beanie babies

Sun leen fai lok! For all you non-Chinese speakers out there, that's "Happy New Year" in Chinese--go hug something yellow. We kick off the Year of the Ox with a ban on Jeff's Engrish impressions and cruise through a few No Duh stories from the Internet. Turns out alcohol has a hand in unwanted sex and gamers are antisocial!? Whodathunk?

To celebrate the Chinese lunar Year of the Ox, Wilson and I pull Jeff through another show. Ohhhhh. Just kidding, we give Jeff a hall pass and explain a few things about the new year customs. … Read more

Throw away those beanie babies; they are old news. There is a new sheriff in munchkin town.

Webkinz.com is a Web site children can join and interact in an online society while adopting a physical representation of the pet. The catch is that a Webkinz stuffed animal must be purchased first, followed by entering the "secret code" found on an attached tag. The cute plush toys have been quite popular, grossing over $45 million last year for Canadian gift company Ganz, the creators of Webkinz. Like its TY Beanie-Baby predecessor, Webkinz also has a high collection value, … Read more

In the '80s, it was the Cabbage Patch doll. In the 1990s, Beanie Babies.

What better toy to rule the millennium age than with a social-networking stuffed animal? A relatively Web-savvy concept by gift company Ganz, these plushies hope to usher in elementary-level children into the Web 2.0 realm.

Webkinz--stuffed animals that also live virtually through avatars that interact with others in their own online world--have become increasingly popular since their introduction in 2005. Like Beanie Babies, certain they're available for a only limited time, then retired. On eBay, the retired Webkinz Cheeky Pet Dog and Cat … Read more