Latest / Stuff You Should Know / SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Cabbage Patch Kids: Must-Have Toy of the Century

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SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Cabbage Patch Kids: Must-Have Toy of the Century · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's my turn. Now it's Josh and for
0:04
Speaker 1: this episode on our Stuff you Should Know twelve Days
0:07
Speaker 1: of Christmas Toys playlist, we're talking about cabbage Patch Kids,
0:12
Speaker 1: one of the all time top contenders for a must
0:16
Speaker 1: have Christmas toy. I had one. His name was Weberdino.
0:20
Speaker 1: He was very great. We had very fun times together,
0:24
Speaker 1: important times at any rate, whether you had a cabbage
0:28
Speaker 1: Patch kid or not. I think you're going to enjoy
0:30
Speaker 1: this episode. So turn up your coco. There's some marshmallows
0:34
Speaker 1: in there and enjoy this app.
0:41
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:51
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, Josh, Malcolm Clark.
0:56
Speaker 1: There's Charles Wayne Bryant. This is Stuff you should know
1:01
Speaker 1: about cabbage Patch Kids who have two names, which is
1:06
Speaker 1: why I just did that. That's right.
1:09
Speaker 2: This, uh, remarkably the third time we've talked about cabbage
1:12
Speaker 2: Patch Kids on this show.
1:14
Speaker 1: I only remember one other time. When was the When
1:17
Speaker 1: was the third time or the second time?
1:19
Speaker 2: I guess well, the last time was not even a
1:23
Speaker 2: year ago, on our on our episode on Must Have
1:27
Speaker 2: Christmas Gifts. And then that's all I remember yeah. And
1:31
Speaker 2: then while I was telling the story of my Cabbage
1:35
Speaker 2: Patch Kid experience, he said, yes, you've told everyone the
1:39
Speaker 2: story before, so I think this will be the third
1:42
Speaker 2: time that we hear these stories.
1:45
Speaker 1: I thought you didn't have a Cabbage Patch kid.
1:48
Speaker 2: So you don't remember the other two times I told
1:49
Speaker 2: the story.
1:51
Speaker 1: No, you got to tell it again. It's called the
1:53
Speaker 1: It's called the hat trick. Baby.
1:56
Speaker 2: Uh yeah. My sister has one of the first, like
2:00
Speaker 2: seventy five of them, of the little people dolls oh wow,
2:05
Speaker 2: that she bought in Okilja when she was a kid.
2:09
Speaker 1: Now I know why it didn't stick with me because
2:14
Speaker 1: I didn't understand what the heck you were talking about.
2:17
Speaker 1: Now I totally get it, and I think it will
2:19
Speaker 1: stay with me forever, Chuck. When we do our fourth, fifth,
2:22
Speaker 1: and sixth podcasts on Cabbage Patch Kids, I will be
2:26
Speaker 1: the one telling that story. How about that?
2:28
Speaker 2: Well, and you also told the story of yours that
2:30
Speaker 2: you rip the head off and gave it a mohawk.
2:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, for yours, weber Dino met a pretty a terrible demise.
2:39
Speaker 2: And I have two of them myself that my mom
2:42
Speaker 2: every once in a while says, hey, do you want these,
2:45
Speaker 2: and I say, no, I don't. I don't think they're
2:48
Speaker 2: worth much money. And I don't even though if My
2:51
Speaker 2: Sisters is worth a lot of money now, even though
2:54
Speaker 2: it's hand signed and one of the first ones. I
2:57
Speaker 2: just I don't think the market is robust as it
3:01
Speaker 2: was at one point.
3:02
Speaker 1: So was hers a callco Little People or as Xavier
3:08
Speaker 1: Roberts like original Appalachian artworks Little People?
3:13
Speaker 2: No, hers was one of the handmade Xavier Roberts og
3:18
Speaker 2: Kraft fair dolls.
3:20
Speaker 1: I think those go for like one two, maybe up
3:24
Speaker 1: two thousand dollars.
3:25
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I just I guess depends on where
3:29
Speaker 2: you look. Like I saw the one that of mine
3:31
Speaker 2: that was one of those originals, and it wasn't one
3:33
Speaker 2: of the first one hundred, but people were asking like
3:35
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty bucks on eBay for those.
3:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm surprised to see that, like
3:42
Speaker 1: from what I've seen, Like, if you really want the
3:45
Speaker 1: big bucks, it's the original Xavier Roberts Little People. But
3:49
Speaker 1: we're probably getting ahead of ourselves a little bit because
3:52
Speaker 1: some people are probably like, what's the cabbage patch kid? Right?
3:56
Speaker 2: Right?
3:57
Speaker 1: So well, we'll tell everybody what a Cabbage Patch kid
3:59
Speaker 1: is It's a little doll that was a huge, huge
4:04
Speaker 1: deal in the Christmas of nineteen eighty three, and like
4:08
Speaker 1: Chuck said, we talked about this on I guess that
4:11
Speaker 1: was our I think it was our Christmas episode or
4:14
Speaker 1: was it a different standalone episode from last year?
4:19
Speaker 2: Now? I think the first time we did it was
4:21
Speaker 2: a Christmas episode, and then last year it was in November.
4:24
Speaker 2: It was just muscle Christmas toys.
4:27
Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha, gotcha, So that's worth listening too. But in
4:32
Speaker 1: December of nineteen eighty three, Christmas of nineteen eighty three,
4:35
Speaker 1: everybody was going crazy for these dolls. But at the
4:38
Speaker 1: same time, there was like because it was such a
4:40
Speaker 1: huge craze and they were so a part of like
4:43
Speaker 1: popular culture at the moment. They were on the news
4:45
Speaker 1: every night. People were doing just absolutely crazy things to
4:49
Speaker 1: get their hands on these dolls for their kids. There
4:51
Speaker 1: was a lot of talk about, well, what are these things?
4:54
Speaker 1: They're so ugly that they're cute, and other people thought, well, no,
4:57
Speaker 1: they're actually just ugly. There was a journal article that
5:03
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen eighty six and the Semantics Journal,
5:05
Speaker 1: et cetera, and the Cabbage Patch kids were described as open,
5:10
Speaker 1: arm denied, seemingly dull witted, with mop haired faces only
5:15
Speaker 1: mothers could love, which I think is pretty pretty. It's
5:18
Speaker 1: a pretty accurate description of a cabbage patch kid, don't
5:20
Speaker 1: you think.
5:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, so on that that was This is something I
5:24
Speaker 2: never knew. Apparently there was a rumor years after the
5:27
Speaker 2: fact that the design was managed by Ronald Reagan because
5:34
Speaker 2: he wanted to get Americans used to what mutant offspring
5:39
Speaker 2: might look like if we ever go to if the
5:41
Speaker 2: big one ever drops and we go to war with
5:43
Speaker 2: the Ruskies, we might want to get used to our
5:47
Speaker 2: babies looking like this. So let's just it's sort of
5:49
Speaker 2: in the classic Hollywood, like, you know, their theories that
5:52
Speaker 2: that's why we make UFO movies. They're commissioned by the
5:55
Speaker 2: government to get people sort of adjusted to the idea
5:58
Speaker 2: that one day there's going to be aliens walking around.
6:00
Speaker 1: Right exactly, But that's probably not the case. Ronald Reagan
6:05
Speaker 1: probably didn't have anything to do with it. But that's
6:07
Speaker 1: just such an eighties thing. Cabbage Patch kids, Ronald Reagan,
6:11
Speaker 1: and nuclear war with the USSR. That's about like the
6:14
Speaker 1: greatest eighties combination I've ever heard of. In my life.
6:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty good.
6:19
Speaker 1: So if you go onto the Cabbage Patch Kid's website,
6:22
Speaker 1: you'll find the enchanting, magical story of where cabbage patch
6:27
Speaker 1: kids came from or how they came into our human world,
6:31
Speaker 1: and it goes something like this that when he was
6:34
Speaker 1: a young boy, Xavier Roberts was wandering around the Appalachian
6:39
Speaker 1: mountains and he saw what is called a bunny bee,
6:43
Speaker 1: which is a magical bee or magical bunny that can
6:46
Speaker 1: fly around like buzzes around like a bee. And he
6:49
Speaker 1: followed it, and the bunny bee went through a waterfall,
6:54
Speaker 1: and Xavier Roberts went and looked and saw that behind
6:56
Speaker 1: the waterfall there was a tunnel, and he went into
6:59
Speaker 1: the tunnel, being an inquisitive type of Appalachian young boy,
7:03
Speaker 1: And when he came out on the other side of
7:05
Speaker 1: the tunnel, he was clearly in some sort of enchanted
7:07
Speaker 1: land because there were a bunch of bunny bees flying
7:10
Speaker 1: around over a cabbage patch, sprinkling some sort of magical dust.
7:15
Speaker 1: An Xavier noticed that when the dust hit the cabbage,
7:18
Speaker 1: the cabbage would start to move and a little baby
7:21
Speaker 1: would be born from it, a cabbage patch kid. And
7:23
Speaker 1: one of those kids a kid named Otis Lee came
7:27
Speaker 1: up to Xavier and said, hey, will you take me
7:30
Speaker 1: and all of my friends over to your human world
7:33
Speaker 1: and help us find homes? And so Xavier Roberts agreed,
7:36
Speaker 1: and he found a Babyland General Hospital for the purpose
7:40
Speaker 1: of adopting out cabbage patch kids. And that's where it
7:43
Speaker 1: all came from.
7:44
Speaker 2: That's right, Babyland General, right here in Cleveland, Georgia. And
7:48
Speaker 2: I just so happened to have driven by there but
7:53
Speaker 2: two days ago. I went up, Oh yeah, yeah, we
7:56
Speaker 2: went on a waterfall hike the family did on Sunday and.
8:00
Speaker 1: Did you see a bunny bee?
8:02
Speaker 2: Didn't see a bunny bee? But we drove right by
8:04
Speaker 2: Babyland General and Emily was like, did you know that
8:07
Speaker 2: was there? I was like, yeah, I've been there, so
8:11
Speaker 2: of course I know it was there. But that's where
8:14
Speaker 2: Xavier Roberts went to college. He went to college at
8:16
Speaker 2: True at McConnell there in Cleveland.
8:17
Speaker 1: So that was the connection, right right, Yeah, if you
8:20
Speaker 1: want to, if you want to kind of take it
8:22
Speaker 1: down a notch as far as magical enchantment goes, the
8:25
Speaker 1: the official story is that Xavier Roberts, while he was
8:28
Speaker 1: at True at McConnell. While he was studying art there,
8:32
Speaker 1: he came across a German fabric sculpture technique from the
8:36
Speaker 1: nineteenth century called needle molding. And if you've ever seen,
8:40
Speaker 1: you know, that really famous tomato pincushion Chuck in the seventies,
8:46
Speaker 1: So you know how how like the top the creases
8:48
Speaker 1: in the top of the tomato are made by like
8:51
Speaker 1: like taut thread pulled through together to kind of create
8:54
Speaker 1: that that molded look. That, from what I can tell,
8:57
Speaker 1: is a form of needle molding. But somehow Xavier Roberts
9:01
Speaker 1: was like, I really like sculpture, and this is a
9:03
Speaker 1: form of soft sculpture. I also like quilting, and this
9:06
Speaker 1: kind of has to do with quilting. I'm going to
9:08
Speaker 1: get into this and I'm going to figure out how
9:10
Speaker 1: to make baby dolls using this needle molding technique. And
9:14
Speaker 1: he did just that starting in nineteen seventy seven.
9:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, And for those of you that want to throw
9:20
Speaker 2: your car into a ditch right now because you're screaming
9:24
Speaker 2: about the story, yeah, because you know the true story,
9:28
Speaker 2: just put a pin in it. We're going to get
9:29
Speaker 2: around to it.
9:31
Speaker 1: That was very merciful of you. Chuck.
9:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't want people to think that we didn't know.
9:36
Speaker 2: But in nineteen seventy seven, Xavier Roberts, who sort of
9:41
Speaker 2: looked like a sort of like a shorter haired Kenny
9:44
Speaker 2: Rogers type, wore a cowboy hat and had this beard,
9:47
Speaker 2: and he developed these They were, like you said, soft sculpture,
9:52
Speaker 2: but they were dolls called little People. And here was
9:55
Speaker 2: this sort of hitch that really drove kids wild, is
9:59
Speaker 2: that they were not dolls that you buy. They were
10:01
Speaker 2: little people that you adopt, so you got adoption birth certificates.
10:07
Speaker 2: It was. It was a brilliant idea that he had
10:12
Speaker 2: put a bin in it, right, and he sold these things,
10:15
Speaker 2: little people originals he had. He went to arts and
10:18
Speaker 2: craft shows, he sold them. We bought ours at Unicoy
10:22
Speaker 2: Lodge at Unicoy State Park in a gift shop there,
10:25
Speaker 2: so that was the kind of place that would carry
10:27
Speaker 2: this kind of stuff. There were about forty dollars, and
10:29
Speaker 2: I remember distinctly that my father could not imagine paying
10:35
Speaker 2: forty dollars for a doll and I think even I
10:39
Speaker 2: think we even left without Little Chuck. And he went
10:42
Speaker 2: back because he felt so bad about how Cresfall and
10:46
Speaker 2: my sister was and bought the doll later on for
10:49
Speaker 2: a Christmas gift or something, if my memory served me,
10:52
Speaker 2: But it was a lot of money. Forty bucks was
10:55
Speaker 2: a lot of money for a doll back then.
10:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was probably getting pretty close to one hundred bucks.
11:00
Speaker 1: And I mean, who goes to Unicoy State Park's gift
11:04
Speaker 1: shop and expects to drop one hundred bucks on a
11:06
Speaker 1: piece of folk art that's really just a baby doll?
11:08
Speaker 1: You know, I could kind of start as.
11:11
Speaker 2: He thought, he's gonna have to get a Michelle miniature
11:14
Speaker 2: license plate for two fifty.
11:16
Speaker 1: Sure, exactly. And when you go on with an expectation
11:19
Speaker 1: like that and you are faced with one hundred dollars
11:22
Speaker 1: soft sculpture payment that you have to make, that's a
11:26
Speaker 1: big shock. And sometimes somebody needs to get in their
11:29
Speaker 1: car and drive home and think about it before they
11:31
Speaker 1: can accept that that's right. So that, like you said,
11:35
Speaker 1: that's exactly the kind of place you would have bought this.
11:37
Speaker 1: You could have also found him at like craft Fares
11:39
Speaker 1: or something. And in fact, Xavier Roberts one first place
11:44
Speaker 1: at the Osceola Art Show in Kassimi, Florida for little
11:49
Speaker 1: people that he named Dexter, which is one of the
11:52
Speaker 1: most uncanny, haunting, horrid dolls you'll ever see in your life.
11:58
Speaker 1: But it helped kind of generate some buzz and that
12:00
Speaker 1: point he was like, you know what this is. Things
12:02
Speaker 1: are kind of going well. People are paying forty bucks
12:04
Speaker 1: for to adopt one of these little people. I'm winning
12:08
Speaker 1: first place prizes. I'm gonna get together some friends and
12:12
Speaker 1: he founded what's known as Original Appalachian Artworks and they
12:16
Speaker 1: they are the ones that actually opened up baby Land General.
12:19
Speaker 1: They took an old medical center in Cleveland, which is
12:23
Speaker 1: super creepy that they they they took an abandoned hospital
12:28
Speaker 1: and opened it for it's basically like a doll store,
12:32
Speaker 1: really creepy if you step back and just look at
12:34
Speaker 1: the contours of the whole thing. But it was ash. No,
12:39
Speaker 1: no it didn't. I'm just saying, if you just look
12:41
Speaker 1: at the words on paper, Oh you put it like that,
12:43
Speaker 1: it does seem Yeah, it was. And it was the
12:48
Speaker 1: opposite of creepy. Like it was delightful, and I guess
12:50
Speaker 1: it still is because I mean it's still in operation today.
