Ty is shameless

As you may remember in previous posts, I'm not the biggest fan of Ty - the 90's era wunderkind who keep trying to be relevant. Actually, I'd probably place them near the bottom of the list of toy companies I like. Why?
They refuse to miss a moment to exploit someone for money. Remeber the Sasha and Malia dolls they rolled out just before the Inauguration which, according to a Ty spokeperson Tania Lundeen, "There's nothing on the dolls that refers to the Obama girls." Instead they chose the names because "they are beautiful names." Then, weeks later, the pulled them and renamed them.
Now, forgoing any pretense with the naming of their latest offering, they've introduced "Bo, the First Dog," proving you don't even have to be human to be exploited by Ty. Oh, and "Bo" is part of the new Webkinz, um I mean "Ty 2.0" line - which means there's a code on the toy that lets you play online, which is odd because I remember back when Ty had original ideas, they went after people who tried to copy their success. I guess once the fad's passed, you just try to attach yourselves to something that's popular, whether it's a competing toy company or who's in the news this week.

Ty 'retires' Sasha & Malia dolls

It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Ty. When they were king, they ran roughshod through their retailers. Now that the pack has swallowed them up, they seem to be out of ideas and have resorted to gimmicks to stay in the news.

Their TyGirlz line (no, they're not Bratz, they TyGirlz, there's a BIG difference) features dolls that are 'not' based on real life people. The line includes 'Happy Hillary,' 'Precious Paris,' and 'Bubbly Britney,' but no longer 'Marvelous Malia' and 'Sweet Sasha.' Ty insisted the dolls, which were introduced in January and featured brown skin and brown eyes, were not based on President Obama's daughters. It was just a coincidence that they were introduced in the month that a newly elected President took office with daughters of the same name, right?

A spokeswoman for the first lady mentioned that the dolls were inappropriate and that they should not be using “young, private citizens for marketing purposes.” Several weeks later, they've decided to 'retire' the dolls without comment about why.

The sad thing is Ty gets more out this by the publicity than they ever would have with sales, so the gimmick worked.

Update (2/19) - The New York Daily News is reporting that Sasha & Malia dolls are selling for as much as $3,000 on ebay. Ugh. Some of that money should be going to a charitable cause, no?

Ty finally pulls Jammin Jenna doll

Remember Beanie Babies? We sold thousands of 'em. Piled 'em up high when we opened at our new location ten years ago. We had a dedicated following that would call every day to see if we got the latest batch of Beanie Babies in. Our UPS driver said people would ask him if he had any cases from Ty on his truck, then they'd come in and ask for the latest shipment, as they already knew it was here. Ty had a gold mine in it's hand, and they knew it.

As often happens when everybody and their brother wants what you sell, Ty became...er...funky...about it's products. I remember calling for customer service, and being told that "you don't call customer service, they call you." I also vividly remember running a sale on Beanie Babies, where we advertised them at $1 off the suggested retail price. The next day, my Ty sales rep calls and informs me that "we're in big trouble" because we advertised them at a sale price. I tried to tell her that, by law, we can sell them at any price we want to. She threatened to take us off the "priority shipping list" and said we broke the rules. I asked her to fax me these rules so I could show them to our lawyer. Funny, she didn't have them in writing.

Anyhow, to make a long story short (too late), Ty today finally relented in pulling their Jammin' Jenna doll - which, according to the state of Illinois, had too high lead content. Unlike virtually every other toy company who had toys recalled (most of which bent over backwards to try to save face), Ty fought the recall and left the toys on the shelves for weeks while legal solutions were explored. Apparently, they are replacing the vinyl red shoes on the dolls with ones made of cloth. Check the full story here.

Nice. Ty wanted to save money while leaving toys that were at the very least allegedly tainted in the marketplace.

We stopped selling Ty years ago, and are thankful now that we did.