Cabbage Patch Kids: Dolls for Adoption
Something unbelievable happened in 1979. Even a child could adopt someone. And adopt someone of his or her liking from a hospital in Cleveland, Georgia! The hospital was called Babyland General Hospital and the kids they could adopt were called the “Cabbage Patch Kids”.
And that was how the Cabbage Patch dolls started becoming a part of people’s lives.
Many of us have fresh memories how fast and how well this novel idea caught the imagination of everyone. We also remember the riot-like situations that ensued inside and outside stores in the later years of production when parents frantically searched for Cabbage Patch dolls as gifts for their children, especially during Christmas time.
Was it only a craze, only a fad? Partly true and maybe partly not. The Cabbage Patch dolls were very special in one way. Each was unique. Eyes, hair, hairstyle, the contours of the face, the dress – all differed from one Cabbage Patch doll to another. There were some without hair for the boys, and they were named the “Baldies”. They were worth collecting and none could blame the children clamoring to get one (or more) of these pudgy-faced and lovable dolls.
So how did it all begin?
A young sculptor named Xavier Roberts from Cleveland, Georgia, thought of producing dolls. He was trained in the art of soft sculpture, and he thought of creating the dolls out of cloth. Xavier Roberts was twenty-four then. He converted a medical unit as his production base, produced the dolls from Original Appalachian Artworks Incorporated, and named the dolls “Little People”. One interesting thing that he did was to rename the production base. He named it the “Babyland General Hospital”. The dolls that he created were also renamed. He called them the “Cabbage Patch Kids”. (The artist in Xavier Roberts saw a new face in the cabbage form, and the legend that was later created for the children to cherish said that one day when the creator of these dolls saw cute faces magically peering out of a secluded cabbage patch behind a waterfall in the Appalachian Mountains, he brought them to that haven called the Babyland General Hospital to be loved and looked after).
Another unthought-of thing in the history of dolls that Xavier Roberts thought of was that children could “adopt” the Cabbage Patch Kids instead of simply buying them from stores. Each kid had a name, a birthday and, as we know, was different from the rest. A child chose from an array of Cabbage Patch Kids kept in a maternity ward-like setting at the Babyland General Hospital, put on oath to love and care for the Cabbage Patch Kid and was given a birth certificate signed by Xavier Roberts. Accessories for the Kid could be gotten from a store at the “hospital”. Babyland General also sent a card on the first birthday of the Cabbage Patch Kid! And this whole practice is still on.
The first lines of Cabbage Patch Kids from Babyland General were fully made of cloth with their faces sculpted out of cloth too. They usually stood at sixteen inches. They had close-set eyes and they must have seemed quaint to look at when they first appeared. But Cabbage Patch Kids were one of a kind and they had no precursors resembling them. They were chubby, soft to touch and immensely huggable. The appeal was direct and instantaneous.
Later, in 1982, Coleco got the rights for mass distribution, and the Cabbage Patch Kids they produced had vinyl heads with cloth bodies. They retained the same facial and other features – close-set eyes, chubby faces, pudgy limbs and hair made of yarn – but also experimented with several variants. Nevertheless, one thing did not change at all – the computer generated uniqueness of every doll.
In 1988, Coleco filed for bankruptcy and Hasbro started producing Cabbage Patch dolls. Mattel took over in 1994. All vinyl Kids were produced. Ten years later, 4Kids Entertainment and Play Along Toys started producing Cabbage Patch dolls once more.
The popularity of the Cabbage Patch dolls has been a volatile one. But the people have never been totally out of touch with the Cabbage Patch Kids.