it. It is the
action that is important.
Time and time
again, we see it in scripture.
“How many loaves
and fishes do you have?”
“Put your net on
the other side of the boat.”
“It is finished.”
We’re so busy
looking for the inside news on the latest celebrity. We live in a world
where we are drenched with marketing slogans that want to catch our
attention so that we can act under their direction. Yet it is the
simplest act on our part, the cup of water in the name of
Jesus that has an effect far out of proportion to the act itself.
People are
desperate to see a living example of Jesus somewhere. That example can
be shown by the simplest of acts.
By Henry Schlarb
Ottawa, ON, Canada
