Why Were Cabbage Patch Dolls So Popular?

If you were around during the 80s, you most likely remember the craze of the Cabbage Patch Kids in 1983. Every parent in America went completely ballistic over them. According to Newsweek, “it was as if an army had been turned loose on the nation’s shopping malls, ravaging the ficus tress, sloshing through the fountains, searching for the legendary stockrooms said to be filled with those of the dough-faced, chinless, engagingly homely dolls.”

Why Cabbage Patch Kids Were so Popular

For those of you who don’t understand what all the fuss was about, they did look like regular old dolls. Actually a bit ugly in my opinion. So exactly why were they so popular? And why were people clawing and climbing over each other on Black Friday in 1983 just to get one?

The answer: customization and marketing. Everyone loved Cabbage Patch Dolls back in the day because no doll was the same as the other. Each doll could be customized to have different color eyes, hair, skin, different outfit, smile, freckles and dimple location.

The dolls were also marketed like babies, actually playing on people’s nurturing instincts to “adopt a doll.” The goal was to trigger the endorphins in their consumers’ minds as one would when picking up a baby from a crib.

Inside each box were the adoption papers, waiting to be signed. When the dolls were first introduced in June of 1983 during a publicity circuit, the company held a press conference at the Boston Children’s Museum. When the young locals arrived, it turned out to be a mass adoption ceremony as the media cameras got it all on tape and the kids got a free doll. From then on, the dolls were on the covers of major magazines, TV commercials and newspapers, taking over all major media outlets.

The Cabbage Patch Panic of 1983

But the people who suffered were the retailers; they didn’t expect to have such a booming demand in time for Christmas. Christmas shoppers bought an average of three dolls each, and the stores couldn’t keep up with their supply. The Cabbage Patch Kids’ manufacturer at the time, Coleco, said all of their supply of two million dolls was gone by October 6th. By Thanksgiving, they called it the “Cabbage Patch Panic.”

To curb the flocks from crowding in, store managers moved all their supply of dolls to the front of the store. But as soon as customers paid, they were forced to push their way through the crowd and past those piling in from the parking lots. As thousands of dolls came in, they were gone within hours.

Those more impatient and cruel would rip boxes from strangers’ arms without even looking at the doll or the person holding it. One man had even flew to London to buy a doll for his five-year-old daughter. Some dolls worth $25 were resold for $150. One psychologist called this type of behavior as Nazism as the dolls possessed a “higher power” over their consumers.

By New Year’s Day, Coleco sold over three million Cabbage Patch Kids. Coleco used a withholding strategy to keep them selling year-round instead of just during the holidays, which definitely worked. Along with a growing line of bikes, pajamas, lunchboxes and cereal, Coleco generated over $4.5 billion in 1984.

The Cabbage Patch frenzy would go down in history as one of the world’s most intense Black Friday sales as people physically fought each other and traveled the world to get one. But on a more positive note, the fiasco inspired the 1986 comedy film with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jingle All the Way. The Cabbage Patch Kids also preceded the expensive line of American Girl dolls, where kids could customize the dolls to look exactly like them. The dolls also set the blueprint for Furby and Tickle Me Elmo.

The History of the Cabbage Patch Kids

The Cabbage Patch Kids are essentially a line of customizable toys introduced to the market in 1983. They were soft, sculpted dolls with little dimples that caused significant stress and hysteria for its consumers just to get one. The idea may have also been stolen from someone who had invented a similar doll a few years beforehand. Here’s the story behind it all.

Going back to the very beginning, the idea came about during the 1970s by a lady in Kentucky named Martha Nelson Thomas. She was both an artist and creator who loved to fabricate her own, unique dolls. She wanted to create something that looked like a baby, something softer than hard porcelain that was meant more for playing than viewing.

Martha’s personality was more on the timid side, but she found the best way to communicate with others was through her work. She attended art school in Louisville, working on soft sculptures instead of painting and sculpting.

It was then when she came up with the “Baby Doll” idea, with softer, baby-like features. She also spent time shopping for outfits and accessories to dress the dolls, giving them their own unique style. Dressing up these dolls was also a way of expressing herself.

When she was ready, she started selling the dolls at craft shows and fairs, where they quickly became popular. But her competitive advantage was her use of adoption certificates. These also played a key role in the Cabbage Patch Kids craze.

Xavier Roberts Cuts In

As Martha Roberts became more successful with her unique line of dolls, a man named Robert Xavier attended one of her trade shows in 1976. He purchased a few dolls, but only to resell them at his own shops in Georgia, except he sold them at a much higher price. Martha was immediately alarmed and concerned when she found out.

To protect her idea and her future, she confronted Xavier about the scandal and took them back. But allegedly, he said if he couldn’t sell her dolls, then he would sell his own, which was exactly what he did.

Xavier claimed in an interview to also have studied soft sculpture in college and started making his own version of the soft dolls. Whether or not he actually did, he had a vision of the dolls in a successful marketing campaign, which led him to invest in a mass production line.

He contacted a manufacturing company in Hong Kong to make a cheaper version of the dolls with a similar appearance. While they weren’t the dolls in the 1983 Black Friday frenzy, they were a stepping stone to the start of the Cabbage Patch Kids.

The History of Xavier Roberts

Xavier claimed to be good at quilting at the age of 21, learning from his mom. He made his own fabric sculptures of which he called “Little People” (which certainly wouldn’t be accepted today, but in the 80s, things were more lenient). Robert’s Little People dolls weren’t up for sale but rather up for adoption as customers would pay an adoption fee for each doll to come with its own adoption certificate.

Certainly there’s much confusion over who had the original idea to make soft, babylike dolls that came with birth certificates. But in our opinion, Martha had the original idea of it all but wasn’t quick enough to capitalize on it (perhaps due to her more timid personality), so Xavier stepped in and took advantage of the successful doll line. Although he wrongfully took all credit for creating the idea on his own, much to Martha’s misfortune.

The Birth of the Cabbage Patch Kids

After touring various craft shows throughout the country, Xavier landed upon a converted medical clinic in Cleveland, GA and renamed it “Babyland General Hospital”. Here, the clinic was not a retail shop, but a gallery in which his sales clerks dressed in nurse’s uniforms as they interacted with dolls who slept in incubators and cribs. Each doll came with a birth certificate, adoption papers and a random name from a list of Georgia’s 1938 birth records. In 1982, Xavier licensed the doll to a giant toy manufacturer Coleco.

For those wondering where the name “Cabbage Patch Kids” came from, it was Xavier Roberts million-dollar idea from the child fable of babies being born and plucked from cabbage gardens. From one of his childhood experiences, he chose to rename the Dolls Cabbage Patch Kids, with his story printed on the behind of every product:

“Xavier Roberts was a ten-year-old boy who discovered the Cabbage Patch Kids by following a BunnyBee behind a waterfall into a magical Cabbage Patch, where he found the Cabbage Patch babies being born. To help them find good homes he build BabyLand General in Cleveland, Georgia where the Cabbage Patch Kids could live and play until they were adopted.”

One of the genius ploys of this idea was that it was marketed for both girls and boys. It was simply a special baby for a special kid. The timing was also perfect as manufacturing technology was just advanced enough to incorporate random customization so no two dolls were alike; they each had their own skin color, hair style, clothing, freckles, dimple location and smile. But in the manufacturing lines, the names were chosen by a computer and not from old birthing records.

It was here when the birth of the Cabbage Patch Kid craze came about. The dolls were sold all over America by June of 1983, waiting in little boxes with their arms up, ready to be adopted and taken home.

What Happened to The Cabbage Patch Kids After 1983

As the Cabbage Patch Kids were a gold mine for business, they sold for $30 each during the 80s, which is equivalent to about $75 today. By 1985, Coleco had made $600 million from the sales. But as everyone got one and the spark died down, sales blundered down to $250 million in 1986. While this was still a great profit, they couldn’t rekindle the original spark to keep the lines going.

As Coleco scrambled to introduce more accessories to the toys by incorporating speech and kazoo sound features, they were all failed efforts as Coleco also struggled with other toy lines. In 1988, they went bankrupt before selling the Cabbage Patch Kids rights to its original owner, Original Appalachian Artworks. Then big gorilla toy company Hasbro took over and sold them to younger kids.

But even Hasbro couldn’t bring back the hype that once caused widespread hysteria across the country. Mattel gave it a shot in 1994, making smaller size versions until Toy R’ Us took over in 2003 and tried selling super-size Cabbage Patch Kids, which didn’t work either.

The line was passed to Play Along Toys in 2004 to Jakks Pacific in 2011 to Wicked Cool Toys in 2012, who was recently acquired by Jazwares, LLC in 2019. Today, the toys are marketed alongside other iconic toy brands, including Blinger, Pokémon and Lamo. But sadly, it doesn’t look like the Cabbage Patch Kids will be coming back anytime soon. That’s the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids craze!

Which Cabbage Patch Kid Did You Have?

What did your Cabbage Patch Kid look like? Did he look like you or someone else? We’d love to see pictures, even better if you still have yours! Please let us know in the comments below.