From Silly Fad to Utterly Fab

We all remember fads of our generation....bell bottom, parachute, and hammer pants, snap bracelets, swatch watches, high tops, pet rocks, lava lamps, beanie babies, magic eight balls. I might be going out on a limb here but my guess is that you likely donated most of your fabulously retro items to Goodwill, the trash can, or sold them at a garage sale for 1/80th of their purchase price.

I was "one of those" beanie baby collectors back in the day. The reality is, its a cute toy that retailed for $5 but when the demand became high, I remember searching around for those random animals and forking out all of my babysitting money for the latest one and standing in lines for hours to get the latest released critter. I never wanted to get rid of them for some reason, they are cute. I ended up with 100+ beanies in a huge dresser drawer at my mom's house.

During my time working in pediatrics, I'd hear all about the latest baby must haves or see items that make one say, "what on earth IS that?". The wubbanub was that item. It always bugged me when someone would take a seemingly simplistic idea, create a prototype, and go on to make a fortune. Once again, enter wubbanub. Apparently a mom was travelling with her infant somewhere and was trying to solve the ever present issue of losing the bink. (pacifier). She had a beanie baby like animal and she sewed the bink to the animal and ta-da, the birth of the wubbanub. (where the name came from, who knows). Soothie pacifiers are Cade's favorites and they're flexible in comparison the the more traditional Nuk pacifiers. Even as small as she is, particularly in the car, I was encountering the same issue when she'd spit out her bink, so I went to Nana.

Nana in her infinite sewing wisdom was able to sew a soothie to a random beanie baby and its a life saver. Cade already cuddles with her puppy (as much as a 2 week old can cuddle a toy half her size). Its also a heck of a lot easier to reposition a beanie baby while driving than searching for the bink AND putting it back in.

So to anyone out there with a beanie collection and babies around, for crying out loud, sew a Soothie on it, it'll be the best use of an outdated fad ever. Additionally, beanies are cuter than the wubbanubs.