| The Cabbage
Patch Kids have their origin with the bestselling
1901 novel by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice, Mrs.
Wiggs and the Cabbage Patch. Mrs. Wiggs, whose
husband had "traveled to eternity by the
alcohol route," was left to raise her 5 children
alone is a Louisville shantytown named Cabbage
Patch. The unbridled optimism with which she faces
adversity was inspiration to many women readers
of the time. Charles Panati in his 1991 Panati's
Parade of Fads, Follies and Manias likens Alice
Rice to an Oprah of her time and the Cabbage Patch
to a Louisville tourist attraction not unlike
"Cheers" in Boston. The story was made
into a movie on at least 4 separate occasions.
In 1983 Xavier Roberts began marketting the "Cabbage Patch
Kids" as a series of dolls produced from
1983-1989 by Coleco. They had large, round vinyl
heads and soft fabric bodies.
The gimmick of the dolls was their uniqueness. No two were
exactly alike; each doll had a different eye color,
facial features, hair, and outfit. The subtle
differences were introduced with a computer for
each run. Each came with a unique birth certificate
signed by their creator.
They were the must-have toy one Christmas. Parents across the
United States flocked to stores to try to obtain
one of the Cabbage Patch Kids for their children
with fights occasionally erupting between parents
over the hard-to-find dolls. In later years, Coleco
introduced variants on the original Cabbage Patch
Kids, and derivatives of the original line of
dolls continued to be marketed.
Although the Cabbage Patch Kids fad has largely passed, there remain a significant number of die-hard collectors.
Cabbage Patch Kids were later parodied with the typically grotesque Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. The parody led Roberts to sue Topps, the maker of Garbage Pail Kids, for trademark infringement. The parties eventually settled out of court, with Topps agreeing to redesign the cards so that the artwork would not resemble Cabbage Patch Kids so closely.
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