12:53
Speaker 1: But people would show up and like there were like
12:56
Speaker 1: the people who worked there were dressed up as nurses
12:58
Speaker 1: and doctors, and they would help the babies be born
13:02
Speaker 1: from cabbage from cabbages, then they would be incubated. They
13:07
Speaker 1: were premies that were born. Like it was a big
13:10
Speaker 1: deal operation to take this idea that you were adopting
13:14
Speaker 1: a cabbage patch kid rather than buying a doll, and
13:17
Speaker 1: then like adding that whole extra dimension to it of
13:19
Speaker 1: going to Babyland general to do it really helped generate
13:23
Speaker 1: a lot of buzz for these things.
13:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I should say that my sister's doll, Chuck,
13:27
Speaker 2: who was they come with their name. She didn't name
13:29
Speaker 2: it after me, but Chuck had You know, if you
13:33
Speaker 2: see the early versions of these things, like you said,
13:36
Speaker 2: it was kind of horrific looking. They weren't the cutest
13:39
Speaker 2: dolls at all. Chuck had a very crooked hairline, like
13:43
Speaker 2: it looked like it was made by someone who didn't
13:45
Speaker 2: fully know what they were doing. His little yarn hairline
13:48
Speaker 2: was like a good three inches higher on one side
13:51
Speaker 2: of his forehead than the other. Which again, further, my
13:55
Speaker 2: dad did not see the charm in this. He was like,
13:56
Speaker 2: it's not even made well. And I got to pay
13:58
Speaker 2: forty dollars for these things. But supposedly with the premies.
14:04
Speaker 2: Xavier Roberts has given some credit to just raising awareness
14:07
Speaker 2: for premature babies because the pre in Cabbage Patchland were
14:12
Speaker 2: so cute. They also had c sections cabbage sections, and
14:17
Speaker 2: by the time nineteen eighty rolls around, he's selling a
14:20
Speaker 2: pretty good amount of these things. But it really explodes
14:24
Speaker 2: in popular culture from sort of the early eighties. He
14:27
Speaker 2: was featured on the TV show Real People, which I
14:31
Speaker 2: watched a lot as a kid, made Newsweek, made the
14:34
Speaker 2: Wall Street Journal, and so the press is starting to
14:37
Speaker 2: kind of come around, and these things are just getting
14:40
Speaker 2: more and more popular at this point.
14:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of those stories just kind of focused
14:44
Speaker 1: on people who were paying a lot more than the
14:47
Speaker 1: original retail price to start collecting these dolls. So there's
14:51
Speaker 1: like a whole underground cult market that was developing around
14:55
Speaker 1: these little people. And it became very apparent that Xavier
15:00
Speaker 1: Roberts was not going to be able to keep up
15:02
Speaker 1: with supply, so he started looking for some help and
15:05
Speaker 1: he found it in nineteen eighty two. And we will
15:08
Speaker 1: talk all about that partnership Made in Heaven starting after
15:12
Speaker 1: these messages. Okay, Chuck, So it's nineteen eighty two, and
15:39
Speaker 1: the little people are just going bonkers. They're flying off
15:42
Speaker 1: of shelves. They can't keep them in stock anywhere. They're
15:44
Speaker 1: selling them. Unicoy State Park is on the phone every
15:47
Speaker 1: day being like, send us more, send us more. We
15:49
Speaker 1: don't care what the hairline looks like. We got to
15:51
Speaker 1: have them. And so Xavier Roberts started looking for some
15:56
Speaker 1: like a legit toy manufacturer to help him out and
16:00
Speaker 1: found it in Kaliko, who had made a name I
16:03
Speaker 1: guess around the same time as maybe a little bit
16:06
Speaker 1: before this year before maybe as the people who came
16:10
Speaker 1: out with pac Man. So they were riding high by
16:13
Speaker 1: this time, and they said, I think there's something to
16:16
Speaker 1: these little people, and we're gonna we're gonna buy in here.
16:18
Speaker 1: And so Xavier Roberts partnered with Kalico, and the rest
16:23
Speaker 1: of the story just kind of takes off like a
16:24
Speaker 1: rocket from there. Yeah.
16:26
Speaker 2: So this was in nineteen eighty two, and at first
16:31
Speaker 2: Kaliko said, you know what, we're going to keep calling
16:33
Speaker 2: them little People. We think that's a good name, even
16:36
Speaker 2: though it wasn't, so they stuck with the name. They
16:40
Speaker 2: figured out the best way to mass produce these things
16:44
Speaker 2: was to get rid of that hand done hands on head.
16:47
Speaker 2: That was a real problem. That's what took the most time.
16:50
Speaker 2: It's also, frankly, what gave those early dolls all the personality.
16:55
Speaker 2: A lot of that was lost when they went to
16:56
Speaker 2: the plastic heads, but they did keep the cloth bodies.
17:01
Speaker 2: They machine produced these vinyl heads. They sized the doll
17:05
Speaker 2: down a little bit to about sixteen inches. The initial
17:08
Speaker 2: dolls were pretty big. They varied in size, obviously depending
17:12
Speaker 2: on how old they were when you adopted them, but
17:16
Speaker 2: they were large, like Chuck was a big doll, the
17:18
Speaker 2: two I have here big dolls.
17:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were like the size where if they were
17:22
Speaker 1: possessed by a demon and came alive, they could smother
17:25
Speaker 1: you like you'd be in big trouble if they came
17:27
Speaker 1: alive while you were asleep.
17:29
Speaker 2: Yes, big time. But sizing them down made a big
17:32
Speaker 2: difference because then you could just box them up, get
17:35
Speaker 2: more shelf space that way. Sure, and they were smart
17:38
Speaker 2: early on too, to realize that kids wanted a lot
17:41
Speaker 2: of variety. They wanted different ethnicities, they wanted different skin color,
17:48
Speaker 2: different shapes. They wanted some with freckles, some with dimples, obviously,
17:52
Speaker 2: different eye color and hair color and stuff like that.
17:54
Speaker 2: And that was one of the big selling points, is
17:56
Speaker 2: it wasn't just this Samesy's mass p is do all
18:01
Speaker 2: that right. Every kid could have the same one. Every
18:03
Speaker 2: kid wanted a different version.
18:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because I mean that was the part of the
18:08
Speaker 1: whole marketing that you were adopting your own individual kid,
18:13
Speaker 1: your own cabbage patch kid who had his or her
18:15
Speaker 1: own name, his or her own like specific birth date.
18:20
Speaker 1: He or she was a unique little baby that you
18:23
Speaker 1: were adopting. So the idea that you could take different
18:27
Speaker 1: head molds and different facial features and different types of hair,
18:30
Speaker 1: and you had like a few different from each category.
18:33
Speaker 1: You suddenly had like millions of combinations that you could
18:36
Speaker 1: randomly put together. It continued that uniqueness that was like
18:40
Speaker 1: part of the brand from the beginning, and like you said,
18:42
Speaker 1: was like part of like the big the big thing
18:45
Speaker 1: that like made this craze so so huge. You know,
18:48
Speaker 1: they were very smart to identify that as a big
18:51
Speaker 1: part of the marketing and then figure out a way
18:54
Speaker 1: to carry it on while also mass producing these things.
18:58
Speaker 1: It was pretty clever on Kleco's part.
19:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was also clever to change the name
19:03
Speaker 2: Little People, Yeah, just didn't have legs, basically in the end,
19:08
Speaker 2: and they thought cabbage Patch Kids, they were born in
19:10
Speaker 2: the cabbage patch. It's and you know, looking back, it's
19:14
Speaker 2: a pretty brilliant name because it ties into being adopted,
19:18
Speaker 2: being born in the little cabbage patch, and it's it
19:23
Speaker 2: was pretty brilliant. I think it was a kind of
19:26
Speaker 2: name like that you could end up making into a
19:29
Speaker 2: bunch of other things, which they did, and we're going
19:31
Speaker 2: to talk about that, but I don't think little people
19:33
Speaker 2: quite had the legs to do that.
