Reference Desk

Which Ty tag generation is on your Beanie Baby?

Check the hang tag in order, fold, then star, then poem, and remember a tag generation dates the tag, not the bear.Illustration: LinkToLooks

A reference for reading the two tags on a Ty Beanie Baby. Last verified 10 September 2026.

The two tags, and why both matter

Every Beanie Baby carries two tags and collectors read them together. The hang tag (or swing tag) is the red heart-shaped card clipped to an ear. The tush tag is the fabric label sewn into a seam. A bear whose hang tag and tush tag belong to different eras has usually been re-tagged, and that is the single most useful thing this pairing tells you.

Hang tag generations

Hang tag generation	In use from	What identifies it
1st	1993-94	A single flat card, not folded. Small Ty logo on the front, the Beanie's name on the back. No barcode, no poem.
2nd	Spring 1994	The first tag that opens like a book. Small front font, a UPC barcode on the back, still no poem.
3rd	1995-96	Opens like a book, larger front font, a fat 'ty' with no star. Blank 'To ___ From ___' lines inside. No poem.
4th	Spring 1996	A yellow star added at the top right of the logo reading ORIGINAL BEANIE BABY. To/From replaced by a four-line poem and a birth date, with Ty's web address below the poem.
5th	1998 onward	Same furniture as the 4th, distinguished by a changed typeface rather than by any new element.

The order to check them in is: fold, then star, then poem. Is the tag a single flat card or does it open like a book? Is there a yellow star beside the logo? Is there a poem inside, or blank To/From lines? Those three questions place a tag within a two-year window without any reference photograph.

Tush tags, briefly

The earliest tush tags are black and white with no red heart and no trademark line. Collector references pair these with 1st generation hang tags.
Red-and-white tush tags carrying a small red heart come later, and from the mid-1990s the tag begins carrying a registered-trademark mark and a country of manufacture.
Later tush tags add a star inside the heart and, later still, a serial or authentication style tag. Ty has redesigned both tags repeatedly, so the presence of a heart proves nothing on its own.

An editorial warning worth more than the table

Tag generation dates the tag. It does not date the bear, and it does not authenticate anything. Tags are the easiest part of a Beanie Baby to swap, print or fake, and they are the part with all the money attached — which is exactly why they get faked. Our position: a tag generation is evidence, never proof, and a bear whose seller cannot photograph both tags flat and in focus should be priced as though it has none.

What the market actually says about tags

What the listing says	Listings	Cheapest	Median	Dearest
Mentions a tag at all	28	—	—	—
Names a tag generation	0	—	—	—

Corrected 10 September 2026, and the correction is the finding. On 8 September this page said 87 listings mentioned a tag, at a $20.00 median. That population was two different products. The word “beanie” sells knit hats as well as Ty Beanie Babies, and a keyword pull cannot tell them apart: 57 of those 87 rows were hats — a Supreme beanie, a Gucci baby beanie, a J.Crew cashmere beanie, all genuinely “new with tag”. Only 28 were Beanie Babies. Those 28 run a $30.00 median rather than $20.00, but 28 rows across too few read depths is not a figure we will print, so the price columns show —. What survives is the original point, and it survives more cleanly: sellers write “with tags” because it raises the price, and none of them name a generation.

No listing in this pull photographs a tag closely enough to read a generation from it, so nothing here is dated from its markings by us. The generation table is drawn from published collector references, not from the feed.

Tag descriptions last verified 1 September 2026 against published Beanie Baby collector references. Market counts computed the same day from 243 Ty Beanie Baby listings by US advertisers in the CJ product feed.

Common questions about Ty tags

How do I tell which generation hang tag I have?

Check three things in order. A single flat card is 1st generation. A folded tag with no star and blank To/From lines is 2nd or 3rd. A folded tag with a yellow star and a four-line poem inside is 4th generation or later, from spring 1996 onward.

What is a tush tag?

The fabric label sewn into a Beanie Baby's seam, as opposed to the heart-shaped card clipped to its ear. The earliest are black and white; later ones add a red heart, a trademark mark and a country of manufacture.

Does an older tag generation make a Beanie Baby more valuable?

It can, but the effect is far smaller than collectors expect, and it only applies when both tags are present, undamaged and consistent with each other. A missing tag costs more than an early tag gains.

Can Beanie Baby tags be faked?

Yes, easily. Tags are printed card and woven label, they carry most of the value, and they are trivial to reproduce. Treat a tag generation as evidence rather than proof, and be sceptical of any listing that does not show both tags in focus.

Sources

Wikipedia, Beanie Babies — the 1993 debut, the 1994-96 shift from To/From blanks to four-line poems and birth dates, and the 1995 addition of Ty's web address to tags.
Beaniepedia, tag identification and The Ty Plush Archive, 4th generation tag — the generation-by-generation descriptions cross-checked here.
CJ Affiliate product feeds, US advertisers, queried 1 September 2026 — the listing counts.