Cabbage Patch Doll Craze: remember this?

I did not grow up with toys other than hot wheels. I wanted one so bad. My mom worked double shifts to get me it. His name was Randolph. I grew tired of him in a few month. I was never bought an expensive toy again. My mom is a smart woman.

Furby craze in the late 90s as well as Tickle Me Elmo craze.

And the Hatchimals craze a couple of years ago.

Still going strong after 45 years. Hello Kitty!

I'll never forget the first Christmas when these ugly things came out. I went to Woolworth's for some cheap Christmas presents, as I was a teen at the time on a limited budget. The toy department was in the basement. I went down and saw a group of women arguing and pushing against each other, surrounding a table full of Cabbage Patch dolls. Two of the women (both white) had their hands on a box which contained a black Cabbage Patch doll, and weren't letting go, calling each other names that would make a whore blush. Iron-clad proof that marketing works.

The battle was abated when a clerk went in the back and returned with another black doll.

The black Cabbage Patch kids were adorable to me compared to the homely white ones.

Don't remember Cabbage Patch Dolls. But I do remember Davey Crockett hats!

Beanie Babies in the mid 80's.

I guess those Fidget Spinners were popular in a hot second in 2017- I've seen kids and cats with them.

R8 Beanie Babies made a big resurgence in the late 90s too, before the New Millennium and then they died again.

There’s this LOL thing that came out a couple of years ago that was sold out everywhere and people were selling on eBay for Hundreds of bucks.

Any stories about the Cabbage Patch creator? He has extreme gayface

Don't forget those Tamagotchi and Virtual pet stuff. Those were everywhere for awhile.

I used to have the Dinosaur and Monkey gigapets

Here’s a video on the craze from 1983

r11 I don't know about the creator of Cabbage Patch kids but...

[quote]Alfred R. Kahn, the man at Coleco Industries who is credited with foisting the Cabbage Patch Kids hysteria on an unsuspecting nation...

[quote]You probably don’t know him, but Al Kahn is likely to have had an enormous influence on your life. As a licensing executive, Kahn has spent more than 30 years distributing and promoting some iconic brands, including the Cabbage Patch Kids, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, James Bond and Yu-Gi-Oh.

Kahn bought the Madoff apartment from the U.S. Marshals

It was all women buying the dollies. They wouldn't let the kids near them.

My mother did not give into the craze so she made my sister a doll that looked like a Cabbage Patch kid but without the price tag. Hobby stores had doll heads you could buy to put on bodies you made yourself, and it bore a striking resemblance. There were also patterns published that would net you a soft-headed doll that looked very close to the real thing. The only thing missing from them was the "Xavier Roberts" signature across the ass. My sister still laughs about some of her off-brand dolls she got that first year. The next Christmas she got a real one, but that was after production was ramped up and the craze had died down a bit.

Yes, r16. There are still women that have their collection of CPKids.

They went nuts when the boy finally came out. It was all girls at first then they released the boy and he was hard to find.

The boy and the black ones were hardest to find cause they weren’t made in droves like some of the others, so that explains why those women were fighting for the black one to add to their collection r5.

R14. Thanks. Vid was hilarious. I like how almost everyone knew they were hideous and were dumbfounded by its populrity. Old lady at the end had me chuckling.

I love my Furby.

My mom worked at the store like Target (which is no longer in business). As Christmas drew nearer and demand increased, people would beg store employees to set aside a doll or two for them when a shipment came in. My mom and her co workers would commandeer a shipment of them and pay the store the full retail price for them, then resell them to their friends. It's no wonder there were no CPKs on the shelves.

Paddington Bear and/or Basil Brush is all a child needs.

Remember Tickle Me Homo dolls?

[quote]My mom worked at the store like Target (which is no longer in business). As Christmas drew nearer and demand increased, people would beg store employees to set aside a doll or two for them when a shipment came in. My mom and her co workers would commandeer a shipment of them and pay the store the full retail price for them, then resell them to their friends. It's no wonder there were no CPKs on the shelves.

We had a lady at our church who was a manager for a store, and she got so much pressure to do the same that she stopped coming to church for awhile! She would always politely demure at first but I guess it got too over-the-top so she had to lay low.

Actually, this was not marketing it was poor buying on the part of the stores. The store buyers rejected the cabbage patch dolls at Toy Fair; consequently, they were unprepared when the TV commercial hit in early fall and everyone was clamoring for the dolls. COLECO could not make the dolls and get them over from China fast enough for the Christmas season.

Here’s another video from then, where a [wealthy] black family is interviewed about their Cabbage Patch dolls, and the husband traveled to Europe to buy some cause they couldn’t find them here in the states.

That’s dedication.

I wonder WHET the little girl in the link at R26. You know she didn't really appreciate the grand gesture.

Yes, I had a boy and a girl.

I was 7 when I got my Cabbage Patch doll. I remember waiting on a long ass line at Toys r Us. By the time we got to the head of the line there were only 2 dolls left. 1 doll had red hair and the other had blonde hair. There was 1 girl in front of me and she got to choose first. I kept hoping she'd choose the red haired 1 because I wanted the blonde 1 so badly. Thankfully she did choose the red haired 1 so I got the blonde 1. I'd never been happier. It was like 100 Christmas Day's all rolled into 1. LOL

I loss all mines in da tarnada *snif* Hold me, Darrul!

