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The Princess Diana Beanie Baby led to the strangest toy craze of the Nineties: ‘It was like the crown jewels!’

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Feb 17, 2024

The Princess Diana Beanie Baby led to the strangest toy craze of the Nineties: ‘It was like the crown jewels!’

Released weeks after Diana’s death, the commemorative bear was speculated to one day be worth thousands. It didn’t happen. Katie Rosseinsky speaks to collectors and experts about the Beanie Baby fad

Released weeks after Diana’s death, the commemorative bear was speculated to one day be worth thousands. It didn’t happen. Katie Rosseinsky speaks to collectors and experts about the Beanie Baby fad of the Nineties and one of the brand’s most prized – if completely deranged – variations

Beanie baby

In the winter of 1997, Katie Ford received a very special Christmas gift: a purple Beanie Baby teddy with a small white rose on its chest and a ribbon around its neck. Its name was Princess, in tribute to Diana, who had died just a few months before. “I was probably eight at the time, and my nan got hold of one for me,” explains Katie, now a 34-year-old vet based in Manchester. “I think she was more competitive about finding one than I was.” Her grandma, she explains, “was a frequent customer at the local Beanie shop”; she had accumulated so many “tokens” through purchasing Beanies for her grandchildren that she qualified to “go into a ballot to have a chance to get a Diana bear”.