Throwback Thursday: The crazy Christmas Cabbage Patch chaos in 1983: “There hasn’t been anything like that”
Licensed to Coleco, Xavier Roberts’ Cabbage Patch Kids dolls were the must-have Christmas item in 1983 with fights breaking out in stores to obtain one.
Among the biggest Christmas toy crazes (Rubik’s cubes, skateboards, Atari consoles) was the humble Cabbage Patch Kids doll which was caused such a commotion in the run-up to the 1983 holidays that getting your hands on one occasionally turned violent.
Individual, ordinary-looking doll, born in a cabbage patch, seeks adoption
The Cabbage Patch Kids were cloth-and-vinyl dolls, which were not particularly pretty - verging on ugly some might say. They were originally handmade by Martha Nelson Thomas, came complete with a birth certificate and adoption papers. The ‘Little People’ line were sold at craft fairs by American businessman Xavier Roberts.
Licensed to Coleco Industries of Hartford, and renamed Cabbage Patch Kids (as toy manufacturer Fisher Price owned the Little People name), the hype surrounding the dolls got into full gear in September 1983 with a series of TV commercials (“Each doll is different and you can pretend to adopt them”).
And a fantasy story about how they were the parentless offspring of magic cabbages, each kid born one night a year in a mystical cabbage patch
Mass produced in China, the Cabbage Patch Kids retailed for $19.95 to $28 which meant they were affordable for most households. Sales went through the roof. Demand was so big that Coleco, who were producing around 200,000 dolls per week, had to stop all advertising to focus on upping production.
The height of the Cabbage Patch Kids craze
During the 1983 Christmas season, millions of young girls in the US and abroad wanted to adopt a Cabbage Patch Kid. In the US, Europe and Japan, 3 million dolls were sold during the festive period. Near riots broke out in stores as shoppers clambered to get one. In one Pennsylvania department store, a crowd of close to 1,000 mobbed the toy department, leaving one woman with a broken leg and four others injured.
And after learning that Cabbage Patch Kids had sold out in some states, desperate shoppers went to incredible lengths to hunt them down. Kansas City postman Edward Pennington flew to London to buy one for his 5-year-old daughter, Leana.
“We told her she probably wouldn’t get one until after Christmas,” Pennington told the New York Times. “It was a spur of the moment thing. After seeing the way people were going for the dolls, I just decided the kid was worth it.” He returned home with five - Leana kept two and the other three were donated to charities.
Kids in Space
On October 30, 1985, ‘Xavier Christopher’ became the first Cabbage Patch Kid cosmonaut, venturing into space as a passenger on the Challenger Space Shuttle STS-61-A mission as content for the Young Astronaut Program.
By 1988, sales had declined and Coleco filed for bankruptcy. The Cabbage Patch Kids craze was over. The toys market was shifting towards more electronic products although the dolls are still being produced after a succession of companies acquired the rights. The originals and new, limited edition series remain popular with collectors all over the world.
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