The Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids and the 1983 Retail Riots

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That's invite code GETDROP777. And we continue with our American Stories. Jonathan Alexandratos is a toy historian whose knowledge was featured in the film Billion Dollar Babies, the true story of the Cabbage Patch Kids. Here's Jonathan with the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids and how they set the wheels in motion for modern day Black Friday. So in 1850, way back, the U.S. met its first baby doll. And instantaneously, the baby doll was not popular. It took until the late 1800s for the thing to actually catch on. But by 1920, the modern conception of the baby doll was here. It was a cloth body and a sculpted head that was painted. That's typically what one might think of when they think of the baby doll.

That model stayed fairly popular throughout the 20th century. Once we get to 1971, we meet an artist, Martha Nelson. Martha Nelson Thomas, soon to be. And she's looking at the baby doll and she's wondering what she could add to this genre of toy. And what she reaches for is something called soft sculpture. So soft sculpture is basically the act of conceiving of a sculpted head, let's say, that's made out of some sort of cloth material.

So you're kind of sewing it so that the features are all evident in the ultimate soft sculpture. That's Martha Nelson's interest. She makes these off of input from kids that she knew at the time. So she actually asked kids in her community, you know, what they would like to see in a baby doll and she made those.

Those are called doll babies. Martha Nelson Thomas originally sold those in Appalachian craft fairs. She is from Kentucky and she would go to those regional craft fairs and sell them. But by 1976, she meets Xavier Roberts at the craft fair who ultimately says, hey, I would really like to start selling these on a bigger scale. And initially, Martha is kind of interested in this, but after about a year, she's not so psyched about it.

She's kind of losing interest in that. So as a result, Xavier Roberts says to her, well, I'm going to keep selling whether you want me to or not. And what he does is he doesn't call them doll babies. He calls them little people. And little people are supposed to be different than doll babies. Yet when you put their pictures side by side, they actually look pretty similar. The features are the same.

The scale is the same, you know, the puffy cheeks, all of that is the same. And Martha Nelson Thomas and Xavier Roberts, when they meet, Martha is more or less just out of school. Xavier is a little bit older than that. Xavier is a heavily talented man in his own right. So I think one of the misconceptions that sometimes happens in this story is it becomes the story of an artist and the person who stole the art, which yes, there is an element of that. But with Xavier Roberts, he actually is a pretty talented like bookmaker. He's done artistic endeavors on his own. So it's not so much random outsider. This is actually somebody who knows the world pretty well. So by 1978, Xavier Roberts is out selling his little people.

He's doing well with that. But by 1982, Coleco approaches him for a license because these are selling so well. And by then, the little people, presumably because little people is a brand made by Fisher Price since 1959, have changed to being called Cabbage Patch Kids something different. Now, the thing with Cabbage Patch Kids that is unique is from Martha Nelson Thomas's early days, she wanted these creations to be closer to actually adopting a baby rather than getting a doll. So as a result of that, these dolls would come with birth certificates, they would be unique.

Again, this goes all the way back to Martha's idea. Xavier Roberts keeps that going so that these dolls have that novelty, but they're also harkening back to a very familiar play pattern. Remember, I had said that these dolls go as far back as the 1800s in the modern incarnation back to 1920. So these are things that parents would reasonably see, look at, go, oh, I played with something like that.

But the way these are kind of updated is cool. I want to have that for my kids. So the way in which parents kind of were directed towards the ultimate Cabbage Patch Kid is totally understandable because it's an item they recognize with a little bit of added novelty to it.

So who could resist that? So 1982, Coleco gets the license from Xavier Roberts. That's where you see the Cabbage Patch Kids that we all know, the ones that have Xavier Roberts' signature right there on the rear end, right there on the rear end.

Those are the Cabbage Patch Kids. It's important to note that Martha Nelson Thomas did not just fade away. She actually fought for her creation.

In 1979, she launched her first lawsuit against Xavier Roberts for this. It was settled for an undisclosed amount. So we actually don't know how much she got from that. I think by all accounts, it was probably not enough, given the ensuing craze that was going to happen. So throughout the 80s, the Cabbage Patch Kid takes off.

You see riots essentially breaking out in stores over them. It was an unusual draw. The box was full of ballots, more than 400 of them. But if your name was pulled, you didn't win a Cabbage Patch doll. You only won the chance to buy one. It's a roundabout way of selling the dolls, but the store's manager says it's the best way to avoid trouble. About three weeks ago, we had a sale on Cabbage Patch, and we had about 200 people at the front door, and we had 36 dolls, and we had a near riot.

So this way, we decided we'd have a draw and be more orderly. Kids are getting them, not even necessarily because they like them, but because they represent a higher status when you're at school. You've got a Cabbage Patch Kid. They weren't cheap. They were like 30 bucks at the time, which is quite a lot, actually, if you adjust for inflation.

I think that brings it to around 80 today, maybe a little more. Getting a Cabbage Patch Kid became more enviable than actually having and keeping a Cabbage Patch Kid, in the sense of the fact that Mom got one mattered so much more than what the product actually was. Again, going back to this idea of a status symbol, the fact that Mom managed to, or Dad or whoever, managed to fight through the crowds, fight through the riot, fight through the guy with the baseball bat, and actually get a Cabbage Patch Kid at the end of the day and bring it home victorious.

That said something about how much that parent loved their kid, how much they were willing to do, how much they were willing to fight through. And we've been listening to Jonathan Alex Andratos. He's a toy historian who knows a heck a lot about the subject. And by the way, we learned a bunch. Toys as we know it, dolls, baby dolls as we know them, didn't really come into existence truly in American life till the late 19th century.

There's some innovation, but not a lot. And in come those Cabbage Patch Kids and Cabbage Patch Hysteria. And for any of you who lived during that time period, what moms and dads would do, the ends of the earth they'd go to, to get this toy, this doll for their kids was unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was almost embarrassing sometimes waiting on lines. You heard $30, 200 people showing up, not just fights over these dolls, but riots and all. So there could be that special Christmas present for the kids.

When we come back, more of the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids here on Our American Stories. Luckyland Casino asking people, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? Lucky? In line at the deli, I guess? In my dentist's office, more than once actually. Do I have to say?

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That's invite code GETDROP777. And we return to our American stories and the story of the Cabbage Patch Kids, told by toy historian Jonathan Alexandratos, beginning with a news report from December of 1983. Once the coupons were given out to those few parents who would be allowed to buy a doll, the word was given out that the dolls would be given out behind the store, out back at the freight entrance. And then the race was on.

Otherwise dignified, calm, mannerly parents broke into a sprint. Well, I had to take what they gave me and they gave me a boy and I wanted a girl. This is my second trip around. My husband works here and I can't even get what I want. I miss work. I'm late for work to get this for my little girl.

I'm not going to tell my boss. I'm trying to get there now. I'm so excited. We waited here since 7 30 and I was just ecstatic. In fact, I ran around and got another ticket. And within a matter of minutes, it was over. You did not get a cabbage patch doll this morning. No, I did not. How badly do you want one?

Very, very badly. One woman told us she's going to call her sisters in Nebraska and Illinois to see if they can get her a doll. If not, she's going to drive to Pennsylvania.

What is it? Two hours to go to Pennsylvania. I think it's worth going there.

If not, I'll try California. My niece that lives in California. Why are full grown adults fighting over these?

Well, here's one reason. I want to get it. Look, this is something that consistently we see throughout pop culture from Cabbage Patch Forward. Remember Jingle All the Way? That's a comedy, right? And that's a comedy that's made about a guy who basically does the same thing these parents were doing when they were looking for Cabbage Patch Kids. He was finding Turboman to show that he was the Turboman. He could be the best dad ever.

And that's what these parents were looking to do, too, in many ways. Every holiday season, there's one toy everyone has to have. I want the Turboman action figure with the arms and legs that move and the rocking orange jetpack and the flooring shooter. Getting it is every child's dream.

Whoever doesn't can be a real loser. Finding it. You got the doll, right? Is this father's nightmare. I'll get that toy.

I promise. When I was a kid, it was Power Rangers. Power Rangers were the thing that when they first came out, nobody invested in Power Rangers except for Toys R Us. And Toys R Us sold out of them very, very, very quickly. My uncle to this day insists he paid a guy in a parking lot 100 bucks to get one for me for Christmas. And man, I love that thing.

And man, I love that uncle. So I can imagine, go back to the 80s, you'll see exactly the same thing. The same story of the way fads work and permeate the culture like that, where it almost doesn't matter what the object is.

I mean, people will fight over it. It's something that we all have gone through as a parent, you know, this frantic shopping. So to get a Cabbage Patch Kid really said something about, you know, who you were as a kid.

It was something that culturally we riffed on as well. You might be familiar with the Garbage Pail Kids. You know, those were the sort of reaction to the Cabbage Patch Kid. Let's take this thing that's meant to be wholesome and let's make it real easy.

Make it real ugly. You know, even Sour Patch Kids, right? The candy. That's a riff on those.

Before then, they were called Mars Men. So, you know, they get changed as well to kind of play on this whole craze that's happening. So this is a sensation. The other thing that happens, which is interesting just from a toy creation standpoint, is Coleco actually thinks about how to replicate, at least in some ways, the craft artisanal nature of what was once the doll baby in that they made a computer program that actually created individually unique heads for each Cabbage Patch Kid. Cabbage Patch Kids are each different as can be. Cabbage Patch Kids, a special kind of love. So this idea that in the world of mass-produced toys, you know, if you buy Duke from G.I.

Joe, Duke always looks exactly the same. That's the whole point of that action figure. If you buy a Cabbage Patch Kid, though, you are the only person who has the Cabbage Patch Kid with that exact sculpt and paint application. So, for example, the dimples and the birthmarks and things like that, that's all programmed to be unique. So then you have this sensation of people going into stores looking for specific Cabbage Patch Kids that maybe look like them. The names, when you actually look at the birth certificates, contain names that are culturally distinct.

They're, you know, from lots of different places, at least in terms of the way they sound. This is all new. So when Cabbage Patch Kids first came out, Coleco by no means had enough stock to keep pace with the demand. So while all those riots are happening, Coleco is like, wait, wait, wait, no, we're opening up another factory. We promise more is coming. Meanwhile, folks in the stores are like, yeah, right, buddy, whatever. I'm getting this one. I'd rather have that Cabbage Patch than wait for you. I don't believe you.

They were actually doing their best, Coleco. But it's hard to convey that to a public pre-internet, pre-social media. You can't tweet about this stuff in the 1980s. So you basically just have people wondering if they'll ever get one of these toys without any real way of knowing whether or not they will. So that right there ups the level of fighting that people are willing to engage with that release them. This girl's mother bought $1,700 worth. It defies all reason.

It's the American way. I'm crazy, right? Anything for my grandchildren. It doesn't bother you to spend that much money on dolls.

No, but it sure did my husband. Since doing Cabbage Patch Kids in the 80s, Xavier Roberts became more and more reclusive throughout the years, so much so that for the longest time, he didn't really give extensive interviews about what he was up to, which is interesting because, you know, by the way, Ty Warner was the same thing of Beanie Baby's fame. Pretty reclusive, didn't give extensive interviews, which is actually what makes Billion Dollar Babies, the true story of the Cabbage Patch Kids, pretty novel because in that documentary Xavier Roberts for the first time sat down and did an extensive in-depth interview about his life and what he's kind of been through. And it actually really helps to shed some light on his perspective in this whole thing. Of course, he doesn't see it the same way as perhaps I would.

I've got my own biases when I think about it. For him, you know, he openly admits that Cabbage Patch would have been impossible without Martha Nelson Thomas. And in his view, he took it to a different level. That's kind of his story.

He's essentially retired. Martha Nelson Thomas, by the way, she died in 2013, and for her entire life created art. I mean, she never stopped being an artist, that's for sure, even though she was sort of burned by this experience. So Black Friday, despite being around in the 1950s and onward, never was the violent sensation that it became post-Cabbage Patch. And it is true that once the quote Cabbage Patch Riots happened, it became normalized. When you think about future toy fads, the idea of people fighting over toys in a store isn't really that surprising. You don't hear about it pre-Cabbage Patch, but after that, you certainly do. And again, I go back to the movie Jingle All the Way. That, you know, doesn't actually critique the process of fighting over a fad toy. It actually says, go fight over it. That's, that's fantastic. That's hilarious.

Where's your Christmas spirit? So from the Cabbage Patch Kids Riots of the 80s, as we can kind of dramatically call them, we then see a cascade after that of other toy fads that kind of come along and occupy that space culturally. So we may remember legs of Tickle the Elbows being ripped off in the 90s. The Beanie Babies thing on its own was, you know, a good example. Furby, you know, too. Pokemon throughout the thousands kind of takes that space at different times.

But none of them. Why get to the level of where Cabbage Patch was, where for the first time we saw on the news, recorded footage of just people going nuts inside of a Kmart. That's new. And that's unique to Cabbage Patch. So today, Cabbage Patch Kids are still around.

People don't necessarily know that. They've changed hands a few times from different companies from Coleco to Mattel to Hasbro and others. And they basically look more or less as they did. They're a little smaller now, a little cheaper.

But the enthusiasm that they garnered in the 80s burned so white hot that today there's no way it could sustain after all these years. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Jonathan Alex Andratos.

He's a toy historian whose knowledge was featured in the film Billion Dollar Babies, the true story of the Cabbage Patch Kids. And what a story we heard. And my goodness, I never thought about Black Friday before like this.

And indeed, it's true. This was the first time in American history that people were fighting over a toy the day after Thanksgiving and waiting in line in mass for a product that wasn't enough of the true story of the Cabbage Patch Kids here on Our American Stories. dinner with those groceries? Drop it.

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