Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Cabbage Patch Kids: Must-Have Toy of the Century About this episode Surprisingly, Cabbage Patch Kids have turned up on SYSK almost as much as the Nazis or Seinfeld. It’s finally time to dive all the way into CPKs, from their controversial origins to the Christmas craze of ‘83 to their alter egos, Garbage Pail Kids.
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Transcript 10,070 words · 8 speakers
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1:06 Josh Clark? Hey, everybody. It's my turn now. It's Josh. And for this episode on our Stuff You Should Know 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist, we're talking about Cabbage Patch Kids, one of the all-time top contenders for a must-have Christmas toy. I had one. His name was Weber Dino. He was very great. We had very fun times together, important times. At any rate, whether you had a Cabbage Patch Kid or not, I think you're going to enjoy this episode. So turn up your cocoa, throw some marshmallows in there, and enjoy this app.
1:46 Speaker 03 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:56 Josh Clark? Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, um, Josh Malcolm Clark. There's Charles Wayne Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know About Cabbage Patch Kids, who have two names, which is why I just did that.
2:13 Speaker 04 That's right. This remarkably, the third time we've talked about Cabbage Patch Kids on this show.
2:19 Josh Clark? I only remember one other time. When was the, when was the third time? Or the, the second time, I guess?
2:25 Speaker 04 Well, the last time was, uh, not even a year ago, um, on our, on our episode on must have Christmas gifts. And then-
2:35 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's all I remember.
2:36 Speaker 04 Yeah. And then while I was, uh, telling the story of my Cabbage Patch Kid experience, he said, yes, you've told everyone this story before. So I think this will be the third time that we hear these stories.
2:50 Josh Clark? I thought you didn't have a Cabbage Patch Kid.
2:53 Speaker 04 So you don't remember the other two times I told the story?
2:56 Josh Clark? No, you gotta tell it again. It's called a, it's called a hat trick, baby.
3:01 Speaker 04 Uh, yeah. Uh, my sister has one of the, the first, like 75 of them, uh, of the Little People dolls.
3:09 Josh Clark? Oh, wow.
3:10 Speaker 04 That she bought in North Georgia when she was a kid.
3:14 Josh Clark? Now I, uh, now I know why it didn't stick with me because I didn't understand what the heck you were talking about. Now I totally get it. And I think it will stay with me forever, Chuck. When we do our fourth, fifth and sixth, uh, podcasts on Cabbage Patch Kids, I will be the one telling that story. How about that?
3:33 Speaker 04 Uh, well, and you also told the story of yours that you, uh, ripped the head off and gave it a mohawk.
3:39 Josh Clark? Yeah.
3:40 Speaker 04 For yours.
3:40 Josh Clark? Weber Dino met a, a pretty terrible demise.
3:44 Speaker 04 And I have two of them myself that my mom every once in a while says, hey, do you want these? And I say, no, I don't, uh, don't think they're worth much money. And I don't know even know if my sister's is worth a lot of money now, even though it's hand signed and one of the first ones. I just, I don't think the market is, is- Robust as it was at one point?
4:08 Josh Clark? So was hers a Coleco little people? Or is Xavier Roberts like original Appalachian artworks? Little people?
4:18 Speaker 04 No, hers was one of the handmade Xavier Roberts.
4:22 Josh Clark? Oh gee.
4:23 Speaker 04 Craft fair dolls.
4:25 Josh Clark? I, I, I think those go for like one, two, maybe $2,000, I think.
4:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, it just, I guess it depends on where you look like. I saw the one that of mine that was one of those originals and it wasn't one of the first 100, but people were asking like 150 bucks on eBay for those.
4:43 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm surprised to see that, like from what I've seen, if like, if, if you really want the big bucks, it's the, the original Xavier Roberts little people. But we're probably getting ahead of ourselves a little bit because some people are probably like, what's a Cabbage Patch Kid?
5:01 Josh Clark? Right?
5:01 Speaker 04 Right.
5:02 Josh Clark? So, well, we'll tell everybody what a Cabbage Patch Kid is. It's a little doll that was a huge, huge deal in the Christmas of 1983. And like Chuck said, we talked about this on, I guess it was our, I think it was our Christmas episode, or was it a different standalone?
5:23 Josh Clark? Episode from last year?
5:24 Speaker 04 No, I think the first time we did it was a Christmas episode and then last year it was in November. It was just must have Christmas toys.
5:32 Josh Clark? Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So that's worth listening to, but in, in December of 1983, Christmas of 1983, everybody was going crazy for these dolls. But at the same time, there was like, because it was such a huge craze and they were so a part of like popular culture at the moment, they were on the news every night. People were doing just absolutely crazy things to get their hands on these, these dolls for their kids. There was a lot of talk about, well, what, what are these things? They're so ugly that they're cute. And other people thought, well, no, they're actually just ugly. There is a, a, a journal article that came out in 1986 in the Semantics Journal, et cetera. And the Cabbage Patch Kids were described as.
6:15 Josh Clark? Open-armed, denied, seemingly dull-witted, with mop-haired faces only mothers could love, which I think is pretty, it's a pretty accurate description of a Cabbage Patch Kid, don't you think?
6:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, so on that, there was, and this is something I never knew, apparently there was a rumor years after the fact that the design was managed by Ronald Reagan because he wanted to get Americans used to what mutant offspring might look like if we ever go to, if the big one ever drops and we go to war with the Ruski's, we might want to get used to our babies looking like this. So let's just, it's sort of in the classic Hollywood, like, you know, there are theories that that's why we make UFO movies, they're commissioned by the government to get people sort of adjusted to the idea that one day there's going to be aliens walking around.
7:05 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. But that's probably not the case, Ronald Reagan probably didn't have anything to do with it, but that's just such an 80s thing, Cabbage Patch Kids, Ronald Reagan, and nuclear war with the USSR, that's about like the greatest 80s combination I've ever heard of in my life.
7:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, pretty good.
7:24 Josh Clark? So if you go on to the Cabbage Patch Kids website, you'll find the enchanting magical story of where Cabbage Patch Kids came from, or how they came into our human world, and it goes something like this, that when he was a young boy, Xavier Roberts was wandering around the Appalachian Mountains, and he saw what is called a bunny bee, which is a magical bee that, or magical bunny that can fly around, like buzzes around like a bee, and he followed it, and the bunny bee went through a waterfall, and Xavier Roberts went and looked and saw that behind the waterfall, there was a tunnel, and he went into the tunnel, being an inquisitive type of Appalachian young boy, and when he came
8:09 Josh Clark? out of the other side of the tunnel, he was clearly in some sort of enchanted land, because there were a bunch of bunny bees flying around over a cabbage patch, sprinkling some sort of magical dust, and Xavier noticed that when the dust hit the cabbage, the cabbage would start to move. And a little baby would be born from it, a cabbage patch kid. And one of those kids, a kid named Otis Lee, came up to Xavier and said, hey, will you take me and all of my friends over to your human world and help us find homes? And so Xavier Roberts agreed and he founded Babyland General Hospital for the purpose of adopting out cabbage patch kids. And that's where it all came from.
8:49 Speaker 04 That's right. Babyland General, right here in Cleveland, Georgia. And I just so happened to have driven by there, but two days ago. I went up.
9:00 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah?
9:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, we went on a waterfall hike. The family did on Sunday and.
9:06 Josh Clark? Did you see a bunny bee?
9:07 Speaker 04 Didn't see a bunny bee, but we drove right by Babyland General. And Emily was like, did you know that was there? I was like, yeah, I've been there. So of course I knew it was there. But that's where Xavier Roberts went to college. He went to college at Truitt McConnell there in Cleveland. So that was the connection.
9:24 Josh Clark? Right, right. Yeah. If you want to, if you want to kind of take it down a notch as far as magical enchantment goes, the, the official story is that Xavier Roberts, while he was at Truitt McConnell, while he was studying art there, he came across a German fabric sculpture technique from the 19th century called needle molding. And if you've ever seen, you know, that, that really famous tomato pincushion, Chuck? From the seventies? So you know how, how like the top, the creases in the top of the tomato are made by like, like taut thread pulled through together to kind of create that, that molded look? That, from what I can tell, is, is a form of needle molding.
10:05 Josh Clark? But somehow Xavier Roberts was like, I really like sculpture and this is a form of soft sculpture. I also like quilting and this kind of has to do with quilting. I'm going to get into this and we're going to figure out how to make baby dolls using this needle molding technique. And he did just that, starting in 1977.
10:22 Speaker 04 Yeah. And for those of you that want to throw your car into a ditch right now because you're screaming about the story, because you know the true story, just put a pin in it. We're going to get around to it.
10:36 Josh Clark? That was very merciful of you, Chuck.
10:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, I didn't want people to, to think that we didn't know. But in 1977 Xavier Roberts, who sort of looked like a.
10:48 Speaker 04 Sort of like a shorter haired Kenny Rogers type, wore a cowboy hat and had this beard. And he developed these, they were, like you said, soft sculpture, but they were dolls called little people. And here was the sort of hitch that really drove kids wild is that they were not dolls that you buy, they were little people that you adopt. So you got adoption, birth certificates. It was a brilliant idea that he had. Put a pin in it.
11:19 Josh Clark? Right.
11:20 Speaker 04 And he sold these things, little people originals. He had, he went to arts and crafts shows. He sold them. We bought ours at Unicoi Lodge, at Unicoi State Park, in a gift shop there. So that was the kind of place that would carry this kind of stuff. They were about $40 and I remember distinctly that my father could not imagine paying $40 for a doll. And I think even, I think we even left without Little Chuck and he went back because he felt so bad about how crestfallen my sister was and bought the doll later on for a Christmas gift or something, if my memory serves me. But it was a lot of money. 40 bucks is a lot of money for a doll back then.
12:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, it was probably getting pretty close to 100 bucks. And I mean, who goes to Unicoi State Park's gift shop and expects to drop 100 bucks on a piece of folk art that's really just a baby doll, you know? I can kind of see your dad's...
12:15 Speaker 04 He thought he's gonna have to get a Michelle miniature license plate for $2.50.
12:21 Josh Clark? Sure, exactly. And when you go on with an expectation like that and you are faced with a $100 soft sculpture payment that you have to make, that's a big shock. And sometimes somebody needs to get in their car and drive home and think about it before they can accept that.
12:37 Speaker 04 That's right.
12:38 Josh Clark? So that, like you said, that's exactly the kind of place you would have bought this. You could have also found him at like craft fairs or something. And in fact, Xavier Roberts won first place at the Osceola Art Show in Kissimmee, Florida, for little people that he named Dexter, which is one of the most uncanny, haunting, horrid dolls you'll ever see in your life. But it helped kind of generate some buzz. And at that point, he was like, you know what? This is, things are kind of going well. People are paying 40 bucks for, to adopt one of these little people. I'm winning first place prizes. I'm going to get together some friends. And he founded what's known as Original Appalachian Artworks.
13:21 Josh Clark? And they, they are the ones that actually opened up Babyland General. They took an old medical center in Cleveland, which is super creepy, that they, they, they took an abandoned hospital and opened it for, it's basically like a doll store. Really creepy if you step back and just look at the contours of the whole thing.
13:41 Speaker 04 It didn't look creepy though.
13:43 Josh Clark? No, no, it didn't. I'm just saying if you just look at the words on paper.
13:47 Speaker 04 Oh, sure.
13:48 Josh Clark? And you put it like that, it does seem creepy.
13:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, when you think hospital, it was like a little house.
13:52 Josh Clark? And it was the opposite of creepy. Like, it was delightful. And I guess it still is because, I mean, it's still in operation today. But people would show up and like, there were, like, the, the people who worked there were dressed up as nurses and doctors and, and they would help the, the babies be born from cabbage, from cabbages. Then they would be incubated. There were premies that were born. Like, it was a big deal operation to take this, this idea of you were adopting a cabbage patch kid rather than buying a doll. And then like adding that whole extra dimension to it of going to Babyland General to do it, really helped generate a lot of buzz for, for these things.
14:30 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I should say that my sister's doll Chuck, who was, they come with their name, she didn't name it after me. But Chuck had, you know, if you see the, the early versions of these things, like you said, it was kind of horrific looking. They, they weren't the cutest dolls at all. Chuck had a very crooked hairline. Like it looked like it was made by someone who didn't fully know what they were doing. His little yarn hairline was like a good three inches higher on one side of his forehead than the other, which
14:58 Josh Clark? Oh my.
14:59 Speaker 04 Again, further, my dad did not see the charm in this. He was like, it's not even made well, and I gotta pay $40 for these things. But supposedly with the premies, Xavier Roberts has given some credit to just raising awareness for premature babies, because the premies in Cabbage Patch Land were so cute. They also had C-sections, cabbage sections. And by the time 1980 rolls around, he's selling a pretty good amount of these things, but it really explodes in popular culture from sort of the early 80s. He was featured on the TV show Real People, which I watched a lot as a kid, made Newsweek, made the Wall Street Journal. And so the press is starting to kind of come around,
15:44 Speaker 04 and these things are just getting more and more popular at this point.
15:47 Josh Clark? Yeah, a lot of those stories just kind of focused on people who were paying a lot more than the original retail price to start collecting these dolls. So there was like a whole underground cult market that was developing around these little people. And it became very apparent that Xavier Roberts was not going to be able to keep up with supply. So he started looking for some help. And he found it in 1982. And we will talk all about that partnership made in heaven, starting after these messages.
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17:24 Speaker 06 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Assis about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.
17:35 Speaker 07 AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.
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18:04 Josh Clark? Okay, Chuck, so it's 1982, and the little people are just going bonkers. They're flying off of shelves. They can't keep them in stock anywhere they're selling them. Unicoi State Park is on the phone every day being like, "Send us more, send us more. We don't care what the hairline looks like. We gotta have them." And so Xavier Roberts started looking for some, like a legit toy manufacturer to help him out. And he found it in Coleco, who had made a name, I guess around the same time as, maybe a little bit before this, a year before maybe, as the people who came out with Pac-Man. So they were riding high by this time. And they said, "I think there's something to these little people, and we're gonna buy in here."
18:47 Josh Clark? And so Xavier Roberts partnered with Coleco, and the rest of the story just kind of takes off like a rocket from there.
18:54 Speaker 04 Yeah, so this was in 1982. And at first, Coleco said, "You know what? We're gonna keep calling them little people. We think that's a good name," even though it wasn't. So they stuck with the name. They figured out the best way to mass produce these things was to get rid of that hand-done, hand-sewn head. That was the real problem. That's what took the most time. It's also, frankly, what gave those early dolls all the personality. A lot of that was lost when they went to the plastic heads. But They did keep the cloth bodies. They machine produced these vinyl heads. They sized the doll down a little bit to about 16 inches. The initial dolls were pretty big.
19:39 Speaker 04 They varied in size, obviously, depending on how old they were when you adopted them. But they were large. Like Chuck was a big doll. The two I have are big dolls.
19:48 Josh Clark? Yeah, they were like the size where if they were possessed by a demon and came alive, they could smother you. Like you'd be in big trouble if they came alive while you were asleep.
19:57 Speaker 04 Yes, big time. But sizing them down made a big difference because then you could just box them up, get more shelf space that way.
20:05 Josh Clark? Sure.
20:05 Speaker 04 And they were smart early on, too, to realize that kids wanted a lot of variety. They wanted different ethnicities. They wanted different skin color, different shapes. They wanted some with freckles, some with dimples. Obviously, different eye color and hair color and stuff like that. And that was one of the big selling points is it wasn't just this Samesys mass-produced doll that
20:30 Josh Clark? Right.
20:30 Speaker 04 every kid could have the same one. Every kid wanted a different version.
20:35 Josh Clark? Yeah, because I mean, that was the part of the whole marketing, that you were adopting your own individual kid, your own Cabbage Patch kid, who had his or her own name, his or her own, like, specific birth date. He or she was a unique little baby that you were adopting. So the idea that you could take different head molds and different facial features and different types of hair, and you had like a few different from each category, you suddenly had like millions of combinations that you could randomly put together. It continued that uniqueness that was like part of the brand from the beginning and, like you said, was like part of like the big, the big thing that like made this craze so, so huge, you know?
21:17 Josh Clark? They were very smart to identify that as a big part of the marketing and then figure out a way to carry it on while also mass-producing these things. It was pretty clever on Coleco's part.
21:28 Speaker 04 Yeah, and it was also clever to change the name. Little people
21:32 Josh Clark? Yeah.
21:33 Speaker 04 just didn't have legs, basically, in the end. And they thought Cabbage Patch Kids, they were born in the cabbage patch. It's, and you know, looking back, it's a pretty brilliant name because it ties into being adopted, being born in the little cabbage patch. And it's, it was pretty brilliant, I think. It was the kind of name like that you could end up making into a bunch of other things, which they did, and we're going to talk about that. But I don't think little people quite had the legs to do that.
22:03 Josh Clark? So Kaliko also figured out that there was a really good sweet spot that even if you couldn't really afford it, you would still stretch to reach that point. And they started adopting these, the adoption fees for Cabbage Patch Kids came to about $30, which is $78 in today's money. And then they, they took their, you know, comparatively much larger clout and contacts in the media and started getting way more press for Cabbage Patch Kids than Xavier Roberts ever managed to generate for little people.
