If at first you don't succeed, TY TY and TY again! (ty.com)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	ty.com
Date:	20/09/02 (333 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great photos, search engine is very good, previews of new products

Disadvantages: very slow to load, confusing to navigate, can't buy them from here

Cute little teddy bears. Sweet little bunny rabbits. Bright dragons with golden spines and unicorns with iridescent horns. Purple rats, tie-dyed jellyfish and monkeys with multi-coloured bottoms.

So am I going completely mad here? No, of course not. I’m talking about beanies. Well, actually, I’m talking about the website www.ty.com and its entire product ranges really, not just beanies, but that’s the one you’ll know the best.

If you are a collector of TY beanie babies or if you just like cuddly toys, this site is compulsory viewing. My kids love it too and when the new toys are announced each month, they ooh and ahh about them too. You might even find your little ones start making out their Christmas wants list from this site, instead of the much loved Argos catalogue. (Just make sure they don’t set their heart on a beanie from a few years ago that now sells for £500!)

However, the site is not perfect, as I will try to explain here. It is, though, the only official TY website and is therefore an ideal starting point when looking for or at beanies.

For starters, criticism #1 is that it takes a long time to load. It wonderful on one hand (all those cute cuddlies!) but a pain on another. Often you’ll find that even after getting a page down, half of the pictures will be little red crosses instead.

It can also be rather complicated to navigate and even after being a regular visitor to the site for almost two years, I don’t think I know each link and what it does. Your average child might well need help with the navigation.

The homepage – when it does finally load – is very bright, colourful and cheerful. I suggest you have a little play with the links and see where you end up. If I went through all of them here, it would be a very long and very dull opinion. So instead, I shall take you on a guided tour of how I use it.

First of all, look out for the &
#8216;INTRODUCING’ signs towards the bottom of the homepage. If you click on this, you will get to see the newest TY products. At the moment, these are beanie buddies exclusive to Asia, so don’t get too excited unless you have contacts over there or a money tree (and if so, please send me a seed!).

Once I’ve checked out any new arrivals, I usually login to My TYFolio (top left). This is where I keep an up-to-date list (on a good day!) of all the TY products in my collection. This means you can access a photographic record of your collection. You can add details if you wish and print it out or email a copy to Great Aunt Mabel who wants to know what to get for your birthday.

It is a wonderful idea in principle, but I now have over 350 TY toys and this means it takes a long time to load (AGAIN!) and runs to several pages. It can also be frustrating to discover that not every TY product I own is listed, including some variations of beanie that I count as different but the website don’t always specify. But this is an excellent facility for someone with quite a small collection and one I found invaluable when I began getting into it as a hobby.

Besides listing your collection under the My TYFolio link, you can also create wish lists and rate your favourites. Again, reasonably useful, but more for the children than the serious collectors, me thinks.

Okay, back to the homepage. What else do I use regularly? Well, the TY Search is always good. After all, imagine this scenario – your eight-year-old nephew rings to tell you he’s seen a beautiful cat beanie in a shop in town. He knows it was made by TY but can’t remember the name. You go to the website and click on the TY Search button.

Here you can search by name – a quick and easy option (maybe your name or your pet’s name is represented by a beanie?), but your nephew didn’t notice a name, so no good in this case. The ne
xt option is what type of TY product is it – you know it’s a regular sized beanie. After this, you can choose from ‘current’ (should be easy to find in the shops, as they are still being made) or ‘retired’ (no longer being made, so harder to find in the shops but usually available online) or ‘any’. You aren’t sure here, so click ‘any’ and move on.

Finally – the piece de resistance! – what kind of animal is it? You can choose from aquatic, birds, bears, dinosaurs, dogs, insects and so on and yes, there’s ‘cats’. Clicking on this, you then discover there are 21 cat beanies. You are taken straight to a list, which includes a picture of them and their names. Click on this and you are shown a larger picture and the poem on the beanie’s tag. So all you have to do is see if any of the names are familiar to your nephew or show him the pictures – easy.

The search engine is one of the best features on the website and one I have used many times. However, if you find a TY product you want, you can’t order from this website. Well, there is the TY Store, but it doesn’t sell much and is very American-centric. May of the special beanies offered are not available to British customers and everything has to be paid in US dollars. I would recommend you do your purchasing from shops (Athena, John Lewis, etc.) or buy online from www.beaniebonkers.co.uk or www.ryebypost.com or www.beanibabiebears.co.uk (all of which I have used and would recommend) or subscribe to the BritBeanz list at yahoogroups.

Another feature that is outstanding is the reference material here. Whichever type of TY product you are interested in, there is a list (I won’t say it’s comprehensive, but it’s getting there!) of toys that have been made in that type.

The different products currently made by TY are…

* Beanie Babies ~ your
regular little cuddly toy, selling for about £5 for common ones (Teenie beanie babies are sometimes issued too, plus there are Basket Beanies for Easter and Jingle Beanies for Christmas.)

* Beanie Buddies ~ a similar idea to the beanies, but bigger, usually around £10 each (up to around £100 for the life-size ones!)

* Attic Treasures ~ old-fashioned looking cuddly toys, often jointed, often dressed in various costumes, about £6 each

* Beanie Boppers ~ long-legged rag dolls, dressed in funky clothes with alliterative names, about £10 each (Teenie ones are now available for around £5)

* Beanie Kids ~ smaller rag dolls, usually dressed in less fussy clothes than the boppers, about £5 each

* TY Classics (previously known as Plush) ~ beautiful animals, often quite realistic looking, similar size to the buddies, expect to pay £15-20 for one of these

* Baby TY ~ buddies for babies, plainer designs, softer fabrics, around £6-10 each

* Punkies ~ a new range, fluffy soft creatures in primary colours, looks to be designed for young children

* Pluffies ~ a new range, soft fluffy looking toys in pastel shades, for young children

For these nine main ranges of products, there are lists available, which you can print out. (Click the ‘view printable list’ link.) You can sort these into current and retired, if you wish and once again, they show a picture of each, which can be enlarged to see the poem and birthdate of the toy. On some of the toys (especially the beanies), there is an option to print out a picture of it for your child to colour too.

You can use these to browse through the range to see if there’s one you particularly want or to search for something in particular. It is always nice looking through a site like this, because all the photos are of cute toys looking adorable and it never fails to cheer me up.

So, to sum up, here is a list of the main advantag
es and disadvantages of the TY website ~

DISADVANTAGES

Slow to load
Lists are often incomplete
The TY Store is pretty useless
Hard to navigate
Confusing homepage

ADVANTAGES

Previews of the latest TY products
The lists and print-offs are useful
Good search engine
Good to amuse children
Lots of cute pics

Summary: