The downside of any vicious trend, is the massive overstock when the trend ends. The Cold War left us pondering what the hell do we do with thousands of nuclear missiles. The Seventies left us with millions of scratched Led Zeppelin records. The Eighties left us with way too many of those Member Only jackets. It appears the Nineties have left us with millions of Beanie Babies, and one hell of a disposal problem.

Middle Americas obsession with beanies appears to be weaning and their days may be numbered, so we must address the massive problem of disposing these critters now. Im not sure how many of you are aware of this but beanies are not filled with beans. Instead they are filled with some space-age PVC plastic that probably wont decompose until the suns bursts and pigs fly, so that puts an end to the brilliant idea of feeding the entire continent of Africa for the next twenty years. The responsible eco-friendly task is to find an appropriate alternative use for these, day-glow-softer-than-a-babys-butt-metaphor-of-Americas-ability-to-be-easily-manipulated, critters.

I have been working on possible solutions to our overstock, and would appreciate any of your suggestions. In fact you can email them to me at muygracias@yahoo.com and I will forward the best of them to Mr. Beanie Baby himself, Ty Warner.

As for my solutions, here are some of my favorites:

1. Secretly replace the silicon packs used in breast augmentation surgeries, with Beanie Babies. Lets face it everyone loves boobs.

2. Remarket them as Animal Voodoo Dolls. People will love to get even with those neighborhood pests who dig up their flowers and poop on their lawns.

3. Send them to the coal mine companies of West Virginia, to help replace the billions of tons of earth theyve blasted in their quest for fossil fuel.

4. Start a Beanies-For-Guns exchange campaign in the Middle East.

5. Repackage Beanies as the pants stuffing in Tom Jones impersonator kits.

6. Send them to Russia to replace their inflated worthless currency. Its pretty much a proven fact that when people have to wait in long lines for basic necessities they are a lot happier doing it with stuffed animals in their pockets.

7. Use beanies for laboratory testing.

8. Use beanies as building insulation material. Even if they are not as efficient as that pink stuff at least we wont be able to see them.

9. Chia Pets. Just leave them outside for a couple of weeks and voila.

10. Fill the Grand Canyon with them, to provide a cushion if Robbie Kneivel should fall.