December 22, 2023 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Jonathan Alexandratos is a toy historian whose knowledge was featured in the film, Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids. Here’s Jonathan with the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids and how they set the wheels in motion for modern-day Black Friday.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Jonathan Alexandrados is
a toy historian whose knowledge was featured in the film
Billion Dollar Babies, The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids.
Here's Jonathan with the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids
and how they set the wheels in motion for modern
(00:31):
day Black Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So at eighteen fifty, way back, the US met its
first baby doll, and instantaneously the baby doll was not popular.
It took huntil the late eighteen hundreds for the thing
to actually catch on, but by nineteen twenty, the modern
conception of the baby doll was here. It was a
(00:55):
cloth body and at a sculpted head that was painted
typically what one might think of when they think of
the baby doll. That model stayed fairly popular throughout the
twentieth century. Once we get to nineteen seventy one, we
meet an artist Martha Nelson Marthin Nelson Thomas soon to
(01:17):
be and she's looking at the baby doll and she's
wondering what she could add to this genre of toy
and what she reaches for is something called soft sculpture.
So soft sculpture is basically the act of conceiving of
a sculpted head. Let's say that's made out of some
(01:38):
sort of cloth material, so you're kind of sewing it
so that the features are all evident in the ultimate
soft sculpture. That's Martha Nelson's interest. She makes these off
of input from kids that she knew at the time.
So she actually asked kids in her community, you know,
(01:59):
what they would like to see in a baby doll,
and she made those. Those are called doll babies. Martha
Nelson Thomas originally sold those in Appalachian craft fairs. She's
from Kentucky, and she would go to those regional craft
fairs and sell them. But by nineteen seventy six, she
meets Xavier Roberts at the craft fair who ultimately says, hey,
(02:21):
I would really like to start selling these on a
bigger scale. And initially Martha is kind of interested in this,
but after about a year, she's not so psyched about it.
She's kind of losing interest in that. So as a result,
Xavier Roberts says to her, well, I'm going to keep
(02:44):
selling them whether you want me to or not. And
what he does is he doesn't call them doll babies.
He calls them little People and Little People are supposed
to be different than doll babies, yet when you put
their picture side by side, they actually look pretty similar.
The features are the same, the scale is the same,
(03:07):
you know, the huffy cheeks, all of that is the same.
And Martha and Nelson Thomas and Xavier Roberts when they meet.
Martha is more or less just out of school. Xavier
is a little bit older than that. Xavier is a
heavily talented man in his own right. So I think
(03:29):
one of the misconceptions that sometimes happens in this story
is it becomes the story of an artist and the
person who stole the art, which, yes, there is an
element of that, but with Xavier Roberts, he actually is
a pretty talented like Wiltmaker, He's done artistic endeavors on
(03:50):
his own, so it's not so much random outsider. This
is actually somebody who knows the world pretty well. So
by nineteen seventy eight, Xavier Roberts is out selling his
Little People. He's doing well with that, but by nineteen
(04:10):
eighty two, Calico approaches him for a license because these
are selling so well, and by then the Little People,
presumably because Little People is a brand made by Fisher
Price since nineteen fifty nine have changed to being called
cabbage Patch Kids something different. Now. The thing with cabbage
(04:33):
Patch Kids that is unique is from Martha Nelson Thomas's
early days. She wanted these creations to be closer to
actually adopting a baby rather than getting a doll. So
(04:54):
as a result of that, these dolls would come with
birth certificates. They would be unique. Again, this goes all
the way back to Martha's idea. Xavier Roberts keeps that going,
so that these dolls have that novelty, but they're also
hearkening back to a very familiar play pattern. Remember I
(05:14):
had said that these dolls go as far back as
the eighteen hundreds, and the modern incarnation back to nineteen twenty.
So these are things that parents would reasonably see, look
at go oh, I played with something like that. But
the way these are kind of updated is cool. I
want to have that for my kids. So the way
(05:35):
in which parents kind of were directed towards the ultimate
Cabbage Patch Kid is totally understandable because it's an item
they recognized with a little bit of added novelty to it.
