Anatomy of a Doll Craze

Cabbage Patch Pre-History (from About.com)

In 1979, Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia began producing Cabbage Patch dolls. The dolls were designed by Xavier Roberts, a sculptor residing in Georgia. The dolls were very different than anything that had been produced before, and quite strange-looking at first glance. They had very round faces (almost lumpy!) and tiny, soft pudgy arms. The eyes were close set, and they had hair made of yarn. Each doll was just a bit different than the next doll, making each original "Cabbage Patch Kid" a unique individual. Babyland was also a unique place--the Cabbage Patch dolls were displayed in what looked like a real maternity ward, with the sales personnel dressed in maternity ward outfits, and the dolls "up for adoption" and not just for "sale" (of course, they WERE for sale, but the adoption gimmick really hit a cord with collectors and children). Roberts and his dolls made several television appearances, and the dolls became very well known.

Anatomy of a Doll Craze

Robert sold mass-production rights to his Kids to Coleco toy company in 1982. The Coleco dolls were very similar to the Babyland dolls, except that the heads were made of vinyl, not cloth. Each Cabbage Patch Kid came with its own unique name and birthday, adoption papers, and a birth certificate. And...due to random computer generation, each doll was, due to some small variation, a "one of a kind." Children loved the process of "adoption" for the dolls, where they would send the adoption papers to Coleco to adopt the dolls. Then, on the first birthday of the doll, they received a birthday card from Coleco!

For the first few years, Coleco couldn't produce the dolls fast enough. The marketing gimmick and television coverage combined to make sales explode starting in 1983. The doll was in short supply, and Christmases in the early 1980s saw parents scrambling to find dolls for gifts, as they fought scalpers and other profiteers who also were scooping the dolls up and re-selling them at large profit through newspaper and magazine ads. The dolls were in such short supply for Christmas that some stores had to call the police to control crowds waiting for the dolls, and other stores held lotteries to fairly distribute the dolls and to avoid riot-like scenes. Coleco posted record sales of $600 million in 1985, thanks to their Cabbage Patch Kids. Many people believe that Cabbage Patch dolls were THE fad of the 1980s.

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