If you weren't around for it, you should know the Beanie Babies fad of the late 90s drove seemingly rational adults to some wild behaviour.
People would spend hours of their lives and thousands of dollars collecting $5 animal soft toys with the hopes that it would pay off big time. There was even a murder linked to Beanie Baby trading.
A story made for Hollywood
In hindsight, it's easy to see exactly how the Beanie Babies mass hysteria unfolded — a toy company's canny marketing being supercharged by a network of obsessed American mums and the rise of e-commerce.
The phenomenon was so wild, it's surprising it took a Hollywood studio two decades to make the movie.
The Beanie Bubble — starring Elizabeth Banks, Sarah Snook, Geraldine Viswanathan and Zach Galifianakis — charts the story of the Beanie Babies mania from its founding to the beginning of the end.
It's a zany and curious film, exposing the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of how a mercurial man with an eye for detail thrust these toys upon the world.
More significantly, the movie restores the contribution of the women in founder Ty Warner's life, and the outsized roles they played in helping Warner become a billionaire, before he was eventually convicted of tax evasion.
Why are there so many movies about products now?
The Beanie Bubble isn't just the story of a trend, it's part of one as well. In the repetitive ecosystem of Hollywood output, The Beanie Bubble is the latest in a string of films centred on brands and products.
Like The Beanie Bubble, some of them are origin stories: The Founder (McDonalds); Air (Nike Air Jordans); Tetris; Flamin' Hot (Cheetos). While others are based on characters, like The Lego Movie, Barbie and a slate of upcoming Mattel properties including the just-greenlit Polly Pocket movie, directed by Lena Dunham, starring Lily Collins.
Before the end of the year, there will also be the Blackberry movie and a Poptarts film directed by Jerry Seinfeld. Yes, Poptarts. As in, those over-sugared American toaster pastries.
Fuelled by a mix of nostalgia and familiarity, movie studios believe they've cottoned on to a good thing.
Consumer psychologist Adam Ferrier, founder of marketing agency Thinkerbell, argues that the strategy is all about risk mitigation.
"Making a movie out of existing brands means these films almost become the sequel," he says.
"There's an impression in somebody's mind about a certain brand or a certain product because there are lots of latent memory structures there. So, when the movie comes out, you're leveraging off the pre-existing associations of that brand in people's minds.
"It already feels familiar and personal to them, so it's almost a guaranteed success."
What about the nostalgia factor?
The nostalgia factor also works to evoke an audience reaction, according to Ferrier.
"They offer collective communal experiences at a scale that is very, very hard to do today."
"In the 1980s, you had toys and media properties that cut right through culture that everybody participated in," he says.
"Now you can resurrect those feelings and have a mass communal experience again. That's more potent today because we have media fragmentation, and fragmentation of everything."
By building a story around a brand, studios and companies such as Mattel can also expand that positive association in myriad ways through merchandising and marketing.
The Barbie movie has exploded in brand collaborations. You can buy a Barbie-branded product in almost every category, from burgers and bubble teas to electric toothbrushes and nail polish.
"The Barbie brand can now be monetised and sold as experiences, as well as movie tickets and dolls. It's elevating all these available products into genuine, multidimensional brands."
But, is it still art?
Ferrier warns that to offset the crass commercialism of a brand-inspired movie, you have to inject as much artistic or creative integrity into the story as possible.
"Therefore, you have to get a very well-known, powerful, arthouse, feminist director to make the Barbie movie. And you have to make sure the script plays on sophisticated themes, and you write the hell out of it," he adds.
"It's almost as if the rule is, the more commercialised it is, the more artistic credibility you have to give it to make sure it's a success."
The Beanie Bubble is on Apple TV+ from Friday, July 28 at 5pm AEST. Barbie is in cinemas now.
ABC Everyday in your inbox
Get our newsletter for the best of ABC Everyday each week