The US Employee Teddies were given out to employees and field representatives of Ty Inc. on the Odyssey cruise ship on September 13, 1997. They’re interesting because they were handed out without hang tags, and were themselves reissues of the then retired new face violet teddies. Differences came down to their having 2nd gen red and white tush tags (1993 or 1995 date), and magenta-colored stitching. Two examples were given out (150 made of each) – one with red ribbon, and the other with a green ribbon identical to what came out with production.
It is said that Ty ran out of time to get a more novel design out the door, so he ended up bringing back his new face violet teddies. He did complete a few prototype sets – this is one of them! And they are phenomenal. Complete with pax hang and tush tags – signed by Ty! These both also sport incredible “Ty” embroidery on their chests matching the color of their respective ribbon.
Rarity Rank: -.5 Ranking these beauties is a bit subjective. From a distance, they don’t seem like wild and crazy departures. In truth, they aren’t. But the fact that they even exist – that these were created, and survived, is astonishing. Truthfully, too great a departure, and you might lose the essence and distinctiveness that belongs to this US Employee teddy. But these are true, genuine, and polished prototypes for one of the rarest, most coveted beanies in the entire line – the violet employee teddies. They are still some of the most difficult production pieces to locate. The pax tags on these protos explicitly distinguishes these as the employee teddy prototypes, with Ty personally signing off on them on their tags, pushing them, at the time, to be serious contenders. Perhaps with a little more time, these would have been the final designs. 8/2/97 – we know the production employee teddies arrived just a few weeks later (9/13/97).
Rarest Beans 