Beanie Baby – Squid or Octopus?
Folks, you really should not be getting your knowledge of marine life anatomy from stuffed toys! I’ve been getting these questions about octopus taxonomy and anatomy and it turns out the “specimen” in question is a stuffed Beanie Baby toy octopus! Kids do not seem to have any trouble identifying an octopus, stuffed or not. Trouble is adults tend to believe what they read. . . so here it is – in writing. As the undisputed world expert in octopus toy identification, drawing on my extensive catalogued collection of such, blah blah blah I can tell you that the zillions of cephalopod 2000 Beanie Babies produced are not a squid, but octopus! Heck, they aren’t even octopuses mimicking squid! Or even octopuses mimicking squid mimicking octopuses. I don’t care what the hang tag says! Yes folks, that is correct, believe it or not, TY messed up. After the great Beanie Baby Market crash of 1999 this is what the world has sunk to. However, the creature is a new species of octopus unknown to science
