Plush Friends

You are given a series of poems with a number above it. The poems each identify a person and the number is the person's month and day of birth. The identities of the people are:

• 2/17 - Amber Merritt
• 4/15 - Grizzwald Chapman
• 4/21 - Patti Lupone
• 6/? - Brutus
• 6/25 - Joseph Toronto
• 8/2 - Brittany Wiser
• 8/6 - Herschel Babbage
• 8/24 - Magic Johnson
• 9/26 - Alexander Lucius Twilight

Hinted by the fact that each person is described by a four-line rhyming poem and has a birthday that is given, one realizes that all of the identified people share a name with a Beanie Baby. Moreover, each Beanie Baby's birthday is in a unique month in the range 1 through 9. Indexing into the alphabet with the Beanie Baby's day of birth and ordering by the month of birth gives the answer, FUZZY DICE.

PATTI Lupone	-> Patti the Platypus	-> 1/6	-> F
AMBER Merritt	-> Amber the Cat	-> 2/21	-> U
GRIZZWALD Chapman	-> Grizzwald the Bear	-> 3/26	-> Z
HERSCHEL Babbage	-> Herschel the Bear	-> 4/26	-> Z
Joseph TORONTO	-> Toronto the Bear	-> 5/25	-> Y
Brittany WISER	-> Wiser the Owl	-> 6/4	-> D
BRUTUS	-> Brutus the Dog	-> 7/9	-> I
Alexander TWILIGHT	-> Twilight the Owl	-> 8/3	-> C
MAGIC Johnson	-> Magic the Dragon	-> 9/5	-> E