Beanie Baby Bedlam ‘97’S Cute Champs Are The Toy Kids - And Desperate - Shoppers Crave

People started diving for the floor beside the display case before Pat Fischer finished emptying the bag of small, stuffed animals Saturday.

By the time she stood up, only two Curly Bears remained. Fischer offered the hard-to-find $6.99 toys to the adults rather than bothering with putting them in the case.

Nearby, customer Darla Free cooed, “Oh, a little turtle.” She pointed to another pile of palm-sized critters.

“I’m college-educated, and I’m standing here getting Beanies,” Free said with a chuckle.

Don’t laugh. A few ounces of stuffed toy may make the Christmas season at Coach House Gifts at Silver Lake Mall.

Beanie Babies are to 1997 what Tickle-Me-Elmo was to 1996. Except that the Beanie blitz has been hot since well before the holiday shopping season.

“I have a file of more than 200 collectors and they beat me to work” if there’s a new shipment of the toys, said Fischer, manager of Coach House. “And we’re not talking kids. … These are adults.”

Friday night, an anxious group waited an hour while Fischer and her crew restocked the display case. Then the eager buyers packed Beanie Babies out of the store in bulging shopping bags. The store sold more than $500 worth in just two transactions.

What’s to ogle over? Each creature, from Derby the Horse to Chip the Chipmunk, has special tags that identify the animal and when it was “born.” They also feature a special poem.

“She’s got rhythm, she’s got soul, “What’s more to like, in a fish bowl …”

So opens the poem for Goldie the Goldfish. Goldie, like other Beanie Babies, eventually will be “retired,” increasing her value with collectors.

The toys are outselling everything else at Coach House, and demand is expected to accelerate once the Princess Di model is introduced. There are beds, sleeping bags and even tag protectors for these “babies.”

Outside of these stuffed toys, the closest seconds on the hot gift list this Christmas season are lava lamps and beaded curtains, “retro to the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Fischer said.

Such enthusiasm is important as merchants try to make their season in the waning days before Christmas.

Sales at Fischer’s store are down slightly from last year, but she hopes to close the gap this weekend.

The overall mall tempo is more upbeat. “We’re pretty much even with last year,” said Cindy Lee, marketing director for the mall.

The expansion of Sears has helped. And Saturday’s snow is the type of weather that “keeps people shopping locally,” Lee said.

The new Spokane Valley Mall isn’t luring away many customers, as initially feared. “People are aware if they can shop here, they save money because of the lower taxes, and they support their community, their schools.”

Crowds at the Post Falls Factory Outlet Stores reflected that enthusiasm.

At Country Clutter, Boyd’s Bears - resin figures that compete with Beanie Babies - were selling briskly, said employee Wendy Stredwick.

And what about that Valley mall?

“It seems to bring more people out to us,” Stredwick said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)