The Cabbage Patch Fad - How Did This Happen?

[Music] I've been known to talk about fads on this channel from time to time and every time I do the topic of Cabbage Patch dolls seems to come up in the comments looking at them from the outside most of these fads can be hard to understand the people who are involved in them may look back and laugh at themselves a little but they can usually still understand what made it so appealing in the first place for the people who are never involved in the fed the whole thing just seems insane and that's what I'm experiencing right now this is the thing I'm talking about it's a fairly typical dowel it doesn't talk or move on its own or anything like that to me it's creepy looking with those wide lifeless eyes just staring into the distance they're called Cabbage Patch Kids because they're said to be grown in a Cabbage Patch like their heads come out from the leaves of a cabbage just an entire field of babies heads sticking out of the ground oh no I don't want any part of it the deeper we look the scarier it gets yet it was one of the biggest feds of the 1980s and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I wish I could express the popularity of these dolls at the time but it's hard to convey like this people were lining up outside of stores and actually fighting each other to get them one woman even broke her leg in one of these scenes all of those stories you expect to hear when talking about a major fad are perfectly applicable here and I apologize if I'm angering any fans of these dolls by calling them creepy but you must understand where I'm coming from and Plus you have to realize they weren't exactly meant for me I wouldn't say I'm in their target demographic they're mostly meant to be sold to female children in the 1980s whereas I'm a 27 year old male in whatever decade you call this so forgive me for being a little confused here and I'm sure I'm not alone on this one either so now I'm on a mission to figure it out what made this little doll so appealing in this news report from 1983 they actually asked some of the people among the crowd of buyers the sim question and I have to say their answers weren't much different from anything I've said so far as far as I'm concerned that the worst looking things I've ever seen okay well let's see what a woman has to say about it I don't know what exactly the attachment is I think they're cute but kind of funny-looking and then I just wanted to include this answer because I thought it was funny I don't like them I don't like them I don't like their faces but I want one well they finally asked a little girl who I would expect to be much more helpful than any of those adults okay we're getting nowhere here it looks like there may not be a quick answer to this so it looks like we're going to have to start from the beginning and luckily every part of this fad is fascinating so I don't mind going back a bit there's some controversy surrounding how these dolls actually started the man that gets all the credit for creating them is Xavier Roberts his signature is found written on the adoption papers on the dolls themselves and when I asked Google who created Cabbage Patch dolls he's the name that comes up when I go to the Cabbage Patch website they credit him for creating it hard to argue with all of that but there is a woman named Martha Nelson Thomas that may deserve the credit instead there's a video put out by Vice on this topic that tells the story in detail but basically Martha was creating dolls very similar to Cabbage Patch dolls before Xavier was making them and besides the similar appearance of the dolls there's another reason why many people think Xavier copied Martha do you remember just about a minute ago when I said Xavier signature can be found written on the adoption papers did that sentence seem a little strange to you probably because I haven't encountered too many dolls in my life but I think they typically don't come with adoption papers which is something that Cabbage Patch dolls are known for when Martha made her dolls she provided the new owners with adoption papers to make it seem more like an actual child well Xavier did the exact same thing I'd say that's a unique concept so when you combine that with the fact that the dowels look so similar it starts to look like Martha has a case and she did file a lawsuit in the 1980s the question became whether she influenced his design or did he simply just copy it the case lasted a few years and ultimately led to an undisclosed settlement meaning there was no winner he just agreed to pay her some money to drop the whole thing but no one will tell us how much and I think this whole adoption paper discussion leads us to our answer of why they were so appealing it wasn't the doll itself as much as what they made it represent buying a Cabbage Patch doll was the closest thing to adopting a baby that a young girl could possibly experience they came with what looked like official documentation for you to fill out they sold accessories so you can care for it and just like real babies each one was unique they all looked a little different and had different clothes even had their own name in the eyes of many little girls this wasn't just another doll it was the equivalent of adopting a baby mr. Lane sign here please [Music] to put it in business terms it was the marketing more than the product I've been skipping around in the timeline a little bit so let me straighten everything out when Martha was making these things it was in the early 1970s and she