December 17, 2025 • 49 mins
In 1983, a cherubic, homely doll triggered something close to national hysteria. Parents fought in store aisles. Shelves were stripped bare. Even the New York mafia found itself selling children’s toys.
Cabbage Patch Kids went from handmade curiosities to the most coveted object in America — igniting riots, corporate battles, and a moral panic that stretched from suburban malls to federal courtrooms. All in a single Christmas season.
And the frenzy didn’t end when the Kids disappeared from shelves. In an unexpected twist decades later, these dolls would get more care and attention than they ever had before.
Previously on VSE: The Furby Files
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Very special thanks to all our guests! You can hear more of Larry Mazza’s story in his book The Life, available on Amazon.
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Today's episode is a production of iHeartPodcasts and School of Humans.
Hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zaron Burnett, and Jason English
Written by Jake Rossen
Senior Producer is Josh Fisher
Story Editor is Virginia Prescott
Editing and Sound Design by Jonathan Washington
Additional Editing by Mary Dooe
Mixing and Mastering by Josh Fisher
From School of Humans, producers are Emilia Brock and Edeliz Perez
Research and Fact-Checking by Jake Rossen, Virginia Prescott, and Austin Thompson
Original Music by Elise McCoy
Show Logo by Lucy Quintanilla
Social Clips by Yarberry Media
Executive Producers are Virginia Prescott and Jason English
Got a question for a future mailbag? Send it to veryspecialepisodes@gmail.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
VCRs leather coats cigarettes in the nineteen eighties. If it
somehow finds its way off a truck, the five families
of the New York Mafia will find a way to
make money on it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, here's what happens.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
As hijackers, we weren't known as hijackets, Like we will
go steal the trucks, but lower level criminals would go
probably hijacket truck.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That's Larry Matza, a former associate of the Colombo crime family.
We're not going to get into all the colorful details
of Larry's exploits. It's probably enough to just tell you
that his boss was nicknamed the Grim Reaper.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It could be anything from liquor to you know, pvs,
and we had, you know, the back of the club
looked like a crazy eddy warehouse at plans with just
you know, stereos and things like that.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
The club Larry is referring to is his boss's social
hangout where wise guys convene to talk shop. But during
the nineteen eighty three holiday season, their inventory is a
wash in another kind of contraband.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, yeah, we knew the capush tracks dolls.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
The walls of the Grim Reaper's office is stocked floor
to ceiling with Cabbage Patch Kids, the smiling, stuffed dolls
with an adoption marketing gimmick that have become the most
coveted gift of the year, maybe even the century.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
We knew they were popular, and we didn't go steal them,
like I said, but we had somebody bring us a
large truckload and I'm not talking a lot of track, the
trailer truckload of these cabbage Patch dolls. And we probably
sold them in less than a week, thousands of them,
you know, because people were just going crazy for them.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
The demand for these odd looking little dolls is such
that violence is breaking out. Strangely enough, it isn't organized
crime that's responsible. Its parents kicking, punching, and clawing their
way through store aisles, reduced to their most primitive impulses
(02:18):
to score one of the elusive kids for their children.
So what exactly was in the air or the culture
that turned toy stores into fight clubs and the mafia
into a doll dealership, and what happens when the owners
of the dolls grow up? Welcome to very special episodes
(02:44):
and Iheart's original podcast. I'm your host Danas Schwartz and
this is the cabbage Patch Crisis.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English. I
am usually joined at the top by Dana Schwartz and
Zaren Burnett. Dana is going to be here in just
a second. I just wanted to start by acknowledging that
we lost a friend of the show this week with
the tragic murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner. If you remember,
last summer, Rob was our guest on an episode about
(03:20):
the summer that John F. Kennedy spent as a journalist,
kind of a forgotten period in his history that Rob
helped color in. I got to work with both Rob
and Michelle on their podcast about the JFK assassination who
killed JFK? And I just wanted to share how wonderful
(03:41):
they were to all of us. Rob would ask about
our kids, He'd want to know where we grew up.
He was as good on a zoom with three people
as he was on any talk show. I left every
interaction just thinking like, Wow, he was way cooler. So
then he really needs to be just hopping on to
(04:03):
talk JFK with us on this show, which he absolutely
did not need to do. He offered to do it well,
still on vacation overseas. I remember we were working on
trying to find a time that would work for everybody.
He had been developing another podcast with us. We were
supposed to have the kickoff meeting literally today, Wednesday, December seventeenth.
(04:27):
It's it's kind of surreal. It's still on my calendar.
And look, there were a million people who were a
lot closer to him than me. I was a work
acquaintance at best. But I just today feel compelled to
say how much I'm going to miss getting to work
with him, and how Grady was to all of us,
(04:48):
and we're going to miss him.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Kids are materialists. Try as we might to teach them
the true meaning of the holiday season, goodwill toward others,
charitable endeavors, or at least shoveling the driveway, they're often
happiest when they unwrap the big gift, a Nintendo, a bike,
a pair of headphones. In nineteen eighty Three's a Christmas Story,
(05:15):
little Ralphie was desperate to get a Red Rider baby
gun lest his entire world collapse. The concept of a
hot toy everyone wants isn't a new phenomenon in the
nineteen thirties, people went crazy for Shirley Temple dolls. The
child actress with a halo of blonde curls was one
(05:38):
of the most popular movie stars of the era. The
toy company Ideal sold an astounding one point five million
of them in nineteen thirty five, right in the middle
of the Great Depression. A couple of decades later, Barbie
arrived on the scene with her endless accessories. If you're
a child of the nineteen eighty you had an abundance
(06:02):
of options Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears or Baby Alive. Each year,
Kenner sold a million of those dolls, which ate and
filled their own diapers, just like a real infant. But
the dull success story of the century doesn't start with
a massive toy company, a movie star, or any special features.
(06:25):
It starts with an artist named Xavier Roberts and his
line of one of a kind dolls that some people
found well, let's just say, unconventionally attractive.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Here she shocked me with a little person named Lavinia
Merle that was in a box that we were wrapping
for my daughter's Christmas present.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
That's Roger Schlafer. In the nineteen eighties, Roger is a licenser.
His business is tracking down products that had potential in retail,
sort of like a talent scout for inanimate objects. It's
Roger's wife who introduces him to Xavier's creation, which she
had bought as a gift. It's an auspicious beginning.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
And I opened it up and I was shocked to say,
this really ugly dolls staring up at me.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Xavier's handcrafted dolls, which he called little People, are rendered
in what's known as soft sculpture. That's where an artist
tugs and stitches fabric to create physical features like smiles, dimples, toes,
and fingers. They have yarn for hair and Xavier's distinctive
(07:40):
signature stitched into their rumps. Roberts is a kind of
Etsy sellar before Etsy, hand crafting dolls for a growing fanbase,
devoted enough to make pilgrimages to Babyland General in Cleveland, Georgia,
a delightfully kitchy doll hospital where babies are said to
(08:02):
be born from an actual cabbage patch, complete with nurses,
delivery rooms, and an earnest adoption ceremony that feels half
performance art, half country fair. It's worth noting that the
idea of adoptable soft sculpture dolls wasn't exactly original to Xavier.
(08:23):
A Kentucky artist named Martha Nelson Thomas had sold similar
creations she named doll Babies at a gift shop operated
by Xavier Roberts years prior. Martha later sued him, alleging
he had adopted her idea without permission. The two settled
(08:44):
out of court, with Roberts admitting he was inspired by
Thomas's work. That debate over their origins aside, Xavier Roberts
is doing very well with these distinctive dolls, selling them
one at a time. Roger sees the bigger picture. Rather
than craft them by hand, he envisions a process by
(09:07):
which the little people can be mass manufactured while still
retaining their unique handcrafted appeal.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
So every doll would be different. It would be the
first mass marketed one of a kind doll. Every head
would have different eye color, some would have freckles, some wooden,
some would have dimples, some wooden. The hair color would vary,
and of course there are countless hair color and eye
color possibilities, and hair style would be different, and they'd
(09:40):
be dressed differently. And that was like one of the
biggest things in the history of the toy business, the
first one of a kind doll, and it was done
at the most affordable price imaginable.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Unlike Roberts dolls, which could sell for hundreds, Roger's version
will retail for just twenty eight bucks. But he has
one immediate problem. The name Little People is already taken.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
And then they discovered that Fisher Price own the name,
so basically they had nothing to license. In fact, their
lawyer at the time the fell named Bill Needle, said
I don't see what you're going to license, and I
told him, by the time I'm done, you'll see.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Instead, Roger comes up with the name cabbage Patch Kids,
after the folk tale of babies emerging from a cabbage
patch rather than being dropped off by a stork. Armed
with a deal with Xavier Roberts, Roger finds a willing
partner in Calco. It's not a name you hear much
about these days, but back in the nineteen eighties, Kaliko
(10:52):
was doing well thanks to its video game system, Kaliko Vision,
and other electronic toys. They weren't particularly known for dolls,
but they shared Roger's vision for what the cabbage Patch
Kids could be. They agree to manufacture and distribute these
sixteen inch tall dolls, complete with adoption papers. In a
(11:17):
clever bit of marketing, they're packaged in a sea through
box with their arms reaching out as though they're pleading
for a hug, begging to be freed from their cardboard
and plastic prison. Calico's Cabbage Patch Kids debut at the
nineteen eighty three Toy Fair, the annual parade of plastic
(11:38):
is where manufacturers try to wow retail chains like Toys
r Us or Kymart into placing giant orders. The Kids
arrived with a tailwind. Word has already spread from a
Canadian toy show that these dolls were the must see item.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
What the a brilliant market or for Kalico did. They
had a two hundred thousand square foot facility in Quebec
and they rebuilt an adoption center in the center of
the facility and they hadaa fly up three or four
of their cutest nurses because they were dressed like nurses,
(12:19):
and the nurses were the ones who took the buyers.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Throughaa is Xavier's company, Original Appalachian Artworks.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
So before the International Toy Fair even opened, every major
toy buyer in the world had heard that the most
exciting thing in the Canadian toy fair bar Nun was
cabbage Patch Kids. So almost on opening day in February
nineteen eighty three, every doll was on consignment and Kalico
(12:52):
was demanding cash up front for whomever wanted them.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But Kalico isn't going to rely on word of mouth.
As early as June, the company begins an extensive advertising
campaign on television and in print.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
Well it started the middle of June. We introduced in
New York and again there were some great marketers at
Calico in the New York market. The week of the
introduction they ran a full page ad adopted Cabbage Patch
Kid doll in the New York Times, and they ran
spot TV with some really great commercials in the Tri
(13:35):
State area. So kids were pumped up. They were asking
their mother, even though it was off season, to get
them a Cabbage Patch Kid. And part of the deal
for the introduction was Macy's had agreed to give a
thirty fourth Street positioning of the Cabbage Patch Kids on
(13:59):
thirty fourth Street, which had tens of thousands of people
walking by every day.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Buzz is building around the kids. But stores actually do
the opposite of what you'd expect. Instead of jacking the
price up, they begin marking them down. They realize if
people are coming for the cabbage patch kids, they'll spend
money elsewhere in the store too.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
And instead of the dollars being twenty eight dollars, and
this is a big part of it, every mass mortionon
in the country was selling them for what they were paying,
which could have been eighteen or twenty dollars. So in
a year with a terrible economy, parents, fathers, mothers, aunt's, uncles, whatever,
(14:48):
could be a hero for twenty bucks if they could
get a hand on one. And the riot somehow, the
notion of that spread around the country.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Come the fall of nineteen eighty three, all any kid wants,
boy or girl is a cabbage patch doll, and all
any parent wants is to make their kid happy. That
proves to be a very combustible combination, and.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
The crowds were just literally fighting for dolls.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
At a Zayer store in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, a panicked
manager climbs onto a counter wielding a baseball bat, hoping
to hold off a mob of roughly one thousand people.
He has good reason to be afraid. One woman is
swallowed up by the crush of bodies and is trampled.
She's wheeled out of the store with a broken leg.
(15:42):
Four other shoppers also wind up in the hospital. In
West Virginia, five thousand people storm a Hills department store
Like soldiers on the beaches of Normandy. Tables are toppled
as shoppers practically hurl themselves through the air matrix style,
only to discover there are only one hundred and twenty
(16:04):
dollars to go around. Elsewhere, people line up for hours
in the bitter cold, sprint into stores at opening and
find the shelves empty. That's when fists start flying. Grown
adults rip dolls out of shopping carts and out of
children's arms. When police are called and restore order, some
(16:27):
desperate customers start fighting them too. Naturally, all this parent
on parent violence attracts the media. News crews park outside
of toy stores. Newspapers run breathless coverage of cabbage patch riots.
It becomes a feedback loop the dolls in demand. That
(16:47):
demand leads to fights. The fight's goose media coverage, which
ratchets up demand, which leads to more violence. Calico is
both delighted and blindsided. They charter jets to fly in
two hundred thousand cabbage patch dolls from Hong Kong each
week to keep up. They even pull their TV ads
(17:10):
after parents and consumer affairs advocates complain that they're promoting
a product that very few can actually buy. In a
classic conspiracy theory, some even allege Kaliko is holding back
inventory on purpose. Stores begin taking extreme measures to cope
with the demand. One in Lawrence, Kansas, keeps its limited
(17:34):
stock locked in a bank vault and holds a lottery
to draw winners. Others admit entrance to only ten customers
at a time, reducing the chances of bloodied noses. At
least one store hires a full time employee just to
answer the phone and say we have no Cabbage Patch
(17:56):
kids in stock. A Woolworth's in Jack's County, Florida games
it up. They announce over the loudspeaker that there is
one doll hidden somewhere in the store, unleashing a frantic
treasure hunt. Boscovs has the most brazen idea of all
selling vouchers that entitle the bearer to a doll whenever
(18:19):
stock gets replenished, which they hope will be the following April.
Just what every kid wants for Christmas, a coupon. The
mania gets so out of hand that Time and Newsweek
scrutinize it. Johnny Carson makes jokes on The Tonight Show
(18:41):
not even the White House can navigate what has become
the most frenzied and violent holiday toy season in history. First,
Lady Nancy Reagan makes it known she wants two dolls
to give to a pair of Korean children awaiting surgery
in the US Khalico. Initially, he tells her they don't
(19:01):
have any to give. They relent only when the media
picks up the story. Children do want other toys, like
the newly released Mister t doll, but nothing else triggers
the same full blown elbows out chaos as the kids
in a Bleak punchline. The Wall Street Journal reports a
(19:24):
poll where people say they're more anxious about getting a
doll than about nuclear annihilation. By the fall of nineteen
eighty three, cabbage patch kids are no longer just toys.
They're a kind of currency, something parents, retailers, and as
we heard even the mob can use to prove their connected,
(19:48):
powerful or just lucky. Here's Larry Matsa again.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I tell my five guys, you could take the dolls
for twenty five dollars and they'll go sell them for fifty.
So you know, we were known for that, you know,
for these different things. People would come and the men
would go out and have their people word of mouth.
Before you know it, I mean, coops were coming in
buying cabbage patch dolls for their family.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Unfortunately or fortunately not everyone could turn to the mafia
for their dollphis. But they weren't the only opportunists during
the cabbage crisis, which is how across town several lawyers
and a judge find themselves in a courtroom in a
heated discussion over doll butts. In November nineteen eighty three,
(20:44):
Customs officials in San Francisco, California are facing a serious problem.
In front of them are twelve thousand soft sculpture dolls
with cute faces and tiny Vinyl sneakers. But these aren't
Cabbage Patch kids. They're flower kids. A near identical doll
(21:06):
being shipped from Hong Kong to cash in on the
insatiable demand calico created customs agents don't know quite what
to do. Are the Flower Kids simply shameless knockoffs or
counterfeit babies that need to be seized like illicit contraband
At the height of cabbage Mania, this wasn't an unusual occurrence.
(21:31):
For a period of time. In nineteen eighty three, Kaliko
and Xavier Roberts were both busy trying to swat off
the endless copycat products popping up to meet the demand.
Everyone wanted a doll, well almost everyone.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I never collected to buy a doll. I didn't have
a kid or sibling in that universe.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
That's Paul Friedland. At the time, Paul was a junior
lawyer at a New York firm with satellite office in
Hong Kong. They'd been enlisted by the Blue Box Toy Factory,
the US distribution arm of the Flower Kids, to fight
a lawsuit brought by Xavier Roberts. The suit alleged the
(22:15):
Flower Kids were cute little copyright infringers. The problem there
wasn't much time to prepare.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It was a phone call from Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Morning in Hong Kong, and it was evening in New
York and it's someone had to go down to court
the next morning to defend flower Kids, and I, as
a junior associate, was one of the only people in
the office.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
If the flower Kids are permitted to be sold, it's
only fair they'd be made available in time for the
holiday shopping season. There are only a few more weeks
until Christmas. The opposing parties and the judge would have
to arrive at a conclusion quickly.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So I defended our ferb and I was the advocate
defended the Flower Kids from the clean that it was
an infringement and a knockof fan Well, it was a knockoff,
but that wasn't a point the question whether it was
confusing people.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Things get off to a shaky start. The district court
Judge Abraham Sofair takes a look at the six Cabbage
Patch dolls and the one Flower Kids doll and then
loudly asks which is which. But Paul and his team
argue the Flower Kids are different enough. There's no adoption
(23:34):
gimmick with these dolls. Physically, the Cabbage dolls have removable shoes,
the flower Kids don't. The cabbages have recessed chins and
dimpled knees. Diapers and a belly button. The Flower Kids
have none of those. In the most striking exchange of
(23:54):
the case, Paul declares his client's dolls are also missing
one key feature.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
They don't have a cute tosh.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
There's really no other way to say this. The Flower
Kids are missing a butt crack, a distinctive signature feature
of Klico's cabbage Patch Kids, and Paul argues the Flower
Kids were, on the whole, not as homely as the
legit cabbage Patch Kids. In response, Xavier's team introduces a
(24:29):
hastily collected bit of evidence. They pulled shoppers at them all,
ushering them into a spare room and asking them if
they could identify the doll sitting in front of them.
Sixty four percent answered that it was likely a cabbage
Patch doll, but it was actually a Flower kid, reinforcing
the idea of consumer confusion. Rather than risk the danger
(24:52):
of harboring unguarded Cabbage Patch and Flower kids, Judge so
Fair alects to keep the valuable locked in his chambers
when court adjourns for the day. Maybe he wanted time
alone with them to study their unblinking eyes for any
hint of guilt. Or innocence. In the end, the judge
(25:14):
sides with Blue Box. The Flower Kids, he reasoned, could
not reliably be confused for the Cabbage Patch Kids. Though
they did look similar, so did a lot of dolls
that pole in the mall. It didn't prove much because
the doll lacked the distinctive Cabbage Patch packaging. Most importantly,
(25:37):
he Judge so Fair argues, the sheer demand for the
Cabbage Patch Kids actually reduces the chance for confusion. If
a parent brought home a cabbage bootleg, he reasoned, the
child would recognize the fake instantly and be devastated. It
was the overriding fear of disappointing their kids that convinced
(25:59):
the judge that the Flower Kids posed no existential or
commercial threat to Calico. He denies the request for an injunction. Soon,
hundreds of thousands of Flower Kids are filling store shelves.
A desperate enough parent can pick up a Flower Kid
(26:20):
or any number of other copycat products like lettuce leaf babies,
which are just nylon stockings stuffed with some polyester. You
could look to the classifieds, where some people sold the
kids at a steep markup, or you could do what
Edward Pennington did and go to some pretty extreme measures.
(26:46):
Edward Pennington is a male carrier living in Shawnee, Kansas,
during that fraught holiday season. Like a lot of dads,
his daughter, five year old Lena, wants a cabbage Patch
kid more than anything else in the world. Give Lena
a choice between world peace and a doll with a
copyright protected cute tush, and Lina would probably pick the
(27:09):
doll every time.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Yep, I came home and told my parents that I
wanted a cabbage Patch doll.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's Lena. She understands the cabbage Patch frenzy now, but
at the time she didn't really grasp how wild things
had gotten in the aisles of American department stores.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
At the time. No, I had no idea. The fact
that people were going absolutely and saying over these dolls,
and parents were going crazy trying to get these dolls
for their kids at the time was not even in
my mind.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
All she knew was that the dolls were a kind
of magic babies with names, documentation, personalities. Surely her parents
would come through, but in Kansas, like everywhere else, the
dolls were impossible to find. Then Lena's mother, Maggie hears
an intriguing report on the local news.
Speaker 6 (28:05):
She heard on the news that the only place that
they would be found they weren't here in the States,
but they find the dolls in London.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That wouldn't help most parents, but the Penningtons have an
ace up their sleeve. Maggie is a flight attendant. That
means perks like being able to score cheap airline tickets.
So in early December, Edward takes a vacation from the
post office and flies thousands of miles to London. He's
(28:37):
greeted at Heathrow by reporters from the London Daily Star.
The paper has promised to secure him five of the
dolls in exchange for an exclusive interview. It all feels
a little like a spy handoff. He's escorted to a
vehicle in the airport parking lot where the reporters have
snashed their cabbage patch can Back home, Lena cannot believe
(29:03):
what she was seeing.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
He came back with five cabbage Batch dolls.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
She gets to choose two.
Speaker 6 (29:10):
Oh, I mean completely ecstatic and shocked. You're gonna bring
me to tears, but I knew my family would come
through like it was an amazing feeling that like literally
is bringing me to tears right now.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Edward gives one doll to the local newspaper that helped
connect him to the journalists in London. While he could
have easily sold the remaining two at a significant markup,
he instead donates one to the Children's Mercy Hospital and
the other to the local TV station where Maggie first
heard the news. Edward's trip becomes another cabbage patch story,
(29:56):
though one that appeals to our better angels. Touches down
from London and is whisked off for an interview on
Nightline with Ted Copple.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
When he was flying back to Kansas City. He actually
got pretty tipsy off of Remy Martin, and when we
found out we were going to be on Nightline with
Ted couple, they had to quickly sober my dad up
for the interview. So my dad was absolutely amazing. He
had an amazing personality. He was just a cool cat,
(30:30):
you know.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
But not everyone is captivated by the story. A Toronto
Star columnist argued that Edward Pennington's mission set up an
impossible standard. Most parents couldn't hop continents on short notice.
They had to hope they'd get lucky and find a
cabbage patch kid in stock, all while ducking an uppercut
(30:53):
from a rival shopper. And the cabbage patch craze was
sparking more than just pressure. The adoption gimmick, birth certificates, paperwork,
the annual birthday card was raising hackles among adoption advocates.
They argued that the concept trivialized real adoptions. Others worried
(31:16):
that presenting these dolls as ugly but adoptable sent a
damaging message to actual adopted kids that they were the
product of a low tier vegetable. It's hard to say
how much the adoption gimmick actually influenced kids, but Roger
Schlaefer insists the craze wasn't driven by that marketing hook alone.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
When they were little people, when people would go to
Babyland General or one of the adoption centers, they would
go through the adoption and there would be that ritual.
But that was so secondary, I mean, that was neat.
And the press picked up on the gimmick. This was
the first on mechanical, non electronic gimmick. It was a
(32:03):
piece of paper. But if you think of the riots,
you have to say, well, nobody was adopting them. Then
and parents they were. When the kids opened the present,
weather it was a birthday or for Christmas, they were thrilled.
They weren't, you know, the adoption really didn't mean anything,
but they got one. It had its own name.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
By the end of nineteen eighty three, Calico had sold
between two point five and three million Cabbage Patch Kids,
breaking the record setting sales of the poop producing Baby Alive.
It had become the most successful doll launch in toy history.
By nineteen eighty four, the kids were in twenty million
(32:47):
homes with an array of tie in merch.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
Bedding and children's apparel, doing whole lines of clothes, not
just t shirts, but lunchboxes and dollar accessories. They were
all set up, so by the end of nineteen eighty
three they were already in production. And in nineteen eighty four,
when we hit an all time record of two billion
(33:14):
dollars in retail sales, two thirds of that was non dollars.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
There was even a low sugar Cabbage Patch Kids Cereal,
though it was not a big hit. By the mid
nineteen eighties, cabbage mania was waning, and not because of
the cereal Khaliko, which had once struggled to make enough
dolls began making too many. The company went from boom
(33:44):
to bust, and during bankruptcy proceedings after betting too heavily
on their personal computing products, not even getting the toy
license for Rambo could save them. And that seemingly was
that the kids faded into a kind of toy obscurity
destined for future nostalgia think pieces online and eBay auctions
(34:09):
shelves were cleared to make way for the next hot toy.
Consumers bought game boys and tickle me elmos, brats, dolls,
and furbies. But unlike most of these types of fads,
the kids were about to have a second act. In
a weird twist, these dolls were going to get more
(34:31):
care and attention than they ever had before. Abrasion remembers
her first cabbage Patch kid, well, her first cabbage patch
knockoff kid.
Speaker 7 (34:51):
And I actually had a fake one at first that
my parents bought me at like a local festival, and
I loved her, but she was fake and my friends
would be like, oh, she's fake.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Having a phony cabbage Patch kid was socially unacceptable. Fortunately,
for Christmas nineteen eighty four, Abra got her first real kid.
Like millions of other eighties children, cabbage Patch kids weren't
just toys. They were tiny, manageable relationships. They engendered a
(35:25):
feeling of nurturing and satisfied a need to be needed.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
I just felt like these, to me, somehow, were like
real babies that I needed to take care of, that
I wanted to take care of. They were just adorable
and they were just so cute.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Of course, Abra got older and her cabbage Patch kids
were relegated to the metaphorical box of things from childhood.
But a few years ago, in her forties, Abra came
to a realization the kids still meant something, just a
different something.
Speaker 7 (35:59):
Just bringing back some of my innocence and tying in
not just Cabbage Patch kids, but also just the whole,
you know, eighties and gen X kind of thing somehow
brings me comfort. I feel like things were more innocent
back then.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
It was around this time that Abra discovered a Cabbage
Patch Kids group on Facebook. This isn't the official group,
but a looser, more convevial gathering of mostly adults who
have maintained or rediscovered a strong emotional bond with their kid,
Virtually strolling through the group is a fascinating experience. While
(36:41):
nostalgia is part of it, there's something else going on.
A lot of the discussion revolves around the restoration of kids,
whom they affectionately call Cabbies. Time can be unkind to
mass produced toys, and the plastic heads of the dolls
(37:02):
can develop what devotees referred to as pocks. Abra's doll
had them too, little black spots embedded in their once
flawless skin.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
Hers is mostly on her scalp, which I was able
to cover with the hair. From what I understand, it's
a deterioration in the plastic and from improper storage or
being you know in like locked away in basements or attics.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
There are a number of home remedies to ward off
the pox.
Speaker 7 (37:33):
I did follow some treatments where you literally use ZiT
cream some you know, oxy nine, oxy ten, whatever, you know,
the oxy ZiT creams called, and you apply it and
you wrap their their heads in cellophane and you just
let them sit out in the sun and enlightens it
(37:53):
a little.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Like other adoptive Cabby parents, Abra has to deal with
and disheveled dolls encrusted with filth from decades of neglect.
Speaker 7 (38:05):
The other thing is their bodies sometimes are really stained.
I soak them in. I have a little basin and
fill it with hot water and some oxy clean along
with a little bit of dawn soap, and I let
them soak.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Some like to restore cavvies to their original condition and
clothing when possible. Others like Abra are into using the
kids as a blank canvas to fill in with touchstones
of their youth.
Speaker 7 (38:35):
I completely re rooted her and cleaned her up, and
I made her into Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz,
which is a favorite movie of mine growing up. You know,
in the eighties, it would come on TV once a year,
and you know, I'd stamp and watch it. When I'm
restoring them, I'm making them into something that reminds me
(38:56):
of my childhood.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
If you take a closer look at the Facebook group,
you'll find something else happening, something a little deeper. Not
long ago, Abra posted a question was anyone else using
their cabbage patch kid as a way to deal with
unprocessed trauma.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
I started noticing that pattern on the group, that a
lot of people were all kind of like around the
same age. We're all you know gen X, you know,
we all seem to be the majority of us from
age forty five to fifty five. I was a little
scared to ask it first, but I said, hey, you know,
why not? And I went ahead and I just said, hey,
you know, you don't have to tell me what it is.
(39:37):
And some people started revealing what their trauma was. I
just was curious, or are a lot of you guys,
you know are did you have childhood trauma? Did you
have something? And you know this is why you got
back into collecting. And that opened up that discussion, which
was really interesting, and I resonated with.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Their responses came quickly, Yes, people said, and caring for
the kids helped them navigate certain emotional issues, from childhood
abuse to illness to being unable to bear children of
their own. For abra Her, cabbies are a way of
reconnecting with something that provided solace as a child when
(40:18):
her world was in upheaval.
Speaker 7 (40:20):
As a child, I didn't know how divorce worked, and
I remember just being at school like just stomach ache
all day because I was so afraid I was going
to come home and find my parents divorced and So
these cabbage batch kids, they were something I could go
to my room and just play with and take care
of and dress them up. They were a safe haven
(40:42):
for me. You know, I could tune out my parents,
you know, arguing and stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Today she's still caring for the doll, just in a
different way.
Speaker 7 (40:52):
It was a caregiver role, and I think that did
bring me joy and now too. Yeah, you know, restore
them is an act of love and carrying in it is.
You know, I'm restoring them, I'm fixing them. I'm bringing
them back to life.
Speaker 8 (41:08):
Abra is onto something so I could project my own uncertaints,
my own anxieties and fears onto it, and then I
can in turn soothe it, which fits.
Speaker 9 (41:20):
In well with the Union notion of projecting out these
constructs that might be unconscious. So this is a way
I don't have to directly say the world is scary.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
That's David Bosh, a consumer behavior expert and associate professor
of psychology at New York University. David studies how businesses
connect with consumers and how consumers connect with material goods or,
in this case, dolls.
Speaker 9 (41:51):
What the hell can I do?
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Instead?
Speaker 9 (41:54):
I can turn to my cabbage patch kid, and I
can nurture myself through nurturing the cabbage patch kid.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
But nothing exists in a vacuum. Remember Shirley Temple dolls.
They succeeded at the height of an economic crisis when
the country was feeling despondent. In the nineteen eighties, things
were fraught too, just in a different way. That jolly
Christmas season also brought the day after a disturbingly realistic
(42:25):
made for television movie about the consequences of nuclear warfare.
It was seen by over one hundred million people, generating
fresh anxiety over mutually assured destruction. So called latchkey kids
were in the news too, coming home from school to
an empty house while both parents were at work. The
(42:48):
kids were a welcome companion, or what some psychologists believed
was an adoption fantasy. A cabbage patch kid didn't just
want care, they seemed to need it.
Speaker 9 (43:02):
Yeah, so sure, the idea of it wanting your attention,
of it having an urgent need, of its having its
arms stretched out waiting for a hug, wanting to give
a hug, right, So that brings up this notion that
in this case, dolls can serve different functions and can
be mentally represented, which includes emotional representation in different ways.
(43:28):
This doll is not a product. This doll is not
something that you own. This doll is something that you
interact with. So in this case, it's not about acquisition.
It's not about their uniqueness. It's not that I want
the exact one that my favorite celebrity also has. In fact,
that's not what I want because it's not about possession.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
In this case, it's about a relationship.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
And sure marketing was a big part of it, so
was the thrill of the chain, the idea you could
be a hero for finding an elusive doll coveted by
the masses. A cabbage patch kid wasn't some elitist acquisition.
They often sold for cost or around twenty bucks. It
(44:14):
wasn't about the money. It was proving that you, as
a parent, had the stamina the fortitude to obtain it.
For a child, it was tangible proof they were loved.
Speaker 9 (44:28):
There's uncertainly about what we can provide for our kids,
for our family. Can we fulfill those roles we believe
we should? Can we be the stand up people that
we feel we are and should be, And this represents
a way to compensate for that.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
But for Abra and the thousands of others still caring
for the dolls, the marketing hype has ceased to exist.
There are no more long lines in front of a
department store, no media hysteria over broken legs and base,
no fear of missing out. It's only when you strip
(45:04):
away the kids as a commodity that you get to
their essence. The kids were someone to care for a
tiny brother or sister. That part seems obvious, but the
reverse was also true. In darker times. These dolls provided
a feeling of security. They seemed to care right.
Speaker 7 (45:26):
Back, you know, in a way. I think I felt
that they gave me a love. Their love wasn't going
to be taken away. And now that you know, I'm
really processing stuff, you know, going through some repressed memories
and finally dealing with it, these Cabbage Patch Kids bring
me back to that simpler time.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
They were a safe haven for me Today. Mass produced
at Cabbage Patch Kids are licensed and manufactured by Wicked
Cool Toys out of Bristol, Pennsylvania. If you want an
original kid handmade, you can visit Babyland General in Cleveland, Georgia,
which is still in business. Many people we spoke to
(46:09):
for this story still have a Cabbage Patch kid Abra
of course, but also Roger and Lena. We'll always have
toy fads. You might be scouting for a La Booboo
or whatever TikTok declares the thing of the week, the
toy that disappears online faster than you can hit refresh.
(46:29):
Parents still drive too far, spend too much, and hunch
over their laptops at three am trying to beat a
bot army to the checkout button. But not every craze
leaves it to mark the way that Cabbage Patch Kids did.
For decades after their debut, the Cabbage Patch Kids are
(46:50):
still being washed, re stuffed, rewigged, and renamed, not because
anyone's worrying about Christmas morning, but because the feelings they
carried never expired. That's what makes them more than a
weird eighties footnote. They were away for Latchkey Kids, divorce kids,
(47:12):
the ones who watched the day after and went to
bed scared to practice being caregivers in a world that
often felt unstable, that still feels unstable. Eventually, Abra says,
some members of the Facebook group will have an in
person meetup If so, they'll be easy to spot.
Speaker 7 (47:34):
There is no doubt in my mind that we would
have our some cabbage Patch.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Kids with us.
Speaker 7 (47:38):
I bought a cabbage Patch T shirt and I have
cabbage Patch earrings, and I think you just find us
all kind of decked out in cabbage Patch attire and
with our dolls.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
If that happens, it won't look like the department store
riots of nineteen eighty three. No elbows to rib, no
baseball bets, just a room full of middle aged kids
and the dolls that helped them get through. Who knows,
maybe Larry Mazoe will join to I.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Don't remember them being homely or anything. I just don't
remember that. I thought they were cute, you know.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
I remember the most people loving them and puddling them
and things like that.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 10 (48:34):
Today's episode was produced in partnership with School of Humans.
This show was hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnette, and
Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. This episode
was written by Jake Rowson. Our story editor is Virginia
Prescott from School of Humans. Producers are Amelia Brock and
(48:54):
Etilye's Perez. Editing and sam designed by Jonathan Washington and
Josh Fisher. Additional editing by Mary Doo, fixing and mastering
by Josh Fisher. Research and fact checking by Jake Rosson,
Virginia Prescott and Austin Thompson. Original music by Elise McCoy,
Show logo by Lucy Kintonia, Social clips by Yrberry Media.
(49:19):
Executive producers of today's episode are Virginia Prescott and Jason English.
We'll be back next week one more holiday episode before Christmas.
Speaker 4 (49:28):
If you ever want to share a comment or a question,
hit us up Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com
well through another mailbag episode at some point.
Speaker 10 (49:39):
Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts
VCRs leather coats cigarettes in the nineteen eighties. If it
somehow finds its way off a truck, the five families
of the New York Mafia will find a way to
make money on it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, here's what happens.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
As hijackers, we weren't known as hijackets, Like we will
go steal the trucks, but lower level criminals would go
probably hijacket truck.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
That's Larry Matza, a former associate of the Colombo crime family.
We're not going to get into all the colorful details
of Larry's exploits. It's probably enough to just tell you
that his boss was nicknamed the Grim Reaper.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
It could be anything from liquor to you know, pvs,
and we had, you know, the back of the club
looked like a crazy eddy warehouse at plans with just
you know, stereos and things like that.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
The club Larry is referring to is his boss's social
hangout where wise guys convene to talk shop. But during
the nineteen eighty three holiday season, their inventory is a
wash in another kind of contraband.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Well, yeah, we knew the capush tracks dolls.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
The walls of the Grim Reaper's office is stocked floor
to ceiling with Cabbage Patch Kids, the smiling, stuffed dolls
with an adoption marketing gimmick that have become the most
coveted gift of the year, maybe even the century.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
We knew they were popular, and we didn't go steal them,
like I said, but we had somebody bring us a
large truckload and I'm not talking a lot of track, the
trailer truckload of these cabbage Patch dolls. And we probably
sold them in less than a week, thousands of them,
you know, because people were just going crazy for them.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
The demand for these odd looking little dolls is such
that violence is breaking out. Strangely enough, it isn't organized
crime that's responsible. Its parents kicking, punching, and clawing their
way through store aisles, reduced to their most primitive impulses
(02:18):
to score one of the elusive kids for their children.
So what exactly was in the air or the culture
that turned toy stores into fight clubs and the mafia
into a doll dealership, and what happens when the owners
of the dolls grow up? Welcome to very special episodes
(02:44):
and Iheart's original podcast. I'm your host Danas Schwartz and
this is the cabbage Patch Crisis.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Welcome back to very special episodes. I'm Jason English. I
am usually joined at the top by Dana Schwartz and
Zaren Burnett. Dana is going to be here in just
a second. I just wanted to start by acknowledging that
we lost a friend of the show this week with
the tragic murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner. If you remember,
last summer, Rob was our guest on an episode about
(03:20):
the summer that John F. Kennedy spent as a journalist,
kind of a forgotten period in his history that Rob
helped color in. I got to work with both Rob
and Michelle on their podcast about the JFK assassination who
killed JFK? And I just wanted to share how wonderful
(03:41):
they were to all of us. Rob would ask about
our kids, He'd want to know where we grew up.
He was as good on a zoom with three people
as he was on any talk show. I left every
interaction just thinking like, Wow, he was way cooler. So
then he really needs to be just hopping on to
(04:03):
talk JFK with us on this show, which he absolutely
did not need to do. He offered to do it well,
still on vacation overseas. I remember we were working on
trying to find a time that would work for everybody.
He had been developing another podcast with us. We were
supposed to have the kickoff meeting literally today, Wednesday, December seventeenth.
(04:27):
It's it's kind of surreal. It's still on my calendar.
And look, there were a million people who were a
lot closer to him than me. I was a work
acquaintance at best. But I just today feel compelled to
say how much I'm going to miss getting to work
with him, and how Grady was to all of us,
(04:48):
and we're going to miss him.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Kids are materialists. Try as we might to teach them
the true meaning of the holiday season, goodwill toward others,
charitable endeavors, or at least shoveling the driveway, they're often
happiest when they unwrap the big gift, a Nintendo, a bike,
a pair of headphones. In nineteen eighty Three's a Christmas Story,
(05:15):
little Ralphie was desperate to get a Red Rider baby
gun lest his entire world collapse. The concept of a
hot toy everyone wants isn't a new phenomenon in the
nineteen thirties, people went crazy for Shirley Temple dolls. The
child actress with a halo of blonde curls was one
(05:38):
of the most popular movie stars of the era. The
toy company Ideal sold an astounding one point five million
of them in nineteen thirty five, right in the middle
of the Great Depression. A couple of decades later, Barbie
arrived on the scene with her endless accessories. If you're
a child of the nineteen eighty you had an abundance
(06:02):
of options Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears or Baby Alive. Each year,
Kenner sold a million of those dolls, which ate and
filled their own diapers, just like a real infant. But
the dull success story of the century doesn't start with
a massive toy company, a movie star, or any special features.
(06:25):
It starts with an artist named Xavier Roberts and his
line of one of a kind dolls that some people
found well, let's just say, unconventionally attractive.
Speaker 5 (06:38):
Here she shocked me with a little person named Lavinia
Merle that was in a box that we were wrapping
for my daughter's Christmas present.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
That's Roger Schlafer. In the nineteen eighties, Roger is a licenser.
His business is tracking down products that had potential in retail,
sort of like a talent scout for inanimate objects. It's
Roger's wife who introduces him to Xavier's creation, which she
had bought as a gift. It's an auspicious beginning.
Speaker 5 (07:12):
And I opened it up and I was shocked to say,
this really ugly dolls staring up at me.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Xavier's handcrafted dolls, which he called little People, are rendered
in what's known as soft sculpture. That's where an artist
tugs and stitches fabric to create physical features like smiles, dimples, toes,
and fingers. They have yarn for hair and Xavier's distinctive
(07:40):
signature stitched into their rumps. Roberts is a kind of
Etsy sellar before Etsy, hand crafting dolls for a growing fanbase,
devoted enough to make pilgrimages to Babyland General in Cleveland, Georgia,
a delightfully kitchy doll hospital where babies are said to
(08:02):
be born from an actual cabbage patch, complete with nurses,
delivery rooms, and an earnest adoption ceremony that feels half
performance art, half country fair. It's worth noting that the
idea of adoptable soft sculpture dolls wasn't exactly original to Xavier.
(08:23):
A Kentucky artist named Martha Nelson Thomas had sold similar
creations she named doll Babies at a gift shop operated
by Xavier Roberts years prior. Martha later sued him, alleging
he had adopted her idea without permission. The two settled
(08:44):
out of court, with Roberts admitting he was inspired by
Thomas's work. That debate over their origins aside, Xavier Roberts
is doing very well with these distinctive dolls, selling them
one at a time. Roger sees the bigger picture. Rather
than craft them by hand, he envisions a process by
(09:07):
which the little people can be mass manufactured while still
retaining their unique handcrafted appeal.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
So every doll would be different. It would be the
first mass marketed one of a kind doll. Every head
would have different eye color, some would have freckles, some wooden,
some would have dimples, some wooden. The hair color would vary,
and of course there are countless hair color and eye
color possibilities, and hair style would be different, and they'd
(09:40):
be dressed differently. And that was like one of the
biggest things in the history of the toy business, the
first one of a kind doll, and it was done
at the most affordable price imaginable.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Unlike Roberts dolls, which could sell for hundreds, Roger's version
will retail for just twenty eight bucks. But he has
one immediate problem. The name Little People is already taken.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
And then they discovered that Fisher Price own the name,
so basically they had nothing to license. In fact, their
lawyer at the time the fell named Bill Needle, said
I don't see what you're going to license, and I
told him, by the time I'm done, you'll see.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Instead, Roger comes up with the name cabbage Patch Kids,
after the folk tale of babies emerging from a cabbage
patch rather than being dropped off by a stork. Armed
with a deal with Xavier Roberts, Roger finds a willing
partner in Calco. It's not a name you hear much
about these days, but back in the nineteen eighties, Kaliko
(10:52):
was doing well thanks to its video game system, Kaliko Vision,
and other electronic toys. They weren't particularly known for dolls,
but they shared Roger's vision for what the cabbage Patch
Kids could be. They agree to manufacture and distribute these
sixteen inch tall dolls, complete with adoption papers. In a
(11:17):
clever bit of marketing, they're packaged in a sea through
box with their arms reaching out as though they're pleading
for a hug, begging to be freed from their cardboard
and plastic prison. Calico's Cabbage Patch Kids debut at the
nineteen eighty three Toy Fair, the annual parade of plastic
(11:38):
is where manufacturers try to wow retail chains like Toys
r Us or Kymart into placing giant orders. The Kids
arrived with a tailwind. Word has already spread from a
Canadian toy show that these dolls were the must see item.
Speaker 5 (11:58):
What the a brilliant market or for Kalico did. They
had a two hundred thousand square foot facility in Quebec
and they rebuilt an adoption center in the center of
the facility and they hadaa fly up three or four
of their cutest nurses because they were dressed like nurses,
(12:19):
and the nurses were the ones who took the buyers.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Throughaa is Xavier's company, Original Appalachian Artworks.
Speaker 5 (12:29):
So before the International Toy Fair even opened, every major
toy buyer in the world had heard that the most
exciting thing in the Canadian toy fair bar Nun was
cabbage Patch Kids. So almost on opening day in February
nineteen eighty three, every doll was on consignment and Kalico
(12:52):
was demanding cash up front for whomever wanted them.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
But Kalico isn't going to rely on word of mouth.
As early as June, the company begins an extensive advertising
campaign on television and in print.
Speaker 5 (13:10):
Well it started the middle of June. We introduced in
New York and again there were some great marketers at
Calico in the New York market. The week of the
introduction they ran a full page ad adopted Cabbage Patch
Kid doll in the New York Times, and they ran
spot TV with some really great commercials in the Tri
(13:35):
State area. So kids were pumped up. They were asking
their mother, even though it was off season, to get
them a Cabbage Patch Kid. And part of the deal
for the introduction was Macy's had agreed to give a
thirty fourth Street positioning of the Cabbage Patch Kids on
(13:59):
thirty fourth Street, which had tens of thousands of people
walking by every day.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Buzz is building around the kids. But stores actually do
the opposite of what you'd expect. Instead of jacking the
price up, they begin marking them down. They realize if
people are coming for the cabbage patch kids, they'll spend
money elsewhere in the store too.
Speaker 5 (14:27):
And instead of the dollars being twenty eight dollars, and
this is a big part of it, every mass mortionon
in the country was selling them for what they were paying,
which could have been eighteen or twenty dollars. So in
a year with a terrible economy, parents, fathers, mothers, aunt's, uncles, whatever,
(14:48):
could be a hero for twenty bucks if they could
get a hand on one. And the riot somehow, the
notion of that spread around the country.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Come the fall of nineteen eighty three, all any kid wants,
boy or girl is a cabbage patch doll, and all
any parent wants is to make their kid happy. That
proves to be a very combustible combination, and.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
The crowds were just literally fighting for dolls.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
At a Zayer store in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, a panicked
manager climbs onto a counter wielding a baseball bat, hoping
to hold off a mob of roughly one thousand people.
He has good reason to be afraid. One woman is
swallowed up by the crush of bodies and is trampled.
She's wheeled out of the store with a broken leg.
(15:42):
Four other shoppers also wind up in the hospital. In
West Virginia, five thousand people storm a Hills department store
Like soldiers on the beaches of Normandy. Tables are toppled
as shoppers practically hurl themselves through the air matrix style,
only to discover there are only one hundred and twenty
(16:04):
dollars to go around. Elsewhere, people line up for hours
in the bitter cold, sprint into stores at opening and
find the shelves empty. That's when fists start flying. Grown
adults rip dolls out of shopping carts and out of
children's arms. When police are called and restore order, some
(16:27):
desperate customers start fighting them too. Naturally, all this parent
on parent violence attracts the media. News crews park outside
of toy stores. Newspapers run breathless coverage of cabbage patch riots.
It becomes a feedback loop the dolls in demand. That
(16:47):
demand leads to fights. The fight's goose media coverage, which
ratchets up demand, which leads to more violence. Calico is
both delighted and blindsided. They charter jets to fly in
two hundred thousand cabbage patch dolls from Hong Kong each
week to keep up. They even pull their TV ads
(17:10):
after parents and consumer affairs advocates complain that they're promoting
a product that very few can actually buy. In a
classic conspiracy theory, some even allege Kaliko is holding back
inventory on purpose. Stores begin taking extreme measures to cope
with the demand. One in Lawrence, Kansas, keeps its limited
(17:34):
stock locked in a bank vault and holds a lottery
to draw winners. Others admit entrance to only ten customers
at a time, reducing the chances of bloodied noses. At
least one store hires a full time employee just to
answer the phone and say we have no Cabbage Patch
(17:56):
kids in stock. A Woolworth's in Jack's County, Florida games
it up. They announce over the loudspeaker that there is
one doll hidden somewhere in the store, unleashing a frantic
treasure hunt. Boscovs has the most brazen idea of all
selling vouchers that entitle the bearer to a doll whenever
(18:19):
stock gets replenished, which they hope will be the following April.
Just what every kid wants for Christmas, a coupon. The
mania gets so out of hand that Time and Newsweek
scrutinize it. Johnny Carson makes jokes on The Tonight Show
(18:41):
not even the White House can navigate what has become
the most frenzied and violent holiday toy season in history. First,
Lady Nancy Reagan makes it known she wants two dolls
to give to a pair of Korean children awaiting surgery
in the US Khalico. Initially, he tells her they don't
(19:01):
have any to give. They relent only when the media
picks up the story. Children do want other toys, like
the newly released Mister t doll, but nothing else triggers
the same full blown elbows out chaos as the kids
in a Bleak punchline. The Wall Street Journal reports a
(19:24):
poll where people say they're more anxious about getting a
doll than about nuclear annihilation. By the fall of nineteen
eighty three, cabbage patch kids are no longer just toys.
They're a kind of currency, something parents, retailers, and as
we heard even the mob can use to prove their connected,
(19:48):
powerful or just lucky. Here's Larry Matsa again.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
I tell my five guys, you could take the dolls
for twenty five dollars and they'll go sell them for fifty.
So you know, we were known for that, you know,
for these different things. People would come and the men
would go out and have their people word of mouth.
Before you know it, I mean, coops were coming in
buying cabbage patch dolls for their family.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Unfortunately or fortunately not everyone could turn to the mafia
for their dollphis. But they weren't the only opportunists during
the cabbage crisis, which is how across town several lawyers
and a judge find themselves in a courtroom in a
heated discussion over doll butts. In November nineteen eighty three,
(20:44):
Customs officials in San Francisco, California are facing a serious problem.
In front of them are twelve thousand soft sculpture dolls
with cute faces and tiny Vinyl sneakers. But these aren't
Cabbage Patch kids. They're flower kids. A near identical doll
(21:06):
being shipped from Hong Kong to cash in on the
insatiable demand calico created customs agents don't know quite what
to do. Are the Flower Kids simply shameless knockoffs or
counterfeit babies that need to be seized like illicit contraband
At the height of cabbage Mania, this wasn't an unusual occurrence.
(21:31):
For a period of time. In nineteen eighty three, Kaliko
and Xavier Roberts were both busy trying to swat off
the endless copycat products popping up to meet the demand.
Everyone wanted a doll, well almost everyone.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I never collected to buy a doll. I didn't have
a kid or sibling in that universe.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
That's Paul Friedland. At the time, Paul was a junior
lawyer at a New York firm with satellite office in
Hong Kong. They'd been enlisted by the Blue Box Toy Factory,
the US distribution arm of the Flower Kids, to fight
a lawsuit brought by Xavier Roberts. The suit alleged the
(22:15):
Flower Kids were cute little copyright infringers. The problem there
wasn't much time to prepare.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
It was a phone call from Hong Kong.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Morning in Hong Kong, and it was evening in New
York and it's someone had to go down to court
the next morning to defend flower Kids, and I, as
a junior associate, was one of the only people in
the office.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
If the flower Kids are permitted to be sold, it's
only fair they'd be made available in time for the
holiday shopping season. There are only a few more weeks
until Christmas. The opposing parties and the judge would have
to arrive at a conclusion quickly.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
So I defended our ferb and I was the advocate
defended the Flower Kids from the clean that it was
an infringement and a knockof fan Well, it was a knockoff,
but that wasn't a point the question whether it was
confusing people.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Things get off to a shaky start. The district court
Judge Abraham Sofair takes a look at the six Cabbage
Patch dolls and the one Flower Kids doll and then
loudly asks which is which. But Paul and his team
argue the Flower Kids are different enough. There's no adoption
(23:34):
gimmick with these dolls. Physically, the Cabbage dolls have removable shoes,
the flower Kids don't. The cabbages have recessed chins and
dimpled knees. Diapers and a belly button. The Flower Kids
have none of those. In the most striking exchange of
(23:54):
the case, Paul declares his client's dolls are also missing
one key feature.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
They don't have a cute tosh.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
There's really no other way to say this. The Flower
Kids are missing a butt crack, a distinctive signature feature
of Klico's cabbage Patch Kids, and Paul argues the Flower
Kids were, on the whole, not as homely as the
legit cabbage Patch Kids. In response, Xavier's team introduces a
(24:29):
hastily collected bit of evidence. They pulled shoppers at them all,
ushering them into a spare room and asking them if
they could identify the doll sitting in front of them.
Sixty four percent answered that it was likely a cabbage
Patch doll, but it was actually a Flower kid, reinforcing
the idea of consumer confusion. Rather than risk the danger
(24:52):
of harboring unguarded Cabbage Patch and Flower kids, Judge so
Fair alects to keep the valuable locked in his chambers
when court adjourns for the day. Maybe he wanted time
alone with them to study their unblinking eyes for any
hint of guilt. Or innocence. In the end, the judge
(25:14):
sides with Blue Box. The Flower Kids, he reasoned, could
not reliably be confused for the Cabbage Patch Kids. Though
they did look similar, so did a lot of dolls
that pole in the mall. It didn't prove much because
the doll lacked the distinctive Cabbage Patch packaging. Most importantly,
(25:37):
he Judge so Fair argues, the sheer demand for the
Cabbage Patch Kids actually reduces the chance for confusion. If
a parent brought home a cabbage bootleg, he reasoned, the
child would recognize the fake instantly and be devastated. It
was the overriding fear of disappointing their kids that convinced
(25:59):
the judge that the Flower Kids posed no existential or
commercial threat to Calico. He denies the request for an injunction. Soon,
hundreds of thousands of Flower Kids are filling store shelves.
A desperate enough parent can pick up a Flower Kid
(26:20):
or any number of other copycat products like lettuce leaf babies,
which are just nylon stockings stuffed with some polyester. You
could look to the classifieds, where some people sold the
kids at a steep markup, or you could do what
Edward Pennington did and go to some pretty extreme measures.
(26:46):
Edward Pennington is a male carrier living in Shawnee, Kansas,
during that fraught holiday season. Like a lot of dads,
his daughter, five year old Lena, wants a cabbage Patch
kid more than anything else in the world. Give Lena
a choice between world peace and a doll with a
copyright protected cute tush, and Lina would probably pick the
(27:09):
doll every time.
Speaker 6 (27:11):
Yep, I came home and told my parents that I
wanted a cabbage Patch doll.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
That's Lena. She understands the cabbage Patch frenzy now, but
at the time she didn't really grasp how wild things
had gotten in the aisles of American department stores.
Speaker 6 (27:29):
At the time. No, I had no idea. The fact
that people were going absolutely and saying over these dolls,
and parents were going crazy trying to get these dolls
for their kids at the time was not even in
my mind.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
All she knew was that the dolls were a kind
of magic babies with names, documentation, personalities. Surely her parents
would come through, but in Kansas, like everywhere else, the
dolls were impossible to find. Then Lena's mother, Maggie hears
an intriguing report on the local news.
Speaker 6 (28:05):
She heard on the news that the only place that
they would be found they weren't here in the States,
but they find the dolls in London.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That wouldn't help most parents, but the Penningtons have an
ace up their sleeve. Maggie is a flight attendant. That
means perks like being able to score cheap airline tickets.
So in early December, Edward takes a vacation from the
post office and flies thousands of miles to London. He's
(28:37):
greeted at Heathrow by reporters from the London Daily Star.
The paper has promised to secure him five of the
dolls in exchange for an exclusive interview. It all feels
a little like a spy handoff. He's escorted to a
vehicle in the airport parking lot where the reporters have
snashed their cabbage patch can Back home, Lena cannot believe
(29:03):
what she was seeing.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
He came back with five cabbage Batch dolls.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
She gets to choose two.
Speaker 6 (29:10):
Oh, I mean completely ecstatic and shocked. You're gonna bring
me to tears, but I knew my family would come
through like it was an amazing feeling that like literally
is bringing me to tears right now.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
Edward gives one doll to the local newspaper that helped
connect him to the journalists in London. While he could
have easily sold the remaining two at a significant markup,
he instead donates one to the Children's Mercy Hospital and
the other to the local TV station where Maggie first
heard the news. Edward's trip becomes another cabbage patch story,
(29:56):
though one that appeals to our better angels. Touches down
from London and is whisked off for an interview on
Nightline with Ted Copple.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
When he was flying back to Kansas City. He actually
got pretty tipsy off of Remy Martin, and when we
found out we were going to be on Nightline with
Ted couple, they had to quickly sober my dad up
for the interview. So my dad was absolutely amazing. He
had an amazing personality. He was just a cool cat,
(30:30):
you know.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
But not everyone is captivated by the story. A Toronto
Star columnist argued that Edward Pennington's mission set up an
impossible standard. Most parents couldn't hop continents on short notice.
They had to hope they'd get lucky and find a
cabbage patch kid in stock, all while ducking an uppercut
(30:53):
from a rival shopper. And the cabbage patch craze was
sparking more than just pressure. The adoption gimmick, birth certificates, paperwork,
the annual birthday card was raising hackles among adoption advocates.
They argued that the concept trivialized real adoptions. Others worried
(31:16):
that presenting these dolls as ugly but adoptable sent a
damaging message to actual adopted kids that they were the
product of a low tier vegetable. It's hard to say
how much the adoption gimmick actually influenced kids, but Roger
Schlaefer insists the craze wasn't driven by that marketing hook alone.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
When they were little people, when people would go to
Babyland General or one of the adoption centers, they would
go through the adoption and there would be that ritual.
But that was so secondary, I mean, that was neat.
And the press picked up on the gimmick. This was
the first on mechanical, non electronic gimmick. It was a
(32:03):
piece of paper. But if you think of the riots,
you have to say, well, nobody was adopting them. Then
and parents they were. When the kids opened the present,
weather it was a birthday or for Christmas, they were thrilled.
They weren't, you know, the adoption really didn't mean anything,
but they got one. It had its own name.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
By the end of nineteen eighty three, Calico had sold
between two point five and three million Cabbage Patch Kids,
breaking the record setting sales of the poop producing Baby Alive.
It had become the most successful doll launch in toy history.
By nineteen eighty four, the kids were in twenty million
(32:47):
homes with an array of tie in merch.
Speaker 5 (32:51):
Bedding and children's apparel, doing whole lines of clothes, not
just t shirts, but lunchboxes and dollar accessories. They were
all set up, so by the end of nineteen eighty
three they were already in production. And in nineteen eighty four,
when we hit an all time record of two billion
(33:14):
dollars in retail sales, two thirds of that was non dollars.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
There was even a low sugar Cabbage Patch Kids Cereal,
though it was not a big hit. By the mid
nineteen eighties, cabbage mania was waning, and not because of
the cereal Khaliko, which had once struggled to make enough
dolls began making too many. The company went from boom
(33:44):
to bust, and during bankruptcy proceedings after betting too heavily
on their personal computing products, not even getting the toy
license for Rambo could save them. And that seemingly was
that the kids faded into a kind of toy obscurity
destined for future nostalgia think pieces online and eBay auctions
(34:09):
shelves were cleared to make way for the next hot toy.
Consumers bought game boys and tickle me elmos, brats, dolls,
and furbies. But unlike most of these types of fads,
the kids were about to have a second act. In
a weird twist, these dolls were going to get more
(34:31):
care and attention than they ever had before. Abrasion remembers
her first cabbage Patch kid, well, her first cabbage patch
knockoff kid.
Speaker 7 (34:51):
And I actually had a fake one at first that
my parents bought me at like a local festival, and
I loved her, but she was fake and my friends
would be like, oh, she's fake.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Having a phony cabbage Patch kid was socially unacceptable. Fortunately,
for Christmas nineteen eighty four, Abra got her first real kid.
Like millions of other eighties children, cabbage Patch kids weren't
just toys. They were tiny, manageable relationships. They engendered a
(35:25):
feeling of nurturing and satisfied a need to be needed.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
I just felt like these, to me, somehow, were like
real babies that I needed to take care of, that
I wanted to take care of. They were just adorable
and they were just so cute.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Of course, Abra got older and her cabbage Patch kids
were relegated to the metaphorical box of things from childhood.
But a few years ago, in her forties, Abra came
to a realization the kids still meant something, just a
different something.
Speaker 7 (35:59):
Just bringing back some of my innocence and tying in
not just Cabbage Patch kids, but also just the whole,
you know, eighties and gen X kind of thing somehow
brings me comfort. I feel like things were more innocent
back then.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
It was around this time that Abra discovered a Cabbage
Patch Kids group on Facebook. This isn't the official group,
but a looser, more convevial gathering of mostly adults who
have maintained or rediscovered a strong emotional bond with their kid,
Virtually strolling through the group is a fascinating experience. While
(36:41):
nostalgia is part of it, there's something else going on.
A lot of the discussion revolves around the restoration of kids,
whom they affectionately call Cabbies. Time can be unkind to
mass produced toys, and the plastic heads of the dolls
(37:02):
can develop what devotees referred to as pocks. Abra's doll
had them too, little black spots embedded in their once
flawless skin.
Speaker 7 (37:13):
Hers is mostly on her scalp, which I was able
to cover with the hair. From what I understand, it's
a deterioration in the plastic and from improper storage or
being you know in like locked away in basements or attics.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
There are a number of home remedies to ward off
the pox.
Speaker 7 (37:33):
I did follow some treatments where you literally use ZiT
cream some you know, oxy nine, oxy ten, whatever, you know,
the oxy ZiT creams called, and you apply it and
you wrap their their heads in cellophane and you just
let them sit out in the sun and enlightens it
(37:53):
a little.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Like other adoptive Cabby parents, Abra has to deal with
and disheveled dolls encrusted with filth from decades of neglect.
Speaker 7 (38:05):
The other thing is their bodies sometimes are really stained.
I soak them in. I have a little basin and
fill it with hot water and some oxy clean along
with a little bit of dawn soap, and I let
them soak.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Some like to restore cavvies to their original condition and
clothing when possible. Others like Abra are into using the
kids as a blank canvas to fill in with touchstones
of their youth.
Speaker 7 (38:35):
I completely re rooted her and cleaned her up, and
I made her into Dorothy Gale from the Wizard of Oz,
which is a favorite movie of mine growing up. You know,
in the eighties, it would come on TV once a year,
and you know, I'd stamp and watch it. When I'm
restoring them, I'm making them into something that reminds me
(38:56):
of my childhood.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
If you take a closer look at the Facebook group,
you'll find something else happening, something a little deeper. Not
long ago, Abra posted a question was anyone else using
their cabbage patch kid as a way to deal with
unprocessed trauma.
Speaker 7 (39:15):
I started noticing that pattern on the group, that a
lot of people were all kind of like around the
same age. We're all you know gen X, you know,
we all seem to be the majority of us from
age forty five to fifty five. I was a little
scared to ask it first, but I said, hey, you know,
why not? And I went ahead and I just said, hey,
you know, you don't have to tell me what it is.
(39:37):
And some people started revealing what their trauma was. I
just was curious, or are a lot of you guys,
you know are did you have childhood trauma? Did you
have something? And you know this is why you got
back into collecting. And that opened up that discussion, which
was really interesting, and I resonated with.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Their responses came quickly, Yes, people said, and caring for
the kids helped them navigate certain emotional issues, from childhood
abuse to illness to being unable to bear children of
their own. For abra Her, cabbies are a way of
reconnecting with something that provided solace as a child when
(40:18):
her world was in upheaval.
Speaker 7 (40:20):
As a child, I didn't know how divorce worked, and
I remember just being at school like just stomach ache
all day because I was so afraid I was going
to come home and find my parents divorced and So
these cabbage batch kids, they were something I could go
to my room and just play with and take care
of and dress them up. They were a safe haven
(40:42):
for me. You know, I could tune out my parents,
you know, arguing and stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Today she's still caring for the doll, just in a
different way.
Speaker 7 (40:52):
It was a caregiver role, and I think that did
bring me joy and now too. Yeah, you know, restore
them is an act of love and carrying in it is.
You know, I'm restoring them, I'm fixing them. I'm bringing
them back to life.
Speaker 8 (41:08):
Abra is onto something so I could project my own uncertaints,
my own anxieties and fears onto it, and then I
can in turn soothe it, which fits.
Speaker 9 (41:20):
In well with the Union notion of projecting out these
constructs that might be unconscious. So this is a way
I don't have to directly say the world is scary.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
That's David Bosh, a consumer behavior expert and associate professor
of psychology at New York University. David studies how businesses
connect with consumers and how consumers connect with material goods or,
in this case, dolls.
Speaker 9 (41:51):
What the hell can I do?
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Instead?
Speaker 9 (41:54):
I can turn to my cabbage patch kid, and I
can nurture myself through nurturing the cabbage patch kid.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
But nothing exists in a vacuum. Remember Shirley Temple dolls.
They succeeded at the height of an economic crisis when
the country was feeling despondent. In the nineteen eighties, things
were fraught too, just in a different way. That jolly
Christmas season also brought the day after a disturbingly realistic
(42:25):
made for television movie about the consequences of nuclear warfare.
It was seen by over one hundred million people, generating
fresh anxiety over mutually assured destruction. So called latchkey kids
were in the news too, coming home from school to
an empty house while both parents were at work. The
(42:48):
kids were a welcome companion, or what some psychologists believed
was an adoption fantasy. A cabbage patch kid didn't just
want care, they seemed to need it.
Speaker 9 (43:02):
Yeah, so sure, the idea of it wanting your attention,
of it having an urgent need, of its having its
arms stretched out waiting for a hug, wanting to give
a hug, right, So that brings up this notion that
in this case, dolls can serve different functions and can
be mentally represented, which includes emotional representation in different ways.
(43:28):
This doll is not a product. This doll is not
something that you own. This doll is something that you
interact with. So in this case, it's not about acquisition.
It's not about their uniqueness. It's not that I want
the exact one that my favorite celebrity also has. In fact,
that's not what I want because it's not about possession.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
In this case, it's about a relationship.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
And sure marketing was a big part of it, so
was the thrill of the chain, the idea you could
be a hero for finding an elusive doll coveted by
the masses. A cabbage patch kid wasn't some elitist acquisition.
They often sold for cost or around twenty bucks. It
(44:14):
wasn't about the money. It was proving that you, as
a parent, had the stamina the fortitude to obtain it.
For a child, it was tangible proof they were loved.
Speaker 9 (44:28):
There's uncertainly about what we can provide for our kids,
for our family. Can we fulfill those roles we believe
we should? Can we be the stand up people that
we feel we are and should be, And this represents
a way to compensate for that.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
But for Abra and the thousands of others still caring
for the dolls, the marketing hype has ceased to exist.
There are no more long lines in front of a
department store, no media hysteria over broken legs and base,
no fear of missing out. It's only when you strip
(45:04):
away the kids as a commodity that you get to
their essence. The kids were someone to care for a
tiny brother or sister. That part seems obvious, but the
reverse was also true. In darker times. These dolls provided
a feeling of security. They seemed to care right.
Speaker 7 (45:26):
Back, you know, in a way. I think I felt
that they gave me a love. Their love wasn't going
to be taken away. And now that you know, I'm
really processing stuff, you know, going through some repressed memories
and finally dealing with it, these Cabbage Patch Kids bring
me back to that simpler time.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
They were a safe haven for me Today. Mass produced
at Cabbage Patch Kids are licensed and manufactured by Wicked
Cool Toys out of Bristol, Pennsylvania. If you want an
original kid handmade, you can visit Babyland General in Cleveland, Georgia,
which is still in business. Many people we spoke to
(46:09):
for this story still have a Cabbage Patch kid Abra
of course, but also Roger and Lena. We'll always have
toy fads. You might be scouting for a La Booboo
or whatever TikTok declares the thing of the week, the
toy that disappears online faster than you can hit refresh.
(46:29):
Parents still drive too far, spend too much, and hunch
over their laptops at three am trying to beat a
bot army to the checkout button. But not every craze
leaves it to mark the way that Cabbage Patch Kids did.
For decades after their debut, the Cabbage Patch Kids are
(46:50):
still being washed, re stuffed, rewigged, and renamed, not because
anyone's worrying about Christmas morning, but because the feelings they
carried never expired. That's what makes them more than a
weird eighties footnote. They were away for Latchkey Kids, divorce kids,
(47:12):
the ones who watched the day after and went to
bed scared to practice being caregivers in a world that
often felt unstable, that still feels unstable. Eventually, Abra says,
some members of the Facebook group will have an in
person meetup If so, they'll be easy to spot.
Speaker 7 (47:34):
There is no doubt in my mind that we would
have our some cabbage Patch.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Kids with us.
Speaker 7 (47:38):
I bought a cabbage Patch T shirt and I have
cabbage Patch earrings, and I think you just find us
all kind of decked out in cabbage Patch attire and
with our dolls.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
If that happens, it won't look like the department store
riots of nineteen eighty three. No elbows to rib, no
baseball bets, just a room full of middle aged kids
and the dolls that helped them get through. Who knows,
maybe Larry Mazoe will join to I.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
Don't remember them being homely or anything. I just don't
remember that. I thought they were cute, you know.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
I remember the most people loving them and puddling them
and things like that.
Speaker 4 (48:30):
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people.
Speaker 10 (48:34):
Today's episode was produced in partnership with School of Humans.
This show was hosted by Danish Schwartz, Zaren Burnette, and
Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. This episode
was written by Jake Rowson. Our story editor is Virginia
Prescott from School of Humans. Producers are Amelia Brock and
(48:54):
Etilye's Perez. Editing and sam designed by Jonathan Washington and
Josh Fisher. Additional editing by Mary Doo, fixing and mastering
by Josh Fisher. Research and fact checking by Jake Rosson,
Virginia Prescott and Austin Thompson. Original music by Elise McCoy,
Show logo by Lucy Kintonia, Social clips by Yrberry Media.
(49:19):
Executive producers of today's episode are Virginia Prescott and Jason English.
We'll be back next week one more holiday episode before Christmas.
Speaker 4 (49:28):
If you ever want to share a comment or a question,
hit us up Very Special Episodes at gmail dot com
well through another mailbag episode at some point.
Speaker 10 (49:39):
Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts
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