Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Cabbage Patch Kids: Must-Have Toy of the Century

Transcript

Cabbage Patch Kids: Must-Have Toy of the Century · Stuff You Should Know

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