Righty the Elephant

Righty is the other half of the only Beanie Baby pairing Ty ever built around an election. He and Lefty the donkey arrived together in June 1996, share a style number, and share a poem, which no Beanie Babies had done before them.

The names carry the joke. Righty stood for the Republicans, Lefty for the Democrats, and both wear a USA flag with a fourth of July birthday. Ty retired the pair on the first day of 1997, once the election had passed, which is why neither was in production for even seven months.

If you are matching fabric, Righty uses the same grey plush as the grey version of Happy the hippo. Documented oddities include upside-down flags, missing flags, and tush tags belonging to Freckles, Quackers, Spike and Waddle.

Counterfeit Rightys tend to give themselves away on colour and proportion. The fake fabric is rough and reads as a yellowish grey that looks noticeably darker beside a genuine one. The head is undersized, the ears too large for it, the eyes sit too far down the trunk, and the tail is too short to protrude properly from the knot.