22:39 Speaker 04 Oh, sure.
22:39 Josh Clark? Which I have to say, looking, looking back though, Xavier Roberts did some really good work as just some dude from Cleveland, Georgia, who was hand sewing dolls. I mean, he got some pretty good coverage.
22:52 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, that should have been very niche and regional.
22:55 Josh Clark? Right, exactly. And it was, and it became a big deal. But Kaliko just put it to shame. They, they, they got a lot of press, a lot of interest drummed up for Cabbage Patch Kids. And all of that kind of culminated in a December 12th, 1983 edition of Newsweek, when there was a cabbage, a little girl with her cabbage patch kid on the cover of that edition, just in time for the Christmas buying season.
23:25 Speaker 04 That's right, because every kid in America was reading Newsweek and saying, Mom, Dad, look, it's on the cover. We have to get one.
23:32 Josh Clark? Yep. And that was at the very quaint time when, when you would, you would just start Christmas shopping two weeks before Christmas, rather than
23:39 Speaker 04 Right.
23:40 Josh Clark? eight months before Christmas.
23:41 Speaker 04 So Kaliko, and by the way, just to save listener mails, Kaliko did not make Pac-Man. I just want to save you from that fate.
23:49 Josh Clark? Is that right?
23:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, I think, I think it was Namco, if I remember correctly.
23:54 Josh Clark? Oh, man.
23:55 Speaker 04 I mean, they did do video games, but.
23:57 Josh Clark? Okay, well, thanks for saving me.
23:59 Speaker 04 No, no, no, there'll be plenty of people that write, that probably sent the email before I even got to this.
24:06 Speaker 04 And that want to retract the email, but that's okay. So they started selling these things like hotcakes. They sold 3 million plus by the end of 1983. And like so many Christmas items that came before and after, it is sort of, the frenzy is determined by availability and, and supply. And they were underprepared and they could not keep up with demand. They weren't like the Rubik's Cube where they just made, you know, millions and millions and millions of these things. And it became a supply problem and it became a really big deal. And this is, this is the first toy where people were angry because there weren't enough of them to go around.
24:47 Josh Clark? Yeah, and I mean, they still made 3 million of them and they ran out like very quickly. And, and when you say people were angry, like they were throwing elbows. They were pushing one another. They were like, they were getting physical trying to get these dolls. And now it's like, well, yeah, that sounds like a Christmas, like must have Christmas toy. People hadn't done that up to this point. This is very new. And so in addition to, you know, the normal press they were getting, these dolls were also ending up on like the nightly news a lot that December with stories about how parents were like driving across state lines to get one of those Cabbage Patch Kids.
25:28 Josh Clark? Or there was a story about a post carrier in Kansas City, I think, who flew to London to buy one, which I don't understand why, because London had its own frenzy going on as well. There was a whole lot of stuff going down that hadn't really gone down before Cabbage Patch Kids came along that Christmas.
25:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, I wonder if that became a technique to sell more things was to either falsely,
25:58 Speaker 04 kind of falsely say that you don't have enough.
26:01 Josh Clark? I think we covered that in the must have toys episode, that that is, that is a technique that they use, that they purposely underproduce to, to create scarcity.
26:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, but then you can't sell as many. I would think it'd be better to produce the regular amount and then just say you didn't. And then they're like, but we found a warehouse that we didn't know about.
26:22 Josh Clark? Exactly.
26:23 Speaker 04 Cause you still want to move these dolls. I mean, Rubik's Cube, they sold 200 million Rubik's Cubes in the first few years.
26:29 Josh Clark? I know, that's nuts.
26:30 Speaker 04 Because they were just pumping those things out.
26:32 Josh Clark? Yeah, well, at the very least, I think Coleco was genuinely caught underprepared. I don't think it was a in any way, shape or form, a purposeful.
26:41 Speaker 04 Oh, no, of course not.
26:41 Josh Clark? Scarcity. I think it was just straight up scarcity. And there was, there was, there's this footage from Zale's depart, or no, sorry, Zayer Department Store.
26:53 Speaker 04 Mmm, Zale.
26:53 Josh Clark? Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Right. This is in Wilkes-Barre, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, or Wilkes-Barre, I've also seen, Pennsylvania. But there's this manager who I know we talked about before, but you gotta see this guy. He's the manager of the Zayer Department Store in December of 1983, at least. And this guy is like unhinged. Have you seen footage of him?
27:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, we saw him last year.
27:19 Josh Clark? Okay, you gotta see him again. I gotta describe him again, because I, he struck a chord with me this year that he didn't last year. But he's, he's holding a baseball bat, very famously. But if you listen to what he's doing, he's shouting at the customers. He's like, shut up, listen to me. And he's like waving this baseball bat. And there's this crowd of people filling every available inch of this, this department store, wanting Cabbage Patch Kids. And this guy decides that the way to satisfy the need is to just start tossing them into the crowd. So the crowd is like jostling, going crazy, trying to catch these Cabbage Patch Kids, while the manager of the department store is screaming at them, holding a baseball bat.
27:59 Josh Clark? It's one of the worst forms of crowd management anyone's ever attempted, ever. And it was caught on film and you gotta see it yourself.
28:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, he was a. He wasn't doing his best work that day. I think that's, we can all agree on that.
28:13 Josh Clark? He really wasn't. Agreed.
28:15 Speaker 04 A lot of times, the, the, um, the problems were so big that they didn't even want people in the stores. So they would say, like, we can't have another fistfight in here. So what you do is you can arrive and get a coupon and then you go around back to the loading dock and we'll distribute them there. The secondary market started booming. There were actual stores that were buying them up and then marking them up. And then there was the black market that really, really marked them up.
28:44 Josh Clark? Right.
28:44 Speaker 04 And this was not WKRP in Cincinnati, but it was very much in that rich tradition of, of DJs, kind of conning people into acting like fools. And this happened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when some local DJs there said, there's going to be a B-26 bomber plane and it's going to drop 2,000 dolls over the Brewers baseball stadium. And all you gotta do is show up with your baseball glove to catch these babies and hold up your credit card so the pilot can take a picture and charge you for it. And of course, this is the dumbest thing you've ever heard, but that still didn't stop.
29:22 Josh Clark? Yeah.
29:23 Speaker 04 A couple of dozen people from showing up with their baseball glove and credit card.
29:26 Josh Clark? Yeah, and negative seven degree wind chill, which is very cold if you're in the centigrade parts of the world. That's very cold.
29:35 Speaker 04 They're used to it.
29:36 Josh Clark? I guess so. But the, the, yeah, the fact that people would, would do that is, is like, I, I double checked to make sure that that wasn't an urban legend. And it definitely is not like that was, that really did happen in Milwaukee in 1983. That was like the, the level the craze reached. And what's really, to Kaliko's credit, is they managed to keep the party going for a full another year. Because in Christmas 1984, Cabbage Patch Kids were again the must-have toy. And in just 1984 alone, not 1983 Christmas season, 1984, that year, they sold $2 billion worth of Cabbage Patch Kids in 1984 money.
30:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, this was, I think, one of the things that made it truly unique is, like I said, the Rubik's Cube was really hot for a few years. But generally, as these things go, it's sort of like you can count on the one Christmas season. If you're overlapping to the next Christmas season, that is a grand slam home run as far as toys go.
30:39 Josh Clark? Absolutely. So, one of the, one of the outcomes of that, of being a toy that managed, manages to span two Christmas seasons that thoroughly, is they become, you know, iconic. And they start popping up in other places. Like, there was one named Christopher Xavier, who's a very famous Cabbage Patch Kid. I guess as, as Cabbage Patch Kids can be famous. And he actually rode on the space shuttle, on a, on a genuine legit NASA space shuttle mission in 1985. And that reminds me, Chuck, have you seen the, the mini doc about, about The Challenger?
31:18 Speaker 04 No, not yet. Is it good?
31:20 Josh Clark? Oh, boy. It is really good. I mean, it's a, it's a high caliber documentary to begin with. But then, like, the, the emotionality that it manages to dredge up is really, it's a really well-done documentary in every, every way. I highly recommend it.
31:37 Speaker 04 Where's that showing?
31:38 Josh Clark? That one's on Netflix, I believe. I'm almost positive. And I think it's just called Challenger and then probably colon something. But it's good. It was, it's by, I think, JJ, isn't Bad Robot JJ Abrams Production Company?
31:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:52 Josh Clark? They did it. They were one of the companies that, that handled it. But it was, it's very good.
31:58 Speaker 04 I did watch Anola Holmes on your recommendation.
32:01 Josh Clark? Yes. What'd you think?
32:02 Speaker 04 I liked it a lot. It was good. It was just a good, breezy, light, fun movie to watch, which is just what we needed the night we watched it.
32:11 Josh Clark? For sure. And, and, but it was smart, too, wasn't it?
32:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was, it was smart enough. And she's just great. Millie Bobby Brown is, she's just, she's got a lot of personality and lovable charisma. So, she's, she's great to watch. And it's fun to see her outside of playing 11, with all her personality able to come out like that.
32:30 Josh Clark? Right. Yeah. Well, I'm very glad that you liked it because I think we would have had some sort of awkward wedge between us for the rest of our lives.
32:39 Speaker 04 You haven't seen the octopus doc yet, no?
32:43 Josh Clark? I did.
32:43 Speaker 04 Oh, okay. So I think if we're gonna talk about octopus, my octopus teacher, you should just turn down your volume for about a minute and you won't have it spoiled.
32:53 Josh Clark? All right, fair enough, fair enough. And actually, I think that guy is terrible. I think he's a terrible human being for not rescuing his companion friend for, on two different occasions.
33:03 Speaker 04 Really?
33:04 Josh Clark? Yes. And I know that he's a documentarian, so they're not supposed to interfere. I've seen Drop Dead Gorgeous, I know the rules. But this is different. He crossed the line. He crossed boundaries when he became friends with that octopus. He stopped being a documentarian, started being its friend, and then he, as its friend, wasn't there for his friend when it was attacked, not once, but twice. And I really dislike that guy for that reason.
33:30 Speaker 04 Oh, interesting. Well, I don't concur, but I guess that's part of the beauty of that movie. You can have different, different takes.
33:36 Josh Clark? So, but there's not a gulf between us, a wedge between us now, is there?
33:40 Speaker 04 I mean, did you hate the documentary?
33:42 Josh Clark? No, I otherwise thought it was amazing.
33:45 Speaker 04 All right, well, then there's no gulf.
33:46 Josh Clark? Amazing. It really was, really was great. Except for the, that one thing, times two.
33:51 Speaker 04 All right, no wedge.
33:52 Josh Clark? So let's see, back to Cabbage Patch Kids. There was another kind of landmark they reached in 1992, when they became, I think maybe Christopher Xavier became the official mascot of the US Olympic team and got to go to Barcelona with them.
34:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, this is-
34:09 Josh Clark? Which is pretty impressive.
34:10 Speaker 04 This is 10-plus years after these things were the hot ticket, you know, which is crazy, crazy time. They were on a postage stamp. Eventually, of course, though, his star, well, not his star, it was more than Christopher Xavier, but their collective star was going to fade, like all toys and all dolls. We've all seen Toy Story, we know what hap, we know what happens in the end. It never completely went away, though. They, you know, Coleco then eventually was like, you know, we got to offload these guys. We're going to sell it. We're in the video game industry like big time. And so we got a
34:49 Josh Clark? Have you heard of Pac-Man?