So who could resist that. So nineteen eighty two, Calico
(05:57):
gets the license from Xavier Roberts. That's where you see
the cabbage Patch kids that we all know, the ones
that have Exavier Roberts signature right there on the rear end,
you know, like those are the cabbage Patch Kids. It's
important to note that Martha Nelson Thomas did not just
fade away. She actually fought for her creation. In nineteen
(06:19):
seventy nine, she launched her first lawsuit against Xavier Roberts
for this. It was settled for an undisclosed amount, so
we actually don't know how much she got from that.
I think by all accounts it was probably not enough.
Given the ensuing craze that was going to happen. So
(06:42):
throughout the eighties, the cabbage Patch kid takes on. You
see riots essentially breaking out in stores over them.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
It was an unusual draw. The box was full of ballots,
more than four hundred of them. But if your name
was pulled, you didn't win a cab Patch doll. You
only won the chance to buy one. It's a roundabout
way of selling the dolls, but the store's manager says
it's the best way to avoid trouble.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Well, three weeks ago we had a sale on cabbage
patch and we had about two hundred people at the
front door, and we had thirty six dolls, and we
had a near riot. So this way we decided to
have a draw and be more orderly.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Kids are getting them, not even necessarily because they like them,
but because they represent a higher status. When you're at school,
you know you've got a cabbage patch kid. They weren't cheap,
you know, they were like thirty bucks at the time,
which is quite a lot. Actually, if you adjust for
inflation I think that brings it to around eighty today,
maybe a little more.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Getting a cabbage patch kid became more enviable than actually
having and keeping a cabbage patch kid in the sense
of the.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Fact that mom got one mad so much more than
what the product actually was. Again going back to this
idea of a status symbol. The fact that mom managed
to or dad or whoever, managed to fight through the crowds,
fight through the riot, fight through the guy with the
baseball bat, and actually get a cabbage patch kid at
(08:19):
the end of the day and bring it home victorious.
That said something about how much that parent loved their kid,
how much they were willing to do, how much they
were willing to fight through.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And we've been listening to Jonathan Alex Indrados. He's a
toy historian who knows a heck a lot of about
the subject. And by the way, we learned a bunch
toys as we know it, dolls, baby dolls as we
know them, didn't really come into existence truly in American
life till the late nineteenth century. There's some innovation, but
not a lot and income. Those Cabbage Patch kids and
(08:52):
cabbage Patch hysteria. And for any of you who lived
during that time period, what moms and dads would do
the ends of the earth. They'd go to to get
this toy, this doll for their kids was unlike anything
I'd ever seen. It was almost embarrassing. Sometimes waiting on lines,
you heard thirty dollars two hundred people showing up, not
(09:13):
just fights over these dolls, but riots and all so
there could be that special Christmas present for the kids.
When we come back more of the story of the
Cabbage Patch Kids here on our American Stories. And we
(09:39):
returned to our American Stories into the story of the
Cabbage Patch Kids told by toy historian Jonathan Alexandrados, beginning
with a news report from December of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Once the coupons were given out to those few parents
who would be allowed to buy a doll was given out,
that the dolls would be given out behind the store,
out back at the freight entrance, and then the race
was on. Otherwise dignified, calm, mannerly parents broke into a sprint.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Well, I had to take what they gave me, and
they gave me a boy, and I wanted a girl.
I sai, this is my second trip around.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
My husband works here, and I can't even get what
I want.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm miss work. I'm late for work to get this
for my little girl. I'm not going to tell my boss.
I'm trying to get there now.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
You're so excited.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
We waited here since seven point thirty, and I was
just ecstatic the fact I ran around and got another
ticket and.
Speaker 6 (10:32):
Within a matter of minutes it was over. You did
not get a cabbage punch doll this morning, No, I
did not. How badly do you want one?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Very very badly?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
One woman told us she's going to call her sisters
in Nebraska in Illinois to see if they can get
her a doll. If not, she's going to drive to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
It's what is it two hours to go to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I think it's worth going there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
If not, I'll try California. I have a niece that
lives in CALIFORNI.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Why are full grown adults fighting over these Well, here's
one reason I want to get it.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Look, this is something that consistently we see throughout pop
culture front cabbage Patch forward. Remember Jingle all the Way.
That's a comedy, right, And that's a comedy that's made
about a guy who basically does the same thing these
parents were doing when they were looking for Cabbage Patch kids.
He was finding Turboman to show that he was the Turboman,
(11:32):
he could be the best dad ever. And that's what
these parents were looking to do too. In many ways,
every holiday season there's one toy everyone has to have.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
I want the Turbo mass I figure with the oars
like that move your orange jetpack and the flooring sooner.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Getting it is every child's dream. Whoever doesn't can be
a real loser finding it.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
You got the doll?
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Is this Father's night there?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
I don't get that toy, I promise.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
When I was a kid, it was power Rangers. Power
Rangers were the thing that when they first came out,
nobody invested in power Rangers except for Toys r Us,
and Toys r US sold out of them very, very
very quickly. My uncle to this day insists he paid
a guy in a parking lot one hundred bucks to
get one for me for Christmas, and man I loved
that thing. And man I loved that uncle. So I
(12:25):
can imagine go back to the eighties, you'll see exactly
the same thing, the same story of the way fads
work and permeate the culture like that, where it almost
doesn't matter what the object is. I mean, people will
fight over it. It's something that we all have gone
through as a parent. You know, this landing shopping so
(12:49):
to get a cabbage patch kid really said something about
you know, who you were as a kid. It was
something that culturally we riffed on as well. You might
be familiar with the garbage pail kids, you know, those
were the sort of reaction to the cabbage patch kid.
Let's take this thing that's meant to be wholesome and
let's make it real ugly. You know, even sour patch kids, right,
(13:12):
the candy that's a riff on thotes. Before then they
were called marsmen, so you know, they get changed as
well to kind of play on this whole craze that's happening.
So this is a sensation. The other thing that happens,
which is interesting just from a toy creation standpoint, is
Colico actually thinks about how to replicate, at least in
(13:35):
some ways the craft arteisonal nature of what was once
to the doll baby, in that they made a computer
program that actually created individually unique heads for each cabbage
Patch kid.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Cabbage Patch kids are each different as can be.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So this idea that in the world of mass produced toys,
you know, if you buy Duke from Gi Joe, Duke
always looks exactly the same. That's the whole point of
that action figure. If you buy a cabbage Patch Kid, though,
you are the only person who has the cabbage Patch
Kid with that exact sculpt and pain application. So for example,
the dimples and the birthmarks and things like that, that's
(14:20):
all programmed to be unique. So then you have this
sensation of people going into stores looking for specific Cabbage
Patch kids that maybe look like them. The names. When
you actually look at the birth certificates contain names that
are culturally distinct there you know, from lots of different places,
(14:41):
at least in terms of the way they sound. This
is all new. So when Cabbage Patch Kids first came out, Kalico,
by no means had enough stock to keep pace with
the demand. So while all those riots are happening, Kaliko
is like, wait, wait, wait, note, we're opening up another factory.
(15:01):
We promise more is coming. Meanwhile, folks in the stores
are like, yeah, right, buddy, whatever, I'm getting this one.
I'd rather have that cabbage Patch than wait for you.
I don't believe you. They were actually doing their best, Kaliko,
but it's hard to convey that to a public pre Internet,
pre social media. You can't tweet about this stuff in
(15:25):
in the nineteen eighties, so you basically just have people
wondering if they'll ever get one of these toys without
any real way of knowing whether or not they will.
So that right there ups the level of fighting that
people are willing to engage with that release them.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
This girl's mother bought seventeen hundred dollars worth. It defies
all reason. It's the American way. I'm crazy, right, anything
of my grandchildren it doesn't bother you to spend that
much money on dogg but.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I sure did my usbence. Since doing Cabbage Patch Kids
in the eighties, Xavier Roberts became more and more reclusive
throughout the year, so much so that for the longest
time he didn't really give extensive interviews about what he
was up to, which is interesting because you know, by
(16:16):
the way, Ty Warner was the same thing of Beanie
Baby's fame, pretty reclusive, didn't give extensive interviews, which is
actually what makes Billion Dollar Babies the true story the
Cabbage Batch Kids pretty novel, because in that documentary, Xavier
Roberts for the first time sat down and did an extensive,
in depth interview about his life and what he's kind
(16:39):
of been through, and it actually really helps to shed
some light on his perspective in this whole thing. Of course,
he doesn't see it the same way as perhaps I would.
I've got my own biases when I think about it.
For him, you know, he openly admits that Cabbage Patch
would have been impossible about Larkin Melson Thomas, and in
(16:59):
his view, he took it to a different level. That's
kind of his story. He's essentially retired. Martha Nelson Thomas,
by the way, she died in twenty thirteen, and for
her entire life created art. I mean, she never stopped
being an artist, that's for sure, even though she was
sort of burned by this experience. So Black Friday, despite
(17:22):
being around in the nineteen fifties and onward, never was
the violent sensation that had became post Cabbage Patch. And
it is true that once the quote cabbage Patch riots happened,
it became normalized. When you think about future toy fads,
the idea of people fighting over toys in a store
(17:43):
isn't really that surprising. You don't hear about it pre
cabbage Patch, but after that you certainly do. And again
I go back to the movie jingle all the way
that doesn't actually critique the process of fighting over a
fad toy. It actually says, go fight over it. That's
that's fantastic, that's hilarious. Yes, your Christmas spirit. So from
(18:08):
the cabbage Patch kids' riots of the eighties, as we
can kind of dramatically call them, we then see a
cascade after that of other toy fads that kind of
come along and occupy that space culturally. So we may
remember legs of Tickle the Yelmos being ripped off in
the Ninetiesicko the Beanie Babies thing on its own was
(18:30):
you know a good example, Ferbie, you know to Pokemon
throughout the thousands kind of takes that space at different times,
but none of them. Why get to the level of
where cabbage Batch was. Where for the first time we
saw on the news recorded footage of just people going
nuts inside of a kmart. That's new and that's unique
(18:53):
to cabbage Patch. So today cabbage Patch kids are still around.
People don't necessarily know that. They've changed hands a few
times from different companies, from Calico to Mattel to Hasbro
and others, and they basically looked more or less as
they did. They're a little smaller down, a little cheaper.
(19:14):
But the enthusiasm that they garnered in the eighties burned
so white hot that today there's no way it could
sustain after all these years.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Jonathan Alexandronos. He's a toy historian whose knowledge was featured
in the film Billion Dollar Babies. The true story of
the Cabbage Patch Kids, and what a story we heard.
And my goodness, I never thought about Black Friday before
(19:48):
like this, And indeed it's true. This was the first
time in American history that people were fighting over a
toy the day after Thanksgiving and waiting in line in
mass for a product. There wasn't enough of the true
story of the Cabbage Patch Kids.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Here on our American Stories.
And we continue with our American stories. Jonathan Alexandrados is
a toy historian whose knowledge was featured in the film
Billion Dollar Babies, The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids.
Here's Jonathan with the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids
and how they set the wheels in motion for modern
(00:31):
day Black Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So at eighteen fifty, way back, the US met its
first baby doll, and instantaneously the baby doll was not popular.
It took huntil the late eighteen hundreds for the thing
to actually catch on, but by nineteen twenty, the modern
conception of the baby doll was here. It was a
(00:55):
cloth body and at a sculpted head that was painted
typically what one might think of when they think of
the baby doll. That model stayed fairly popular throughout the
twentieth century. Once we get to nineteen seventy one, we
meet an artist Martha Nelson Marthin Nelson Thomas soon to
(01:17):
be and she's looking at the baby doll and she's
wondering what she could add to this genre of toy
and what she reaches for is something called soft sculpture.
So soft sculpture is basically the act of conceiving of
a sculpted head. Let's say that's made out of some
(01:38):
sort of cloth material, so you're kind of sewing it
so that the features are all evident in the ultimate
soft sculpture. That's Martha Nelson's interest. She makes these off
of input from kids that she knew at the time.
So she actually asked kids in her community, you know,
(01:59):
what they would like to see in a baby doll,
and she made those. Those are called doll babies. Martha
Nelson Thomas originally sold those in Appalachian craft fairs. She's
from Kentucky, and she would go to those regional craft
fairs and sell them. But by nineteen seventy six, she
meets Xavier Roberts at the craft fair who ultimately says, hey,
(02:21):
I would really like to start selling these on a
bigger scale. And initially Martha is kind of interested in this,
but after about a year, she's not so psyched about it.
She's kind of losing interest in that. So as a result,
Xavier Roberts says to her, well, I'm going to keep
(02:44):
selling them whether you want me to or not. And
what he does is he doesn't call them doll babies.
He calls them little People and Little People are supposed
to be different than doll babies, yet when you put
their picture side by side, they actually look pretty similar.
The features are the same, the scale is the same,
(03:07):
you know, the huffy cheeks, all of that is the same.
And Martha and Nelson Thomas and Xavier Roberts when they meet.
Martha is more or less just out of school. Xavier
is a little bit older than that. Xavier is a
heavily talented man in his own right. So I think
(03:29):
one of the misconceptions that sometimes happens in this story
is it becomes the story of an artist and the
person who stole the art, which, yes, there is an
element of that, but with Xavier Roberts, he actually is
a pretty talented like Wiltmaker, He's done artistic endeavors on
(03:50):
his own, so it's not so much random outsider. This
is actually somebody who knows the world pretty well. So
by nineteen seventy eight, Xavier Roberts is out selling his
Little People. He's doing well with that, but by nineteen
(04:10):
eighty two, Calico approaches him for a license because these
are selling so well, and by then the Little People,
presumably because Little People is a brand made by Fisher
Price since nineteen fifty nine have changed to being called
cabbage Patch Kids something different. Now. The thing with cabbage
(04:33):
Patch Kids that is unique is from Martha Nelson Thomas's
early days. She wanted these creations to be closer to
actually adopting a baby rather than getting a doll. So
(04:54):
as a result of that, these dolls would come with
birth certificates. They would be unique. Again, this goes all
the way back to Martha's idea. Xavier Roberts keeps that going,
so that these dolls have that novelty, but they're also
hearkening back to a very familiar play pattern. Remember I
(05:14):
had said that these dolls go as far back as
the eighteen hundreds, and the modern incarnation back to nineteen twenty.
So these are things that parents would reasonably see, look
at go oh, I played with something like that. But
the way these are kind of updated is cool. I
want to have that for my kids. So the way
(05:35):
in which parents kind of were directed towards the ultimate
Cabbage Patch Kid is totally understandable because it's an item
they recognized with a little bit of added novelty to it.
So who could resist that. So nineteen eighty two, Calico
(05:57):
gets the license from Xavier Roberts. That's where you see
the cabbage Patch kids that we all know, the ones
that have Exavier Roberts signature right there on the rear end,
you know, like those are the cabbage Patch Kids. It's
important to note that Martha Nelson Thomas did not just
fade away. She actually fought for her creation. In nineteen
(06:19):
seventy nine, she launched her first lawsuit against Xavier Roberts
for this. It was settled for an undisclosed amount, so
we actually don't know how much she got from that.
I think by all accounts it was probably not enough.
Given the ensuing craze that was going to happen. So
(06:42):
throughout the eighties, the cabbage Patch kid takes on. You
see riots essentially breaking out in stores over them.
Speaker 3 (06:53):
It was an unusual draw. The box was full of ballots,
more than four hundred of them. But if your name
was pulled, you didn't win a cab Patch doll. You
only won the chance to buy one. It's a roundabout
way of selling the dolls, but the store's manager says
it's the best way to avoid trouble.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Well, three weeks ago we had a sale on cabbage
patch and we had about two hundred people at the
front door, and we had thirty six dolls, and we
had a near riot. So this way we decided to
have a draw and be more orderly.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Kids are getting them, not even necessarily because they like them,
but because they represent a higher status. When you're at school,
you know you've got a cabbage patch kid. They weren't cheap,
you know, they were like thirty bucks at the time,
which is quite a lot. Actually, if you adjust for
inflation I think that brings it to around eighty today,
maybe a little more.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Getting a cabbage patch kid became more enviable than actually
having and keeping a cabbage patch kid in the sense
of the.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Fact that mom got one mad so much more than
what the product actually was. Again going back to this
idea of a status symbol. The fact that mom managed
to or dad or whoever, managed to fight through the crowds,
fight through the riot, fight through the guy with the
baseball bat, and actually get a cabbage patch kid at
(08:19):
the end of the day and bring it home victorious.
That said something about how much that parent loved their kid,
how much they were willing to do, how much they
were willing to fight through.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
And we've been listening to Jonathan Alex Indrados. He's a
toy historian who knows a heck a lot of about
the subject. And by the way, we learned a bunch
toys as we know it, dolls, baby dolls as we
know them, didn't really come into existence truly in American
life till the late nineteenth century. There's some innovation, but
not a lot and income. Those Cabbage Patch kids and
(08:52):
cabbage Patch hysteria. And for any of you who lived
during that time period, what moms and dads would do
the ends of the earth. They'd go to to get
this toy, this doll for their kids was unlike anything
I'd ever seen. It was almost embarrassing. Sometimes waiting on lines,
you heard thirty dollars two hundred people showing up, not
(09:13):
just fights over these dolls, but riots and all so
there could be that special Christmas present for the kids.
When we come back more of the story of the
Cabbage Patch Kids here on our American Stories. And we
(09:39):
returned to our American Stories into the story of the
Cabbage Patch Kids told by toy historian Jonathan Alexandrados, beginning
with a news report from December of nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Once the coupons were given out to those few parents
who would be allowed to buy a doll was given out,
that the dolls would be given out behind the store,
out back at the freight entrance, and then the race
was on. Otherwise dignified, calm, mannerly parents broke into a sprint.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Well, I had to take what they gave me, and
they gave me a boy, and I wanted a girl.
I sai, this is my second trip around.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
My husband works here, and I can't even get what
I want.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I'm miss work. I'm late for work to get this
for my little girl. I'm not going to tell my boss.
I'm trying to get there now.
Speaker 4 (10:26):
You're so excited.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
We waited here since seven point thirty, and I was
just ecstatic the fact I ran around and got another
ticket and.
Speaker 6 (10:32):
Within a matter of minutes it was over. You did
not get a cabbage punch doll this morning, No, I
did not. How badly do you want one?
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Very very badly?
Speaker 6 (10:43):
One woman told us she's going to call her sisters
in Nebraska in Illinois to see if they can get
her a doll. If not, she's going to drive to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 4 (10:51):
It's what is it two hours to go to Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I think it's worth going there.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
If not, I'll try California. I have a niece that
lives in CALIFORNI.
Speaker 6 (11:01):
Why are full grown adults fighting over these Well, here's
one reason I want to get it.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Look, this is something that consistently we see throughout pop
culture front cabbage Patch forward. Remember Jingle all the Way.
That's a comedy, right, And that's a comedy that's made
about a guy who basically does the same thing these
parents were doing when they were looking for Cabbage Patch kids.
He was finding Turboman to show that he was the Turboman,
(11:32):
he could be the best dad ever. And that's what
these parents were looking to do too. In many ways,
every holiday season there's one toy everyone has to have.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
I want the Turbo mass I figure with the oars
like that move your orange jetpack and the flooring sooner.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
Getting it is every child's dream. Whoever doesn't can be
a real loser finding it.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
You got the doll?
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Is this Father's night there?
Speaker 4 (12:00):
I don't get that toy, I promise.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
When I was a kid, it was power Rangers. Power
Rangers were the thing that when they first came out,
nobody invested in power Rangers except for Toys r Us,
and Toys r US sold out of them very, very
very quickly. My uncle to this day insists he paid
a guy in a parking lot one hundred bucks to
get one for me for Christmas, and man I loved
that thing. And man I loved that uncle. So I
(12:25):
can imagine go back to the eighties, you'll see exactly
the same thing, the same story of the way fads
work and permeate the culture like that, where it almost
doesn't matter what the object is. I mean, people will
fight over it. It's something that we all have gone
through as a parent. You know, this landing shopping so
(12:49):
to get a cabbage patch kid really said something about
you know, who you were as a kid. It was
something that culturally we riffed on as well. You might
be familiar with the garbage pail kids, you know, those
were the sort of reaction to the cabbage patch kid.
Let's take this thing that's meant to be wholesome and
let's make it real ugly. You know, even sour patch kids, right,
(13:12):
the candy that's a riff on thotes. Before then they
were called marsmen, so you know, they get changed as
well to kind of play on this whole craze that's happening.
So this is a sensation. The other thing that happens,
which is interesting just from a toy creation standpoint, is
Colico actually thinks about how to replicate, at least in
(13:35):
some ways the craft arteisonal nature of what was once
to the doll baby, in that they made a computer
program that actually created individually unique heads for each cabbage
Patch kid.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Cabbage Patch kids are each different as can be.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
So this idea that in the world of mass produced toys,
you know, if you buy Duke from Gi Joe, Duke
always looks exactly the same. That's the whole point of
that action figure. If you buy a cabbage Patch Kid, though,
you are the only person who has the cabbage Patch
Kid with that exact sculpt and pain application. So for example,
the dimples and the birthmarks and things like that, that's
(14:20):
all programmed to be unique. So then you have this
sensation of people going into stores looking for specific Cabbage
Patch kids that maybe look like them. The names. When
you actually look at the birth certificates contain names that
are culturally distinct there you know, from lots of different places,
(14:41):
at least in terms of the way they sound. This
is all new. So when Cabbage Patch Kids first came out, Kalico,
by no means had enough stock to keep pace with
the demand. So while all those riots are happening, Kaliko
is like, wait, wait, wait, note, we're opening up another factory.