19:35
Speaker 1: So Kalico also figured out that there was a really
19:39
Speaker 1: good sweet spot that even if you couldn't really afford it,
19:44
Speaker 1: you would still stretch to reach that point, and they
19:46
Speaker 1: started adopting these. The adoption fees for Cabbage Patch Kids
19:51
Speaker 1: came to about thirty dollars, which is seventy eight dollars
19:53
Speaker 1: in today's money. And then they took their you know,
19:59
Speaker 1: comparatively much larger clout and contacts in the media and
20:04
Speaker 1: started getting way more press for Cabbage Patch Kids than
20:07
Speaker 1: Xavier Roberts ever managed to generate for little People, which
20:11
Speaker 1: I have to say, looking back, though, Xavier Roberts did
20:15
Speaker 1: some really good work as just some dude from Cleveland,
20:19
Speaker 1: Georgia who was hand sewing dolls. I mean he got
20:22
Speaker 1: some pretty good coverage.
20:24
Speaker 2: It was a niche and regional.
20:28
Speaker 1: Right exactly, and it wasn't it became a big deal,
20:30
Speaker 1: but Kalico just put it to shame. They got a
20:34
Speaker 1: lot of press, a lot of interest drummed up for
20:37
Speaker 1: Cabbage Patch kids, and all of that kind of culminated
20:41
Speaker 1: in a December twelfth to a nineteen eighty three edition
20:46
Speaker 1: of Newsweek when there was a cabbage pet, a little
20:50
Speaker 1: girl with her Cabbage Patch kid on the cover of
20:52
Speaker 1: that edition, just in time for the Christmas buying season.
20:56
Speaker 2: That's right, because every kid in America was reading Newsweek
20:59
Speaker 2: and saying, Mom, Dad, look, it's on the cover. We
21:03
Speaker 2: have to get one.
21:04
Speaker 1: Yep. And that was at the very quaint time when
21:07
Speaker 1: you would you would just start Christmas shopping two weeks
21:09
Speaker 1: before Christmas rather than eight months before Christmas.
21:13
Speaker 2: So Clico and by the way, just to save listener mails,
21:17
Speaker 2: Clico did not make back man, and we'll just want
21:19
Speaker 2: to save you from that fate, because is it right, Yeah,
21:23
Speaker 2: I think it was Namco if I remember correctly.
21:26
Speaker 1: Oh man, I.
21:27
Speaker 2: Mean they did do video games.
21:28
Speaker 1: But okay, well thanks for saving me.
21:30
Speaker 2: No, no, no, there'll be plenty of people that write
21:33
Speaker 2: that probably sent the email before I even got to this,
21:38
Speaker 2: and that want to retrack the email. But that's okay.
21:41
Speaker 2: So they started selling these things like hotcakes. They sold
21:45
Speaker 2: three million plus by the end of nineteen eighty three,
21:48
Speaker 2: and like so many Christmas items that came before and after,
21:53
Speaker 2: it is sort of the frenzy is determined by availability
21:56
Speaker 2: and supply, and they were underprepared and they could not
22:01
Speaker 2: keep up with demand. They weren't like the Rubik's Cube,
22:04
Speaker 2: where they just made, you know, millions and millions and
22:07
Speaker 2: millions of these things, and it became a supply problem
22:11
Speaker 2: and it became a really big deal. And this is
22:14
Speaker 2: this is the first toy where people were angry because
22:16
Speaker 2: there weren't enough of them to go around.
22:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean they still made three million of
22:21
Speaker 1: them and they ran out like very quickly. And when
22:24
Speaker 1: you say people were angry, like they were throwing elbows,
22:28
Speaker 1: they were pushing one another, they were getting physical trying
22:33
Speaker 1: to get these dolls. And now it's like, well, yeah,
22:36
Speaker 1: that sounds like a Christmas like must have Christmas toy.
22:40
Speaker 1: People hadn't done that up to this point. This is
22:42
Speaker 1: very new and so in addition to you know, the
22:45
Speaker 1: normal press they were getting, these dolls were also ending
22:49
Speaker 1: up on like the Nightly News a lot that December
22:53
Speaker 1: with stories about how parents were like driving across state
22:56
Speaker 1: lines to get one of those Cabbage Patch Kids. Or
23:00
Speaker 1: there was a story about a post carrier in Kansas
23:04
Speaker 1: City I think who flew to London to buy one,
23:08
Speaker 1: which I don't understand why, because London had its own
23:10
Speaker 1: frenzy going on as well. There was a whole lot
23:14
Speaker 1: of stuff going down that hadn't really gone down before
23:18
Speaker 1: Cabbage Patch Kids came along that Christmas.
23:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wonder if that became a technique to sell
23:23
Speaker 2: more things, was to either falsely kind of falsely say
23:30
Speaker 2: that you don't have enough.
23:32
Speaker 1: I think we covered that and the Must Have Toys
23:35
Speaker 1: episode that that is a technique that they use that
23:38
Speaker 1: they purposefully underproduce to create scarcity.
23:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, but then you can't sell as many. I would
23:45
Speaker 2: think it'd be better to produce the regular amount and
23:48
Speaker 2: then just say you didn't and then they're like, but
23:50
Speaker 2: we found a warehouse that we didn't know about, right exactly,
23:54
Speaker 2: because you still want to move these dolls. I mean
23:56
Speaker 2: Rubik's Cube. They sold two hundred million rubbs cubes in
23:59
Speaker 2: the years. I know that's nuts because they were just
24:02
Speaker 2: pumping those things out.
24:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, at the very least, I think Calico was
24:06
Speaker 1: genuinely caught under prepared. I don't think it was in
24:10
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form a purposeful scarcity. I think
24:14
Speaker 1: it was just straight up scarcity. And there was there was.
24:18
Speaker 1: There's this footage from Zale's Department No, sorry, Zayer Department store, Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania. Right,
24:28
Speaker 1: this is in wilkes wilkes Bury, Pennsylvania or Wilkes Barra.
24:31
Speaker 1: I've also seen Pennsylvania. But there's this manager who I
24:36
Speaker 1: know we talked about before. But you got to see
24:38
Speaker 1: this guy. He's the manager of the Zai department store
24:42
Speaker 1: in December nineteen eighty three at least. And this guy
24:44
Speaker 1: is like unhinged. Have you seen footage of him?
24:47
Speaker 2: Yeah? I saw him last year.
24:50
Speaker 1: Okay, you got to see him again. I gotta describe
24:52
Speaker 1: again because I I he struck a chord with me
24:55
Speaker 1: this year. They didn't last year. But he's he's holding
24:57
Speaker 1: a baseball bat very famously. But if you listen to
25:00
Speaker 1: what he's doing, shouting at the customers. He's like, shut up,
25:04
Speaker 1: listen to May and he's like waving this baseball bat.
25:07
Speaker 1: And there's this crowd of people filling every available inch
25:11
Speaker 1: of this department store wanting cabbage patch kids, and this
25:15
Speaker 1: guy decides that the way to satisfy the need is
25:19
Speaker 1: to just start tossing them into the crowd. So the
25:22
Speaker 1: crowd is like jostling, going crazy trying to catch these
25:25
Speaker 1: cabbage patch kids while the manager of the department store
25:28
Speaker 1: is screaming at them holding a baseball fat It's one
25:31
Speaker 1: of the worst forms of crowd management anyone's ever attempted ever,
25:36
Speaker 1: and it was caught on film and you got to
25:38
Speaker 1: see it yourself.
25:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was. He wasn't doing his best work that day.
25:43
Speaker 1: I really was agreed.
25:46
Speaker 2: A lot of times, the problems were so big that
25:51
Speaker 2: they didn't even want people in the stores, so they
25:53
Speaker 2: would say, like, we can't have another fistfight in here.
25:56
Speaker 2: So what you do is you can arrive and get
25:59
Speaker 2: a coupon and then you go round back to the
26:01
Speaker 2: loading dock and we'll distribute them there. The secondary market
26:06
Speaker 2: started booming. There were actual stores that were buying them.
26:09
Speaker 2: Up and then marking them up, and then there was
26:12
Speaker 2: the black market that really really marked them up. And
26:16
Speaker 2: this was not WKRP in Cincinnati, but it was very
26:20
Speaker 2: much in that rich tradition of DJ's kind of conning
26:25
Speaker 2: people into acting like fools. And this happened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
26:30
Speaker 2: when some local DJs there said there's going to be
26:33
Speaker 2: a B twenty six bomber plane and it's going to
26:35
Speaker 2: drop two thousand dollars over the Brewers Baseball Stadium and
26:40
Speaker 2: all you got to do is show up with your
26:42
Speaker 2: baseball glove to catch these babies and hold up your
26:45
Speaker 2: credit cards so the pilot can take a picture and
26:48
Speaker 2: charge you for it. And of course this is the
26:50
Speaker 2: dumbest thing you've ever heard, but that still didn't stop
26:54
Speaker 2: a couple of dozen people from showing up with their
26:56
Speaker 2: baseball glove and credit card.
26:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, and negative seven degree wind chill, which is very cold.
27:02
Speaker 1: If you're in the centigrade parts of the world, that's
27:05
Speaker 1: very cold. They're used to it, I guess so. But
27:10
Speaker 1: the yeah, the fact that people would would do that
27:13
Speaker 1: is it's like, I double check to make sure that
27:16
Speaker 1: that wasn't an urban legend, and it definitely is not
27:18
Speaker 1: like that was that really did happen in Milwaukee in
27:21
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three. That was like the level the craze reached.
27:25
Speaker 1: And what's really to cale Eco's credit is they managed
27:29
Speaker 1: to keep the party going for a full another year
27:32
Speaker 1: because in Christmas nineteen eighty four, Cabbage Patch Kids were
27:36
Speaker 1: again the must have toy, and in just nineteen eighty
27:39
Speaker 1: four alone, not nineteen eighty three Christmas season, in nineteen
27:43
Speaker 1: eighty four. That year they sold two billion dollars worth
27:46
Speaker 1: of Cabbage Patch Kids in nineteen eighty four money.
27:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this was I think one of the
27:52
Speaker 2: things that made it truly unique is like I said,
27:55
Speaker 2: the Rubikskub was really hot for a few years. But generally,
27:59
Speaker 2: as these things go, it's sort of like the you
28:02
Speaker 2: can count on the one Christmas season. If you're overlapping
28:05
Speaker 2: to the next Christmas season, that is a grand slam
28:08
Speaker 2: home run as far as toys go.
28:10
Speaker 1: Absolutely so. One of the one of the outcomes of
28:14
Speaker 1: that of being a toy that managed manages to span
28:18
Speaker 1: two Christmas seasons that at thoroughly as they become you know,
28:24
Speaker 1: iconic and they start popping up in other places like
28:28
Speaker 1: there was one named Christopher Xavier, who's a very famous
28:31
Speaker 1: cabbage patch kid, I guess, as cabbage patch kids can
28:34
Speaker 1: be famous. And he actually rode on the Space Shuttle
28:38
Speaker 1: on a on a genuine, legit NASA Space Shuttle mission
28:41
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, and that reminds me, Chuck, have
28:45
Speaker 1: you seen the mini doc about about the Challenger? No?
28:50
Speaker 2: Not yet. It's good.
28:51
Speaker 1: Oh boy, it is really good. I mean it's a
28:54
Speaker 1: it's a high, high caliber documentary to begin with, but
28:57
Speaker 1: then like the the emotional that it manages to dredge
29:02
Speaker 1: up is really it's a really well done documentary in
29:06
Speaker 1: every every way. I highly recommend it. Where's that showing
29:10
Speaker 1: that one's on Netflix? I believe almost positive and I
29:13
Speaker 1: think it's just called Challenger and then probably colon something.
29:17
Speaker 1: But it's good. It was it's by I think JJ
29:20
Speaker 1: isn't bad Robot JJ Abrams production company. Yeah, they did it.
29:25
Speaker 1: They were one of the companies that handled it. But
29:28
Speaker 1: it was it's very good.
29:29
Speaker 2: I did watch, and Nola Holmes on your recommendation.
29:33
Speaker 1: Yes, what'd you think?
29:34
Speaker 2: I liked it a lot. It was good. It was
29:36
Speaker 2: just a good, breezy, light fun movie to watch, which
29:40
Speaker 2: is just what we needed to tonight.
29:41
Speaker 1: We watched it for sure, and and but it was
29:45
Speaker 1: smart too, wasn't it. Yeah? It was.
29:47
Speaker 2: It was smart enough. And she's just great Millie Bobby
29:49
Speaker 2: Brown is. She's just she's got a lot of personality
29:53
Speaker 2: and lovable charisma, so she's she's great to watch and
29:55
Speaker 2: it's fun to see her outside of playing eleven with
29:59
Speaker 2: all her person able to come out like that.
30:01
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, Well, I'm very glad that you liked it,
30:05
Speaker 1: because I think we would have had some sort of
30:07
Speaker 1: awkward wedge between us for the rest of our lives.
30:10
Speaker 2: As you know that you haven't seen the Octopus stock yet,
30:13
Speaker 2: No I did. Oh okay, So I think if we're
30:17
Speaker 2: going to talk about octopus, my octopus teacher, you should
30:19
Speaker 2: just turn down your volume for about a minute and
30:23
Speaker 2: you won't have it spoiled.
30:24
Speaker 1: All right, fair enough, fair enough? And actually I think
30:26
Speaker 1: that guy is terrible. I think is a terrible human
30:29
Speaker 1: being for not rescuing his companion friend for on two
30:33
Speaker 1: different occasions. Really, yes, And I know that he's a documentarian,
30:38
Speaker 1: so they're not supposed to interfere. I've seen drop dead gorgeous.
30:41
Speaker 1: I know the rules, but this is different. He crossed
30:45
Speaker 1: the line, he crossed boundaries when he became friends with
30:49
Speaker 1: that octopus. He stopped being a documentary and started being
30:52
Speaker 1: its friend. And then he as his friend, wasn't there
30:54
Speaker 1: for his friend when it was attacked, not once, but twice.
30:58
Speaker 1: And I really dislike that for that reason.
31:01
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, Well I don't concur but I guess that's
31:04
Speaker 2: part of the beauty of that movie. You can have different,
31:06
Speaker 2: different takes.
31:07
Speaker 1: So but there's not a gulf between us a wedge
31:10
Speaker 1: between us, now, is there?
31:12
Speaker 2: I mean, did you hate the documentary?
31:14
Speaker 1: No? I otherwise thought it was amazing, all right, Well,
31:17
Speaker 1: then there's no amazing. It really was really was great,
31:20
Speaker 1: except for that one thing time too. All right, no way,
31:24
Speaker 1: So let's see back to Cabbage Patch Kids. There was
31:27
Speaker 1: another kind of landmark they reached in nineteen ninety two
31:31
Speaker 1: when they became I think maybe Christopher Xavier became the
31:34
Speaker 1: official mascot of the US Olympic team and got to
31:38
Speaker 1: go to Barcelona with them. Yeah, I mean, this is
31:40
Speaker 1: pretty impressive.
31:41
Speaker 2: This is ten plus years after these things were the
31:44
Speaker 2: hot ticket, you know, which is crazy, crazy time they
31:49
Speaker 2: were on a postage stamp. Eventually, of course, though his
31:53
Speaker 2: star will not his star. It was more than Christopher Xavier,
31:56
Speaker 2: but their collective star was going to fade. Like all
32:00
Speaker 2: toys and all dolls. We've all seen toy story. We
32:03
Speaker 2: know what happened. We know what happens in the end.
32:07
Speaker 2: It never completely went away though, they you know Kaliko,
32:10
Speaker 2: and then eventually was like, you know, we got to
32:12
Speaker 2: offload these guys. We're going to sell it. We're in
32:15
Speaker 2: the video game industry like big time, and so we got.
32:20
Speaker 1: A have you heard of pac Man?