34:51 Speaker 04 Well, the video game industry starts tanking, so they're trying to, I guess, recoup some money on their investments. So they sell the Cabbage Patch Kid license. And then, you know, this is not before trying a few things. They tried like Talking Cabbage Patch Kids and stuff like that. But eventually they went bankrupt in the eighties and the license moved on to different people over the years. Mattel, Hasbro, Toys R Us. And then right now it's owned by Play Along, Inc., which it just seems like those are, it seems like there's a lot of toy companies named weird things like that now.
35:28 Josh Clark? I agree. I agree. And I find it unsettling, like their slogan should be, "We're watching you."
35:37 Speaker 04 It just seems like we talk about this a lot. Like, they're still the giants like Hasbro and Mattel, but I feel like when we've done our toy podcasts, it seems like the newer ones, they don't have these sort of name brands that you, that you think of as toys.
35:52 Josh Clark? No, I know. They all sound like Russian fronts. It's really weird and unsettling and kind of off putting.
35:57 Speaker 04 And all the Cs are Ks. It's really strange.
36:01 Josh Clark? It's very sinister. So, yeah, along the, along the lines, like, all of these companies were like, we've got to figure out a way to, to capture lightning in a bottle again, a second time. It just doesn't happen. It's hard enough the first time. And so they tried different things. Like you said, Coleco tried that talking one, didn't work. I think Hasbro had one that swam, which is kind of impressive.
36:24 Speaker 04 Sure.
36:25 Josh Clark? And then Mattel had one that they had to withdraw. It was called Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kids. And they, these things would like eat, like they came with like french fries or something. And you'd put like the french fry in their mouth and they'd start chewing and it, the french fry would go down their throat and actually come out the back of their head and fall into their backpack and then you could feed it to them again, which is great and fine. But if you're a little kid and you get your fingers in there, your hair in there, that Cabbage Patch dolls just kind of keep eating and eating and you're going to start screaming and your parents are going to be like, "I don't want this doll anymore. Give me my money back."
37:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, and these things also declined in quality. I think in the mid 90s, Mattel shrunk them even more, down to 14 inches. And they were like, forget these cloth bodies even, we're gonna make the whole thing vinyl. And people didn't like that at all. And it took, I think, the 20th anniversary in 2003, it took Toys R Us, who took over the rights at that point, to jack these things back up to 18 inches. They had cloth bodies. I think they had an 18-inch and a 20-inch. And then they finally brought back those cloth bodies, which were a big deal. And they debuted them at their flagship store in New York City. And they sort of recaptured the magic a little bit.
37:45 Speaker 04 And it's about this time, and I think a year later is when Play Along licensed it. But it's about this time that people started buying them again a little bit for nostalgia. Like, kids that grew up with them were now buying them for their kids. And I think, you know, they sold okay. It's nothing like they were at first, but they're still around.
38:05 Josh Clark? No. Yeah, and Play Along Inc., if that is their real name, was very wise to basically recreate the original 1983-style Cabbage Patch Kids. Like, they're basically indistinguishable from the ones that the people who are buying them now for their kids had when they were kids. And it's, like you said, it's all nostalgia, and they're doing pretty good trade on it without having to reinvent the wheel.
38:30 Speaker 04 That's right. A little quick stat before we take a break that is remarkable. Over the past 32 years, there have been 130 million of these babies born, which would, if they were real little people, it would make them the 10th most populous country in the world, with one being born every 6.8 seconds. But having said that, we're gonna take a little break, and right after this, we are going to tell you the true origin story of the little people.
39:14 Speaker 06 This live check-in is brought to you by State Farm. Porque el bienestar de tu familia también merece protección. Okay, real talk. I'm about to become a dad again. And wow, it hits different the second time. Hi, I'm Wilmer Valderrama and I've done, you know, I've done the red carpets, the long days on set and all that, but nothing prepares you for that moment when you're building a crib and you realize you're building a future. Familia is everything to me. The laughs, the chaos, the unconditional love, but also the pressure. La responsabilidad. If you're stepping into something big right now, starting a family, getting engaged, moving cities, you're not alone. Take one step at a time.
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41:13 Josh Clark? Okay Chuck, I'm curious, why did you say "true" like that?
41:18 Speaker 04 Well, if you listened to the show a year ago, it's already ruined, but we didn't go into that much depth. Here's what really happened, though. Xavier Roberts ripped off a lady.
41:32 Speaker 04 It's the easiest way to say it. There was a very kind-hearted, soft-spoken folk artist named Martha Nelson Thomas, went to art school in the 70s. She experimented with the same exact German soft sculpture molding, and she created what was called little doll babies. If you Google Martha Nelson Thomas little dolls, and you see this very now-famous picture, when it hasn't been swept under the rug by Xavier Roberts' people, and maybe Coleco's people, this black and white picture of this woman surrounded by what are clearly and obviously Cabbage Patch Kids.
42:08 Josh Clark? Yes, and there's actually, funny enough, there's another famous picture of Xavier Roberts, taken probably about 10 years after that, and he's surrounded by straight-up Cabbage Patch Kids, you know, with the vinyl heads and everything. But the fact that that picture was taken of Martha Nelson Thomas in 1975, is photographic documentary evidence that she is the person who came up with Cabbage Patch Kids. Not Cabbage Patch Kids, but what Cabbage Patch Kids were based on. And if that were it, if that were the photo, if that was the only evidence whatsoever, you'd be like, that's a, I don't know, people can have
42:47 Josh Clark? similar ideas, you know. There's only one, you know, old German technique called needle molding, other people could have found it. But that is not the only evidence. And in fact, Xavier Roberts has gone on public record saying that he was inspired by Martha Nelson Thomas, but he changed it enough. But if you go and look at the actual story and the facts along the way, and there's actually a pretty good 16-minute-long Vice documentary on this whole thing, that you will see that it went way beyond him just being inspired by Martha Nelson Thomas's work. And in fact, like you said, he basically ripped her off.
43:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, so he, from what I could tell, and there's a bunch of different sort of versions of this online, but from what I saw is they actually did have an agreement early on that he would sell these for her. He said, hey, these are great. Can I take some of these to my gift shops and sell them for you? And I think I could sell a lot more than you could. And for a little while, they did have an agreement, but as it turns out, he ended up marking them up and charging too much money. And she wasn't happy about that. She was like, no, these shouldn't cost $40. It's, you know, it's 1978, for God's sake. And that's a doll. And he's like, yeah, but they're-
44:04 Josh Clark? What do you think this is, Unicorns State Park?
44:07 Speaker 04 They're handmade. And, you know, you should put a value on, on your talents. And they had a disagreement about that. And she said, you know what? Forget it. I don't want you to sell these anymore. He follows up with a letter saying, well, you know what? If you don't let me sell your dolls, I'm, he basically said, I'm just gonna start making my own. And that's exactly what he did.
44:29 Josh Clark? Supposedly, he wrote her a letter, and I don't remember who mentions it in the Vice documentary, but basically, they said that in the letter, he said, if I can't sell your dolls, I will sell something just like them. And she apparently was like, whatever, just went her own way. She was satisfied to have her dolls back and probably thought she was done with the matter. And then supposedly, one of her friends said, hey, I saw your little doll babies for sale at the Atlanta airport. Way to go. She said, I'm not selling these at the Atlanta airport. And apparently, that's when she knew she had a big problem on her hands. And found out that Xavier Roberts had come up with the Little People dolls that were just the spinning image of her little doll babies.
45:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, so she filed a lawsuit that went on for, for years. I think by the time they were selling out in stores in 1983, she was about seven years into this lawsuit. And for her, it wasn't, she asked for, I think, a million dollars. But she said it wasn't about the money. She was like, I don't want to see this as a commodity. And I don't want to be ripped off. And I don't want this guy to come along and basically not have the same respect for these little dolls that I had. And if you look at the court case, you think, you know, open and shut. She's got this picture from 75. They had a prior relationship. She's got this letter that says, where he basically says he's gonna rip her off. But she didn't copyright these things.
45:53 Speaker 04 And you would have had to copyright because they were all handmade and they were all, I guess, unique unto themselves. You would have had to copyright and sign or stamp each doll, and she didn't want to do that. And he had no problem doing it. Ours, little Chuck, has an Xavier Roberts hand signature on his butt. If you pulled on his little corduroy shorts.
46:13 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's one of the famous things about Cabbage Patch Kids, aside from their distinctive faces, is that each one of them has Xavier Roberts' signature stamped onto its butt. And I guess Martha Nelson Thomas was like, there's no place to put a signature on a child. And these are like children to me. That's why I adopt them out rather than sell them. So I'm not gonna sign this, I'm not gonna copyright them. And that, basically, you would think it would have sunk her case. And after almost eight years, Xavier Roberts finally said, okay, fine, let's settle this. I suspect it had to do with, he sold out at some point in the 80s. He sold his portion.
46:55 Josh Clark? And I would guess he probably needed that court case to go away to finalize that sale. And for whatever the reason, in 1985, he was suddenly ready to settle. And they settled for an undisclosed sum that apparently Martha Nelson Thomas was satisfied with.
47:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, and he also said, hey lady, you say you can't copyright these things? You can sign it right next to their little butthole.
47:19 Josh Clark? Right. He sounded Cockney there for a second.
47:21 Speaker 04 Cockney?
47:22 Josh Clark? Like, I started to get nervous, like, oh my god, why does he sound Cockney? And then you pulled it out with the real Appalachian mountain folk twist at the end there.
47:29 Speaker 04 Yeah, so he settled, this shit was enough money to put her kids through college, she said. It's still sort of a sad story to me that, you know. That this, you know, man came along and ripped off this lady's design. And then later on complained that he was getting ripped off. He complained about knockoffs and said, you know, my point is not, not take my product to my creation and tarnish it.
47:53 Josh Clark? Yeah, which was pretty audacious because he said this like, you know, I believe it right when he was settling with this other case in which a part of the settlement was he had to acknowledge that, that he had taken her idea. And for him to be complaining about this on TV, it was a little audacious, especially if you know that, you know, the full story. But the, even though it was an open secret or even a widely known tale in the toy industry and even some parts of the press, even still today, everybody thinks of Xavier Roberts as the, the creator of Cabbage Patch Kids.
48:30 Josh Clark? And technically he was because he, he came up with Cabbage Patch Kids and Martha Nelson Thomas came up with Little Doll Babies.
48:39 Speaker 04 Yeah. And he sold it to, uh, well, he didn't come up with Cabbage Patch Kids. He sold it to Pac-Man and Pac-Man named them Cabbage Patch Kids.
48:46 Josh Clark? Yeah, I guess so. I hadn't thought about that. So one of the groups he was complaining about was Topps Trading Cards. Topps Trading Cards around the, the, still in the height of the Cabbage Patch Kid craze in 1985, came out with one of the greatest parodies anyone's ever come out with. The beloved Garbage Pail Kids series.
49:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, I didn't, uh, I wasn't into these. I was a little too old. I certainly, I was, I was 14. I certainly remember them in, uh, The Zeitgeist and I knew it was a very big deal. But this was probably more for kids, probably around your age. I imagine you were probably into these, right?
49:27 Josh Clark? I loved Garbage Pail Kids. I believe Yumi had a pretty impressive Garbage Pail Kid collection herself.
