Anyone of an age to remember the Beanie Babies craze that struck in the ’90s can likely recall that oft-repeated phrase: “They’ll be worth more in a couple of years!” And now we all know how that turned out — too many people hoarded too many Beanie Babies, making them a pretty worthless investment. One man has decided to take his family’s unique story of woe and make it into a short documentary about how a $100,000 investment Beanie Babies led to bankruptcy.

Yes, we wish someone could travel back in time and take the family’s dad by the arm and say, “Listen, stop the madness. It’s not going to work out.” We don’t have one of those, so we’ll have to move on.

While we have yet to create such a machine, it seems like the son who directed the short documentary, “Bankrupt by Beanie Babies” and the rest of his family have accepted the mistake and are trying not to see the entire thing as a bad experience. This, despite the fact that the dad’s first line is, “This is like admitting to a drug addiction.”

For example, as he tells Dazed Digital in a Q&A, there was plenty of bonding time during those weekends spent inventorying and sorting the Beanie Babies by species.

“I’m mostly just apathetic to them at this point,” he says of the little critters. “I see the whole time period as one of bonding with my family, despite it being an extraordinary waste of money that would have been better spent on pretty much anything else. It was fun while it lasted, but then it was over and we got on with our lives.”

Check out the short below, as well as Dazed Digital’s Q&A. Compelling stuff.

Bankrupt by Beanie Babies [Dazed Digital]

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