32:22
Speaker 2: Well, the video game industry starts tanking, so they're trying
32:25
Speaker 2: to guess recoup some money on their investments. So they
32:28
Speaker 2: sell the Cabbage Patch Kid license and then you know,
32:33
Speaker 2: this is not before trying a few things they tried
32:35
Speaker 2: like talking Cabbage Patch Kids and stuff like that, but
32:39
Speaker 2: eventually they went bankrupt in the eighties and the license
32:43
Speaker 2: moved on to different people over the years. Mattel Hasbro Toys,
32:48
Speaker 2: r Us and then right now it's owned by play Along, Inc.
32:52
Speaker 2: Which it just seems like those are seems like there's
32:56
Speaker 2: a lot of toy companies named weird things like that.
32:59
Speaker 1: Now agree, I agree, and I find it unsettling like
33:03
Speaker 1: their slogan should be we're watching you.
33:08
Speaker 2: It just seems like we talk about those a lot.
33:10
Speaker 2: Like there's still the giants like Hasbro and Mattel, but
33:14
Speaker 2: I feel like when we've done our toy podcast, it
33:15
Speaker 2: seems like the newer ones they don't have these sort
33:19
Speaker 2: of name brands that you that you think of as toys.
33:23
Speaker 1: No. I know, they all sound like Russian fronts. It's
33:25
Speaker 1: really weird and unsettling and kind of off putting.
33:28
Speaker 2: And all the c's are k's. It's really strange.
33:32
Speaker 1: It's very sinister. So yeah, along the along the lines,
33:35
Speaker 1: like all of these companies were like, we've got to
33:37
Speaker 1: figure out a way to capture lightning in a bottle
33:40
Speaker 1: again a second time. That just doesn't happen. It's hard
33:44
Speaker 1: enough the first time. And so they tried different things,
33:47
Speaker 1: Like you said, Kalico tried that talking one didn't work.
33:51
Speaker 1: I think Hasbro had one that swam, which is kind
33:54
Speaker 1: of impressive, sure, and then Mattel had one that they
33:58
Speaker 1: had to withdraw. It was all cabbage patch snack time kids,
34:03
Speaker 1: and they these things would like eat like they came
34:06
Speaker 1: with like French fries or something, and you'd put like
34:09
Speaker 1: the French fry in their mouth and they'd start chewing
34:11
Speaker 1: and the French fe would go down their throat and
34:13
Speaker 1: actually come out the back of their head and fall
34:15
Speaker 1: into their backpack, and then you could feed it to
34:17
Speaker 1: them again, which is great and fine, but if you're
34:20
Speaker 1: a little kid and you get your fingers in there
34:22
Speaker 1: or your hair in there, that cabbage patch dolls just
34:24
Speaker 1: kind of keep eating and eating, and you're going to
34:26
Speaker 1: start screaming and your parents are going to be like,
34:28
Speaker 1: I don't want this doll anymore, give me my money back.
34:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, And these things also declined in quality. Think of
34:35
Speaker 2: the mid nineties. Mattel shrunk them even more down to
34:39
Speaker 2: fourteen inches and they were like, forget these cloth bodies
34:43
Speaker 2: even we're gonna make the whole thing vinyl. And people
34:47
Speaker 2: didn't like that at all. And it took I think
34:50
Speaker 2: the twentieth anniversary in two thousand and three. It took
34:52
Speaker 2: Toys r Us, who took over the rights at that point,
34:55
Speaker 2: to jack these things back up to eighteen inches. They
35:00
Speaker 2: had cloth bodies. I think they had an eighteen inch
35:04
Speaker 2: and a twenty inch and then they finally brought back
35:06
Speaker 2: those cloth bodies, which were a big deal, and they
35:09
Speaker 2: debuted them at their flagship store in New York City,
35:12
Speaker 2: and they sort of recaptured the magic a little bit.
35:16
Speaker 2: And it's about this time and I think a year
35:18
Speaker 2: later is when play Along licensed it. But it's about
35:23
Speaker 2: this time that people started buying them again a little
35:25
Speaker 2: bit for nostalgia, Like kids that grew up with them
35:29
Speaker 2: were now buying them for their kids. And I think
35:32
Speaker 2: you know, they sold Okay, it's nothing like they were
35:34
Speaker 2: at first, but they're still around.
35:36
Speaker 1: No, yeah, and I play a long ink if that
35:39
Speaker 1: is their real name. Was very wise to basically recreate
35:43
Speaker 1: the original nineteen eighty three style cabbage patch kids, like
35:48
Speaker 1: they're basically indistinguishable from the ones that the people who
35:53
Speaker 1: are buying them now for their kids had when they
35:55
Speaker 1: were kids. And it's like you said, it's all nostalgia
35:58
Speaker 1: and they're doing pretty good trade on it with without
36:00
Speaker 1: having to reinvent the wheel.
36:02
Speaker 2: That's right. A little quick stat before we take a
36:05
Speaker 2: break that is remarkable. Over the past thirty two years,
36:09
Speaker 2: there have been one hundred and thirty million of these
36:12
Speaker 2: babies born, which would if they were real little people,
36:15
Speaker 2: it would make them the tenth most populous country in
36:18
Speaker 2: the world, with one being born every six point eight seconds.
36:23
Speaker 2: But having said that, we're gonna take a little break
36:26
Speaker 2: and right after this we're going to tell you the
36:29
Speaker 2: true origin story of the Little People.
36:54
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, I'm curious, why did you say true like that?
36:59
Speaker 2: Well, if you listen to the show a year ago,
37:00
Speaker 2: it's already ruined. But we didn't go into that much depth.
37:06
Speaker 2: Here's what really happened, though. Xavier Roberts ripped off a lady.
37:13
Speaker 2: That's the easiest way to say it. There was a
37:14
Speaker 2: very kind hearted, soft spoken folk artist named Martha Nelson
37:18
Speaker 2: Thomas went to art school in the seventies. She experimented
37:22
Speaker 2: with the same exact German soft sculpture molding, and she
37:27
Speaker 2: created what was called little doll babies. If you google
37:30
Speaker 2: Martha Nelson Thomas little Dolls, and you see this very
37:34
Speaker 2: now famous picture when it hasn't been swept under the
37:38
Speaker 2: rug by Xavier Roberts people and maybe Kaliko's people, This
37:42
Speaker 2: black and white picture of this woman surrounded by what
37:45
Speaker 2: are clearly and obviously cabbage patch kids.
37:49
Speaker 1: Yes, and there's actually funny enough. There's another famous picture
37:53
Speaker 1: of Xavier Roberts, taken probably about ten years after that
37:58
Speaker 1: and he's surrounded by straight up cabbage Patch kids, you know,
38:01
Speaker 1: with the vinyl heads and everything. But the fact that
38:04
Speaker 1: that picture was taken of Martha and Nels Nelson Thomas
38:07
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five is photographic documentary evidence that she
38:12
Speaker 1: is the person who came up with cabbage Patch Kids.
38:16
Speaker 1: Not cabbage Patch kids, but what cabbage Patch Kids were
38:19
Speaker 1: based on. And if that were it, if that were
38:22
Speaker 1: the photo, if that was the only evidence whatsoever, you'd
38:25
Speaker 1: be like, that's a I don't know. People can have
38:29
Speaker 1: similar ideas. You know, there's only one you know, old
38:33
Speaker 1: German technique called needle molding. Other people could have found it,
38:37
Speaker 1: but that is not the only evidence. And in fact,
38:40
Speaker 1: Xavier Roberts has gone on public record saying that he
38:44
Speaker 1: was inspired by Martha Nelson Thomas, but he changed it enough.
38:49
Speaker 1: But if you go and look at the actual story
38:51
Speaker 1: in the facts along the way, and there's actually a
38:53
Speaker 1: pretty good sixteen minute long vice documentary on this whole
38:57
Speaker 1: thing that you will see that it went way beyond
39:01
Speaker 1: him just being inspired by Martha Nelson Thomas's work, and
39:04
Speaker 1: in fact, like you said, he basically ripped her off.
39:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he from what I could tell, and there's
39:10
Speaker 2: a bunch of different sort of versions of this online.
39:14
Speaker 2: But from what I saw is they actually did have
39:16
Speaker 2: an agreement early on that he would sell these for her.
39:20
Speaker 2: He said, hey, these are great. Can I take some
39:22
Speaker 2: of these to my gift shops and sell them for you?
39:26
Speaker 2: And I think I could sell a lot more than
39:27
Speaker 2: you could, And for a little while they did have
39:29
Speaker 2: an agreement, but as it turns out, he ended up
39:33
Speaker 2: marking them up and charging too much money, and she
39:36
Speaker 2: wasn't happy about that. She was like, no, they shouldn't
39:38
Speaker 2: cost forty dollars. It's you know, it's nineteen seventy eight.
39:42
Speaker 2: For God's sake, that's a doll And he's like, yeah, but.
39:45
Speaker 1: There, well, you think this is Unicoy State Park.
39:48
Speaker 2: They're a handmade and you know, you should put a
39:51
Speaker 2: value on your talents. And they had a disagreement about that,
39:55
Speaker 2: and she said, you know what, forget it. I don't
39:57
Speaker 2: want you to sell these anymore. He follows up with
40:00
Speaker 2: a letter saying, well, you know what, if you don't
40:02
Speaker 2: let me sell your dolls, he basically said, I'm just
40:06
Speaker 2: going to start making my own and that's exactly what
40:09
Speaker 2: he did.
40:10
Speaker 1: Supposedly he wrote her a letter, and I don't remember
40:12
Speaker 1: who mentions it in the Vice documentary, but basically they
40:15
Speaker 1: said that in the letter he said, if I can't
40:17
Speaker 1: sell your dolls, I will sell something just like them.
40:21
Speaker 1: And she apparently was like whatever, just went her own way.
40:24
Speaker 1: She was satisfied to have her dolls back and probably
40:27
Speaker 1: thought she was done with the matter. And then supposedly
40:30
Speaker 1: one of her friends said, hey, I saw your little
40:32
Speaker 1: doll babies for sale at the Atlanta Airport. Way to go.
40:36
Speaker 1: She said, I'm not selling these at the Atlanta Airport.
40:38
Speaker 1: And apparently that's when she knew she had a big
40:41
Speaker 1: problem on her hands and found out that Xavier Roberts
40:44
Speaker 1: had come up with the little people dolls that were
40:48
Speaker 1: just the spinning image of her little doll babies.
40:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she filed a lawsuit that went on for years.
40:55
Speaker 2: I think by the time they were selling out in
40:58
Speaker 2: stores in nineteen eighty three, she was about seven years
41:01
Speaker 2: into this lawsuit. And for her, it wasn't She asked
41:04
Speaker 2: for I think a million dollars, but she said it
41:06
Speaker 2: wasn't about the money. She was like, I don't want
41:08
Speaker 2: to see this as a commodity. And I don't want
41:12
Speaker 2: to be ripped off, and I don't want this guy
41:14
Speaker 2: to come along and basically not have the same respect
41:17
Speaker 2: for these little dolls that I had. And if you
41:20
Speaker 2: look at the court case, you think, you know, open
41:22
Speaker 2: and shut. She's got this picture from seventy five. They
41:25
Speaker 2: had a prior relationship. She's got this letter that says
41:30
Speaker 2: where he basically says he's going to rip her off.
41:32
Speaker 2: But she didn't copyright these things. And you would have
41:35
Speaker 2: had to copyright because they were all handmade and they
41:38
Speaker 2: were all I guess, unique into themselves. You would have
41:41
Speaker 2: had to copyright and sign or stamp each doll, and
41:44
Speaker 2: she didn't want to do that, and he had no
41:46
Speaker 2: problem doing it. Ours little Chuck has an Xavier Robert's
41:50
Speaker 2: hand signature on his butt if you pull down his
41:52
Speaker 2: little corduroy shorts.
41:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of the famous things about Cabbage Patch kids,
41:57
Speaker 1: aside from their distinctive faces, is that each one of
42:00
Speaker 1: them has Xavier Roberts signature stamped onto it's butt. And
42:04
Speaker 1: I guess Martha Nelson Thomas was like, there's no place
42:06
Speaker 1: to put a signature on a child, and these are
42:09
Speaker 1: like children to me. That's why I adopt them out
42:12
Speaker 1: rather than sell them. So I'm not going to sign this.
42:15
Speaker 1: I'm not going to copyright them. And that basically so
42:18
Speaker 1: you would think it would have sunk her case. And
42:21
Speaker 1: after almost eight years, Exavier Roberts finally said, okay, fine,
42:28
Speaker 1: let's settle this. I suspect it had to do with
42:32
Speaker 1: he sold out at some point in the eighties he
42:34
Speaker 1: sold his portion, and I would guess he probably needed
42:38
Speaker 1: that court case to go away to finalize that sale,
42:41
Speaker 1: and for whatever the reason, in nineteen eighty five he
42:44
Speaker 1: was suddenly ready to settle, and they settled for an
42:47
Speaker 1: undisclosed sum that apparently Martha Nelson Thomas was satisfied with.
42:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he also said, and hey, lady, you say
42:55
Speaker 2: you can't copyright these things, you can sign it right
42:57
Speaker 2: next to their little butthole.
43:00
Speaker 1: Right. He sent a cockney there for a second cockney
43:03
Speaker 1: Like I started to get nervous, like, oh my god,
43:05
Speaker 1: why does he sound cockney? And then you pulled it
43:07
Speaker 1: out with the real Appalachian Mountain folk twist at the
43:10
Speaker 1: end there.
43:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he he settled as shit was enough money
43:13
Speaker 2: to put her kids through college. She said, uh, it's
43:16
Speaker 2: still sort of a sad story to me that you
43:18
Speaker 2: know this. You know, man came along and ripped off
43:22
Speaker 2: this lady's design and then later on complained that he
43:25
Speaker 2: was getting ripped off. He complained about knockoffs and said,
43:29
Speaker 2: you know, my point is not not take my product
43:32
Speaker 2: to my creation and tarnish it.
43:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, which was pretty audacious because he said this, like,
43:38
Speaker 1: you know, I believe it right when he was settling
43:41
Speaker 1: with this other case in which a part of the
43:43
Speaker 1: settlement was he had to acknowledge that that he had
43:46
Speaker 1: taken her idea, and for him to be complaining about
43:51
Speaker 1: this on TV, it was a little audacious, especially if
43:54
Speaker 1: you know that you know the full story. But the
43:58
Speaker 1: even though it was a open secret or even a
44:02
Speaker 1: widely known tale in the toy industry and even some
44:04
Speaker 1: parts of the press. Even still today, everybody thinks of
44:07
Speaker 1: Xavier Roberts as the creator of Cabbage Patch Kids, and
44:11
Speaker 1: technically he was because he came up with Cabbage Patch
44:17
Speaker 1: Kids and Martha Nelson Thomas came up with Little doll Babies.
44:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he sold it to well, he didn't come
44:23
Speaker 2: up with cabbage Patch Kids. He sold it to pac Man,
44:25
Speaker 2: and pac Man named him cabbage patch Kids.
44:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so, I hadn't thought about that. So
44:31
Speaker 1: one of the groups he was complaining about was tops
44:34
Speaker 1: trading cards, Tops trading cards around the still in the
44:38
Speaker 1: height of the cabbage patch kid craze in nineteen eighty five,
44:42
Speaker 1: came out with one of the greatest parodies anyone's ever
44:45
Speaker 1: come out, with the beloved garbage pale Kids series.
44:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wasn't endo these. I was a little too old. Yeah, certainly,
44:55
Speaker 2: I was fourteen. I certainly remember them in the zeitgeist,
45:00
Speaker 2: and I knew it was a very big deal. But
45:02
Speaker 2: this was probably more for kids, probably around your age.
45:06
Speaker 2: I imagine you were probably into these.
45:08
Speaker 1: Right, I loved garbage pail Kids. I believe that you
45:11
Speaker 1: had a pretty impressive garbage pail kid collection herself. Oh
45:14
Speaker 1: really yeah, and she actually, yeah, she actually bought me
45:18
Speaker 1: a couple of garbage pail kids that I have somewhere.
45:21
Speaker 1: I think one is squashed, Josh, I can't remember the
45:24
Speaker 1: other one. But they are for people who don't know
45:27
Speaker 1: what a garbage pail kid is. Go look up gp
45:31
Speaker 1: K dot com and I think it's like g E
45:33
Speaker 1: E p e e ka y dot com. I'm not sure,
45:37
Speaker 1: but they have every single series scanned, so you can
45:41
Speaker 1: see all fifteen series that came out between nineteen eighty
45:44
Speaker 1: five and nineteen eighty eight, and they're just awesome. But
45:47
Speaker 1: they're basically like if garbage If Cabbage Patch Kids were
45:53
Speaker 1: meant to get us used to what mutant offspring of
45:57
Speaker 1: nuclear war survivors would look like, Garbage Pail Kids were
46:02
Speaker 1: the mutated version of that.
46:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good way to say it. They were.
46:07
Speaker 2: They were deformed, and they were plagued and diseased, and
46:12
Speaker 2: they had names like Adam Baum and Bony Tony and
46:15
Speaker 2: I guess squashed Josh and yeah roomy Umie. I don't know. No,
46:22
Speaker 2: they didn't have they didn't have names for everyone, but
46:25
Speaker 2: it was it was a big deal. They sold a
46:27
Speaker 2: ton of them, and Xavier Roberts was was not happy
46:30
Speaker 2: with this, and I think ended up in the lawsuit
46:35
Speaker 2: being successful and getting them just to change enough to
46:40
Speaker 2: where it didn't look like it was officially tied to
46:43
Speaker 2: the Cabbage Patch Kids.
46:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, like they had the cat you know where how
46:47
Speaker 1: it says like on the box for the Cabbage Patch Kid,
46:50
Speaker 1: It's like in a banner kind of like semi circle
46:52
Speaker 1: banner they had that originally as Garbage Pail Kids. They
46:55
Speaker 1: had to turn that into a straight bar. They made
46:58
Speaker 1: them look less like lifelike and more like plastic dolls.
47:03
Speaker 1: In the later series. There were a few changes, but
47:05
Speaker 1: I mean, it was still pretty clear what the whole
47:07
Speaker 1: thing was a riff off of. But one thing I
47:09
Speaker 1: didn't realize is that one of the art directors who
47:13
Speaker 1: helped conceptualize Garbage Pale Kids from the outset was Art Spiegelman,
47:18
Speaker 1: who created Mouse.
47:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you know that? I Mean, I've heard of
47:22
Speaker 2: Art Spiegelman, but I really don't know anything about him,
47:24
Speaker 2: So I didn't know that, But I know the name.
47:27
Speaker 1: I've not read Mouse, but I know it's like it's
47:29
Speaker 1: like a like a just a legendary graphic novel about fascism.
47:34
Speaker 1: But that guy helped create Garbage Pale Kids just a
47:39
Speaker 1: couple of years before he created Mouse.
47:41
Speaker 2: Amazing, and there was a bad TV show that eventually
47:45
Speaker 2: only aired in Europe. That was a bad movie that
47:48
Speaker 2: is pretty legendarily bad, but it was a big deal.
47:52
Speaker 2: Though they sold a ton of them, they didn't quite
47:54
Speaker 2: have the spinoff power of the cpks, but the gpks
47:59
Speaker 2: did okay for themselves.
48:00
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean like that really goes to show you
48:02
Speaker 1: just how big cabbage Patch Kids were that it could
48:05
Speaker 1: sustain a cottage industry for a parody. Even that's how
48:09
Speaker 1: big cabbage Patch Kids were in the yeah piece. So
48:13
Speaker 1: hats off to cabbage Patch Kids. I can't wait to
48:16
Speaker 1: talk about them again next year in another episode. It'll
48:19
Speaker 1: be great, we'll figure it out. We'll spend twenty twenty
48:23
Speaker 1: one figuring out how to do that, Chuck. And in
48:26
Speaker 1: the meantime, everybody, since we're thinking about how to talk
48:29
Speaker 1: about cabbage Patch Kids so more, it's time for listener mail.
48:36
Speaker 2: That's right. Before we do listener mail, real quick, I
48:38
Speaker 2: just want to give a shout out to the Budge family.
48:41
Speaker 2: Not really going to get into what's going on with them,
48:44
Speaker 2: but just want them to know that we're thinking about
48:46
Speaker 2: them and sending them lots of love and support over
48:49
Speaker 2: the internet airwaves. But this email is called oh I know,
48:56
Speaker 2: I'm going to call it the beev this is about
49:00
Speaker 2: beavers again. And it starts out as this is seriously
49:04
Speaker 2: not a please read me on the air email, And
49:06
Speaker 2: that's a pretty good way to get on the air.
49:08
Speaker 2: By the way, thanks for the amazing show. Been a
49:11
Speaker 2: listener since they were paltry twenty minutes. Love everyone, keep
49:14
Speaker 2: me company while walking, driving, cleaning, cooking, and providing an
49:18
Speaker 2: endless source of interesting topics for my English students in Spain.
49:22
Speaker 2: I kind of think Chuck is my podcast soulmate, as
49:25
Speaker 2: we grow up in much the same circumstances around the
49:27
Speaker 2: same age. We have very similar cultural outlook on different things.
49:31
Speaker 2: I do have a small difference of opinion, though your
49:33
Speaker 2: Bigfoot podcast was great and I was happy to hear
49:36
Speaker 2: you say the possibility exists. Did we say that?
49:41
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, I think we were. I don't know
49:45
Speaker 1: if it was we so much as you.
49:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe so, But a while back you were just teasing.
49:50
Speaker 1: I think it was we.
49:51
Speaker 2: You were adamant that NeSSI does not exist, buddy show
49:55
Speaker 2: NeSSI some love. Wouldn't it be amazing if she did exist?
50:00
Speaker 2: So she has her fingers crossed on that. But the
50:01
Speaker 2: real reason she wrote in she listened to the beaver
50:04
Speaker 2: episode and came across Beav the beaver, So just get
50:10
Speaker 2: online and google bev. It was this beaver that was found,
50:15
Speaker 2: I think, abandoned by its parents and then adopted as
50:17
Speaker 2: a young baby. And then raised for a while to
50:20
Speaker 2: eventually be putting maybe a while life center or something.
50:23
Speaker 2: But the long and short of it is Beav makes
50:26
Speaker 2: dams in their house. So there are all these pretty
50:30
Speaker 2: cute videos of Bev dragging stuff into this one specific
50:35
Speaker 2: doorway that Beav is trying to dam up and like
50:38
Speaker 2: dragging a shoe rack, pillows, tissue boxes, like anything Beef
50:45
Speaker 2: can get a hold of in his little paws and teeth.
50:48
Speaker 2: He'll drag over to this doorway and try and dam up.
50:51
Speaker 2: And it's really one of the cutest, funniest things I've
50:54
Speaker 2: ever seen.
50:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is very cute because he looks like, should
50:58
Speaker 1: this go here? Maybe a little bit to the left? Okay,
51:01
Speaker 1: that's all right right there. They were like when he
51:03
Speaker 1: brought the pillow over, He's like, oh, this is very useful.
51:05
Speaker 1: I can just squish this into place. It was very
51:08
Speaker 1: cute to watch him do that.
51:09
Speaker 2: It is amazing. And that email, by the way, was
51:12
Speaker 2: from Carrie Keeley.
51:13
Speaker 1: Thanks Carrie, that was a great email. And yes, way
51:17
Speaker 1: to get it on the air by saying it's not
51:19
Speaker 1: meant to be on the air. We fall for stuff
51:22
Speaker 1: like that all the time. And if you want to
51:24
Speaker 1: try to make us fall for something. Have at us.
51:27
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to stuff podcast at
51:29
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio dot com.
51:35
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
51:37
Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
51:41
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.