Cabbage Patch Playtime

Animal themed Cabbage Patch Kids Babies come dressed up as adorable baby animals with matching accessories. Look for Bunnies, Kittens and Bear Cubs.

Cabbage Patch Kids weren t actually born in a field of vegetables, but out of the entrepreneurial mind of a 21-year-old art student, Xavier Roberts, in Helen, Georgia.

Engage your little one s nurturing sense with this adorable adoptimal pet doll that comes with a heart key pendant. Pair it with a Cabbage Patch kid heart key doll.

Cabbage Patch Kids weren t actually born in a field of vegetables, but out of the entrepreneurial mind of a 21-year-old art student, Xavier Roberts, in Helen, Georgia. In 1976, Roberts became fascinated with a German fabric-sculpture technique from the 19th century known as needle molding.  However, according to a 1980 lawsuit, Roberts wasn t only inspired by turn-of-the-century crafts. Martha Nelson Thomas of Louisville, Kentucky, alleged that she had been selling similar soft-sculpture baby dolls for adoption since the early 1970s, and Roberts had approached her in 1976 about selling her dolls in a gift shop he managed. Nelson Thomas ultimately lost her suit against Roberts because she had not copyrighted her dolls. She went on to manufacture her own Original Doll Baby.

Roberts developed his own adoptable hand-made Little People soft-sculptures, which came with birth certificates, in 1977. He sold his Little People Originals at craft shows across the South, where he learned that people would pay 40 to adopt his dolls. After his Dexter sculpture won first place at the Osceola Art Show in Kissimmee, Florida, in 1978, Roberts got together with five friends to form Original Appalachian Artworks, Inc. A key component of the enterprise was the renovation of an old medical center in Cleveland, Georgia, as BabyLand General Hospital, where eager customers watched the process of the Little People being born from mother cabbages, with the help of licensed patch nurses. At this surreal store, premature babies were placed in incubators, and some births require c-sections or cabbage-sections.

In 1980, Roberts and his Little People creations were featured on the documentary TV show, Real People, and by 1981, they were causing a national stir, getting coverage in Newsweek, the Atlanta Weekly, and The Wall Street Journal. These stories highlighted doll fanatics who paid 100 times the original price for earlier editions of the dolls.

All this buzz led to a licensing deal with major toy manufacturer Coleco in 1982, which changed the name of Roberts doll line to Cabbage Patch Kids. The Coleco toy version of Roberts artworks were smaller in size 16 inches and had vinyl, rather than fabric, heads. The adoption fees for the mass-produced toys were usually less than 30, and each doll came with a birth certificate with a unique name and birth date.

The introduction of Cabbage Patch Kids, which came in a wide range of ethnicity and races and were marketed to girls and boys, sparked a frenzy. Coleco sold more than 3 million dolls by the end of 1983, but could not keep up with the demand. During the Christmas season, parents mobbed department stores, hoping to get one of these coveted dolls to put under the tree. This was the first holiday toy fad to nearly cause riots, as shoppers pushed and shoved each other to get to the dolls.

Because of this craze, the dolls became something of an American icon. In 1985, a Cabbage Patch doll named Christopher Xavier, traveled aboard a NASA space shuttle; and in 1992, the doll became official mascot of the U.S. Olympic Team, traveling with the athletes to Barcelona. Then, in 1999, the Cabbage Patch Kids were honored in a U.S. postage stamp set remembering the 1980s. The dolls inspired spinoffs like books, clothing, records, and animated movies, as well as 13-inch infant-like Preemie and animal-faced Koosa dolls.

They were also subject to parody. In 1985, Topps introduced Garbage Pail Kids sticker trading cards, which were conceptualized by none other than Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman. On each card, a Cabbage Patch-like child would be depicted deformed or plagued by some horrible misfortune above a clever nameplate like Adam Bomb or Bony Tony. Roberts quickly sued for trademark violation, and settled when Topps agreed to make changes to the appearance of the cards.

Both fads, for Cabbage Patch Kids and their Garbage Pail spoof, died quickly in the 80s. In 1985, Coleco also the distributor of Pac-Man video games made record profits, but by 1986, video-game sales were slumping and Cabbage Patch Kids were no longer the must-have toy. Even though, in 1987, Coleco introduced a pricey Talking Cabbage Patch Kid as a last-ditch effort to renew interest in the toy, the company went bankrupt in the late 80s.

But mass-produced Cabbage Patch Kids lived on, manufactured by Hasbro, Mattel, Toys R Us, and eventually its current licensee, Play Along Inc. Roberts, too, has continued to make hand-made Cabbage Patch Original Kids, which are more rare and more valuable to collectors. New, these Originals sell for six-to-10 times the price of the licensed versions.

When Hasbro took over the rights, the company tried several gimmicks to revive the dolls previous popularity. Some Kids played kazoos, others were made smaller to appeal to younger children, and several specialty lines were established, including Birthday Kids, Splash n Tan Kids, and Pretty Crimp and Curl.

Mattel bought the rights in 1994, and began making 14-inch Cabbage Patch Kids that were all vinyl now, even the cloth bodies had been replaced with plastic. The Mattel dolls often did tricks, too, including eating food, brushing their teeth, or swimming. One line known as Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids was withdrawn from the market a year after its premiere in 1996; children were getting their fingers and hair caught in the dolls mechanical mouths.

Just in time for the dolls 20th anniversary in 2003, Toys R Us took over the rights and released 18-inch and 20-inch dolls with vinyl heads and cloth bodies. These debuted at the company s flagship store in New York City, where they were sold in cabbage-leaf seats.

Thanks to all the nostalgia for the dolls, in 2004, the Cabbage Patch Kids were revived by new licensee Play Along. Its new generation of 16-inch dolls are very similar to the Coleco versions from 1983, and are sold to parents who remember loving their Kids as children. In recent years, Play Along has released a line known as Cabbage Patch Kids Babies, as well as the 25th Anniversary Celebration Baby, which licks an ice cream cone. And in 2008, the Republican and Democratic contenders for U.S. President and Vice President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain, and Sarah Palin were made into Cabbage Patch dolls. Palin s came with glasses, of course.

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Cabbage Patch Kids line of Vintage Kids and the same Kids moms and grandmothers remember. The nostalgic look with yarn hair and classic fashions will remind you of.

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