was making them by hand one at a time they weren't popular at all and she was hardly making any money when Xavier started making them it was in 1976 and he was also making them by hand and wasn't making too much money either nobody watching this knew anything about Cabbage Patch Kids until 1982 for one they only experienced limited popularity and for - they weren't even called that yet they were called little people in 1982 is when everything started to happen that's when Xavier made a licensing agreement with the company called calico that allowed them to produce the doll they changed the name to the one we know and started mass-producing them each sold separately from calico by the 1983 holiday season they were one of the biggest fads in the country Coleco is an interesting company in itself I'd like to make a full video on them one day but in short they started off in the 1930s by making leather later switched to swimming pools and by 1983 Dhin were having some trouble they entered the business of video games with colecovision the year before which was now starting to fizzle out they just spent way too much money developing a home computer called atom that just didn't turn out well she's a beaut you get B to Coleco like how about he can I put you down for a lot please say a lot and they were in desperate need for something like this that could save them the Cabbage Patch Kids were like a life preserver that they grabbed onto as tight as they could it quickly became 75% of their entire business now I can give you an important business tip right here it's not the brightest idea to rely on a fad for 75% of your business and I'm sure they knew that too but they didn't want to let go of that life preserver it was all they had you can probably see where this is going and the sales for the dolls eventually died down and in 1988 calico went bankrupt one year later they were bought by Hasbro now it would be way oversimplifying things to say that this doll was responsible for all of this that's why Coleco needs its own video but for now we can say it was a big contributor it's hard to put exact dates on fads like this but I'll say that that crazy 1983 holiday season was the start of it and I'll call the Coleco bankruptcy in 1988 the unofficial end giving it a five to six year run but it's not like it completely died after 1988 I just wouldn't qualify it as being a fad anymore it does still exist today and it's gone through quite a journey Hasbro had it for a few years then in the 90s it went over to Mattel Toys R Us owned it at one point and today it's made by wicked cool toys and I want to talk about one other thing that might help express their popularity in the 1980s we talked about the Cabbage Patch Kids and now I want to mention the Garbage Pail Kids these were trading cards put out by tops that parodied the Cabbage Patch Kids they must have been playing off the fact that the original dolls looks so scary if you thought that all these dolls so far have been unpleasant wait till you see virus iris or drippy Dan the funniest one I've encountered is come over Grover he's going bald so he combs his nose hairs up to his head in an attempt to cover it up but my point is even these were popular in 1987 there was even a feature length movie centered around them I haven't seen it myself but I have seen I hate everything this video about it and well he hates it and it's just generally considered to be terrible but come on the Cabbage Patch Kids were so popular that even a parody of them became popular enough to justify making a movie about it that's a whole new level of popularity there was later a lawsuit between the Cabbage Patch Kids and the Garbage Pail Kids parties involving more copyright issues the Garbage Pail people said it was a parody and therefore not violating any laws the Cabbage Patch people said they were just using their brand to make money the judge sided with the Cabbage Patch people and ordered that the Garbage Pail Kids be drawn in a different way but the design changes combined with the decreasing popularity of the original Cabbage Patch it's led to the Garbage Pail brand to fail right around the same time but then it came back in 2003 and just like in the 1980s we have both the original and the parody if you want them it's just that not as many people want them let me know in the comments your thoughts on the Cabbage Patch Kids I'm guessing most of the people watching this aren't running out to buy one of these but I'm hoping you at least understand the appeal a little bit better it wasn't necessarily that a bunch of people wanted this hideous looking baby it was the marketing that surrounded it but since that's the case I wondered what if it had been a cuter looking baby would that have made this fad twice as big or was there something about this appearance that was appealing to the buyers or maybe just made it all work somehow and finally who do you consider the true creator of the Cabbage Patch doll I'd like to hear what you have to say and quickly I thought you'd appreciate one more look at comb over Grover come on now a baby wearing a tie with a comb-over stemming from his nose you can't tell me you've seen that before and then he has that little comb in his pocket he looks so proud too like he's fooled everyone thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Company Man

Views: 470,626

Keywords: Fads, Dolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, Cabbage Patch, Garbage Pail

Id: 4hRFdUmVtPs

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 02 2019