(15:01):
We promise more is coming. Meanwhile, folks in the stores
are like, yeah, right, buddy, whatever, I'm getting this one.
I'd rather have that cabbage Patch than wait for you.
I don't believe you. They were actually doing their best, Kaliko,
but it's hard to convey that to a public pre Internet,
pre social media. You can't tweet about this stuff in
(15:25):
in the nineteen eighties, so you basically just have people
wondering if they'll ever get one of these toys without
any real way of knowing whether or not they will.
So that right there ups the level of fighting that
people are willing to engage with that release them.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
This girl's mother bought seventeen hundred dollars worth. It defies
all reason. It's the American way. I'm crazy, right, anything
of my grandchildren it doesn't bother you to spend that
much money on dogg but.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
I sure did my usbence. Since doing Cabbage Patch Kids
in the eighties, Xavier Roberts became more and more reclusive
throughout the year, so much so that for the longest
time he didn't really give extensive interviews about what he
was up to, which is interesting because you know, by
(16:16):
the way, Ty Warner was the same thing of Beanie
Baby's fame, pretty reclusive, didn't give extensive interviews, which is
actually what makes Billion Dollar Babies the true story the
Cabbage Batch Kids pretty novel, because in that documentary, Xavier
Roberts for the first time sat down and did an extensive,
in depth interview about his life and what he's kind
(16:39):
of been through, and it actually really helps to shed
some light on his perspective in this whole thing. Of course,
he doesn't see it the same way as perhaps I would.
I've got my own biases when I think about it.
For him, you know, he openly admits that Cabbage Patch
would have been impossible about Larkin Melson Thomas, and in
(16:59):
his view, he took it to a different level. That's
kind of his story. He's essentially retired. Martha Nelson Thomas,
by the way, she died in twenty thirteen, and for
her entire life created art. I mean, she never stopped
being an artist, that's for sure, even though she was
sort of burned by this experience. So Black Friday, despite
(17:22):
being around in the nineteen fifties and onward, never was
the violent sensation that had became post Cabbage Patch. And
it is true that once the quote cabbage Patch riots happened,
it became normalized. When you think about future toy fads,
the idea of people fighting over toys in a store
(17:43):
isn't really that surprising. You don't hear about it pre
cabbage Patch, but after that you certainly do. And again
I go back to the movie jingle all the way
that doesn't actually critique the process of fighting over a
fad toy. It actually says, go fight over it. That's
that's fantastic, that's hilarious. Yes, your Christmas spirit. So from
(18:08):
the cabbage Patch kids' riots of the eighties, as we
can kind of dramatically call them, we then see a
cascade after that of other toy fads that kind of
come along and occupy that space culturally. So we may
remember legs of Tickle the Yelmos being ripped off in
the Ninetiesicko the Beanie Babies thing on its own was
(18:30):
you know a good example, Ferbie, you know to Pokemon
throughout the thousands kind of takes that space at different times,
but none of them. Why get to the level of
where cabbage Batch was. Where for the first time we
saw on the news recorded footage of just people going
nuts inside of a kmart. That's new and that's unique
(18:53):
to cabbage Patch. So today cabbage Patch kids are still around.
People don't necessarily know that. They've changed hands a few
times from different companies, from Calico to Mattel to Hasbro
and others, and they basically looked more or less as
they did. They're a little smaller down, a little cheaper.
(19:14):
But the enthusiasm that they garnered in the eighties burned
so white hot that today there's no way it could
sustain after all these years.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hengler, and a special thanks to
Jonathan Alexandronos. He's a toy historian whose knowledge was featured
in the film Billion Dollar Babies. The true story of
the Cabbage Patch Kids, and what a story we heard.
And my goodness, I never thought about Black Friday before
(19:48):
like this, And indeed it's true. This was the first
time in American history that people were fighting over a
toy the day after Thanksgiving and waiting in line in
mass for a product. There wasn't enough of the true
story of the Cabbage Patch Kids.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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