49:33 Speaker 04 Oh, really? Yeah.
49:34 Josh Clark? And she actually, yeah, she actually bought me a, um, a couple of Garbage Pail Kids I have somewhere. I think one is Squash Josh. I can't remember the other one. But they are for the people who don't know what a Garbage Pail Kid is, go look up, um, GPK.com. And I think it's like G E E P E E K A Y dot com. I'm not sure. But, um, they have every single series scanned. So you can see all 15 series that came out between 1985 and 1988. And they're just awesome, but they're basically like. If garbage, if Cabbage Patch Kids were meant to get us used to what mutant offspring
50:16 Josh Clark? of nuclear war survivors would look like, Garbage Pail Kids were the mutated version of that.
50:23 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's a good way to say it. They were, they were deformed and they were plagued and diseased and they had names like Atom Bomb and Bony Tony and I guess Squash Josh and Roomy Yumi, I don't know.
50:38 Josh Clark? That's a great one.
50:42 Speaker 04 They didn't have names for everyone, but it was, it was a big deal. They sold a ton of them and Xavier Roberts was, was not happy with this and I think ended up in the lawsuit being successful and getting them just to change enough to where it didn't look like it was officially tied to the Cabbage Patch Kids.
51:04 Josh Clark? Yeah, like they had, you know where, how it says like on the box for the Cabbage Patch Kid, it's like in a banner, kind of like semi-circle banner. They had that originally as Garbage Pail Kids. They had to turn that into a straight bar. They made them look less like lifelike and more like plastic dolls in the later series. There were a few changes, but I mean, it was still pretty clear what the whole thing was a riff off of. But one thing I didn't realize is that one of the art directors who helped conceptualize Garbage Pail Kids from the outset was Art Spiegelman, who created Mouse.
51:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:39 Josh Clark? Did you know that?
51:40 Speaker 04 I mean, I've heard of Art Spiegelman, but I really don't know anything about him. So I didn't know that. But I know the name.
51:45 Josh Clark? I've not read Mouse, but I know it's like, it's like, like a, just a legendary graphic novel about fascism, but that guy helped create Garbage Pail Kids just a couple of years before he created Mouse.
51:59 Speaker 04 Amazing. And there was a, a bad TV show that eventually only aired in Europe. There was a bad movie that is pretty legendarily bad, but it was a big deal though. They sold a ton of them. They didn't quite have the spinoff power of the CPKs, but the GPKs did okay for themselves.
52:19 Josh Clark? Yeah. I mean, like that really goes to show you just how big Cabbage Patch Kids were, that it could sustain a cottage industry for a parody even. That's how big Cabbage Patch Kids were in the movies.
52:32 Josh Clark? So hats off to Cabbage Patch Kids. I can't wait to talk about them again next year in another episode.
52:38 Speaker 04 It'll be great.
52:40 Josh Clark? We'll figure it out. We'll spend 2021 figuring out how to do that, Chuck. And in the meantime, everybody, since we're thinking about how to talk about Cabbage Patch Kids some more, it's time for listener mail.
52:55 Speaker 04 That's right. Before we do listener mail, real quick, I just want to give a shout out to the Budge family. Not really going to get into what's going on with them, but just want them to know that we're thinking about them and sending them lots of love and support over the internet airwaves. But this email is called, oh, I know, I'm going to call it The Beeve. This is about beavers again. And it starts out as, "This is seriously not a please read me on the air email." And that's a pretty good way to get on the air, by the way. Thanks for the amazing show. Been a listener since they were Paltry 20 Minutes. Love everyone. Keep me company while walking, driving, cleaning, cooking, and providing an endless source of interesting topics for my English students in Spain.
53:40 Speaker 04 I kind of think Chuck is my podcast soulmate, as we grew up in much the same circumstances, around the same age. We have a very similar cultural outlook on different things. I do have a small difference of opinion, though. Your Bigfoot podcast was great. And I was happy to hear you say the possibility exists. Did we say that?
54:00 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think we were. I don't know if it was we so much as you.
54:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, maybe so. But a while back, you were-
54:08 Josh Clark? I'm just teasing. I think it was we.
54:10 Speaker 04 You were adamant that Nessie does not exist. Buddy, show Nessie some love. Wouldn't it be amazing if she did exist? So she has her fingers crossed on that. But the real reason she wrote in, she listened to the Beaver episode and came across Beeve the Beaver. So just get online and Google Beeve. It was this beaver that was found, I think, abandoned by its parents and then adopted as a young baby and then raised for a while to eventually be put maybe a wildlife center or something. But the long and short of it is Beeve makes dams in their house.
54:48 Speaker 04 So there are all these
54:49 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's pretty cute.
54:49 Speaker 04 videos of Beev dragging stuff into this one specific doorway that Beev is trying to dam up. And like dragging a shoe rack, pillows, tissue boxes, like anything Beev can get a hold of in his little paws and teeth, he'll drag over to this doorway and try and dam up. And it's really one of the cutest, funniest things I've ever seen.
55:14 Josh Clark? Yeah, it is very cute because he looks like, should this go here? Maybe a little bit to the left. Okay, that's all right, right there. Or like when he brought the pillow over, he's like, oh, this is very useful. I can just squish this into place. It was very cute to watch him do that.
55:28 Speaker 04 It is amazing. And that email, by the way, is from Kerry Keely.
55:32 Josh Clark? Thanks, Kerry. That was a great email. And yes, way to get it on the air by saying it's not meant to be on the air. We fall for stuff like that all the time. And if you want to try to make us fall for something, have at us. You can send us an email to [email protected] .
55:54 Speaker 03 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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56:40 Speaker 03 She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens. Zolir 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one
57:01 Speaker 02 While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair. This is an advertisement for Zolair, paid for by Genentech and Novartis.
57:40 Speaker 00 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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