R29 would you have begrudgingly taken the red headed doll?

r23

It would come out at night and pull your privates

I'm still waiting for my Hatchimal to break out of its egg

I would've r31. lol I would've been happy to get either 1 really. It's just that I was really hoping to get the blonde 1.

True Story: the Cabbage Patch Doll Craze was when I realized that I was no longer a child.

I was 11 or so during that period and had younger kids in my life who were caught up in it but I was considered--by myself?--too old for a doll. But I really wasn't--I wanted that doll! But I was too ashamed to say anything about it for fear of being scolded since my parents and society considered me to be too old for a doll.

The modern Cabbage Patch dolls are cuter than they used to be.

I want the Blonde Boy one still to this day lmao

I was little when Pound Puppies came out. They were a few years after CP dolls and caused another Toys R US frenzy. I had a brown one named "Dusty" and he came with a rain coat and one of those "cool" athletic silky jackets like a track jacket of the 80's.

I remember when the illegitimate ones came out and they were minorities.

There were always minority CP Kid dolls.

Were there Asian CP kids?

R40 not in the original group. They were all white, black, Hispanic, Native American

Groovy Girls, Bratz dolls and furbys were big in the 90’s. On the tasteful side, playmobile. I had the ER room and the zoo. We had a bratz disembodied head for styling that quickly ended up looking like a meth addicted pole dancer that had stuck her finger in a light socket. My sister gave her American Girl doll a tramp stamp.

I was gonna bring up the Bratz dolls also r42. They were huge.

I too worked in a store through the CP craze (part-time high school job; yes, I'm so old I fart Cabbage Patch dust). We got a shipment of something like 50 dolls in about 2 weeks before Christmas, and corporate came out with a policy that pissed pretty much every employee off, that only 10% of the inventory could be sold to staff, and it was done by lottery (as were all of the dolls; customers had to put their name and phone number on one of the "entry" forms and the store held a big morning event where they had a child come and pull slips out of the bowl until all of the dolls were sold). Somehow, I won one of the five set aside for employees. My colleagues with children complained bitterly that they should have been given priority. There were tears shed.

Now, these were the days before eBay, but I had no intention of keeping or giving the doll away. IIRC, I paid about $30 for the doll, ran an ad in the local paper (which pissed my mother off as the phone didn't stop ringing for three days) and sold it for $200. It paid for all of Christmas shopping that year, and the guy who bought it was so grateful I thought he was going to cry when he picked it up.

What would Ayn Rand think of Cabbage Patch dolls? She sort of looked like one.

Funny how all these years later most Americans actually look like these childhood nightmares. Someone should bring them back with sewn on MAGA hats for the lighter ones and "immigrant concentration camp" kits for the darker ones.

My late father, God bless him, once drove from St Louis to Jefferson City (about 2 1/2 hours) to get a Teddy Ruxpin for my sister's little girl, who was about 2 at the time. It was a big teddy bear that "talked" when you stuck a cassette tape in its back, and I think the eyes and mouth moved. St Louis was utterly sold out of the things, and my father, who was a banker, had a connection in Jeff City that got him one. I forget what he paid for it, but it was relatively expensive for the time, maybe like $50 or so.

My niece took one look at the thing and started screaming bloody murder. She was so terrified of it that my sister had to hide it out in the garage.

The Wii and Xbox were like this. There was an old guy who stood in the store holding three Wii’s and he gave me one without any price bump up because I was giving it to kids and not going to sell it on Craigslist

R48 the Switch also. The year it came out we sold out over and over.

[quote]Somehow, I won one of the five set aside for employees. My colleagues with children complained bitterly that they should have been given priority. There were tears shed.

This is not doll-related but I used to work at a place that had a professional staff made up mostly of recent college grads (i.e., poor with heavy debt) that also had a huge contingent of senior volunteers. At Christmas one year, the door prizes were all iPod giveaways. I think there were maybe 15 or 20 and every single one went to a very old person who, to a person, made a face when their name was called because they had no use for it. Meanwhile, the young people were going apeshit that volunteers were even allowed to be in the door prize pool.

OP, you are clearly not an elementary school teacher. Toy fads are an endless cycle.

My least favorite of recent years - as the aforementioned elementary school teacher - was the fidget spinner.

[quote]Were there Asian CP kids?

You mean the Rice Paddy Kids?

There was also a German version called the Sauerkraut Kids.

So no gossip about the founder? He looks & sounds like a big ole queen.

There are the American Girl and Build a Bear fads too.

My uncle knew the person who first made the Cabbage Patch Dolls. He gave my Grandma one of the original hand made ones. Her name was Tina Rita.

My sister worked at Zellers during the Cabbage Patch doll craze.

When they knew a shipment was coming in close to Christmas they asked an off duty police officer to be present to keep the crowd under control.

He was knocked over by a 300 pound Amazon who was trying to grab as many as possible and not concerned about anyone in her way.

I much prefer the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards to these atrocious dolls!

This one would never be allowed to be sold to children today: