Cabbage Patch Kids

According to court records (OAA v Toy Loft )[4] As a 21-year-old art student at a missionary School in North Georgia, Xavier discovered craft artist Martha Nelson’s Doll Babies. They came with a birth certificate and adoption papers. With the help of artist Debbie Moorehead, he hand-stitched dolls called "The Little People". Roberts very cleverly modified the look of Nelson’s dolls, birth certificate and adoption papers sufficiently to get a copyright and told potential customers his Little People weren’t for sale, but could be "adopted" for prices ranging from sixty to as much as a thousand dollars.[2]

The Little People were first sold at arts and crafts shows, then later at Babyland General Hospital, an old medical clinic that Roberts and his friends-turned-employees converted into a toy store, in Cleveland, Georgia.[3]

In 1981, at the height of Roberts’s success, he was approached by Atlanta designer and licensing agent, Roger L. Schlaifer[4][2] about licensing Little People. But since Schlaifer thought the name mundane and Fisher Price owned it for the toy category, he invented “Cabbage Patch Kids.” His goal was to build the first and largest mass-market children’s brand in history. In order to attract potential doll manufacturers and to create the entertainment and publishing businesses he envisioned, Schlaifer and his partner/wife wrote the Legend of the Cabbage Patch Kids. To make sense of how special cabbages gave birth to Cabbage Patch Kids, Schlaifer invented BunnyBees—the bee-like creatures that use their rabbit ears to fly about and pollinate cabbages with magical crystals. Since Roberts insisted on being a character in the story, Schlaifer created him as a curious, ten-year-old boy who discovered the Cabbage Patch Kids by following a BunnyBee behind a waterfall into a magical Cabbage Patch, where he found the Cabbage Patch babies being born in a neglected garden. To save them from being abducted to work in the gold mines operated by the villainess, Lavender McDade and her two cohorts in crime, Cabbage Jack and Beau Weasel, young Xavier tried to save them by finding loving parents who would adopt them and keep them safe in their homes.

In 1982, Coleco’s design team, headed by famed doll designer, Judy Albert, devised an industry first—one-of-a-kind, plastic headed Cabbage Patch Kids dolls with much cuter features, much softer bodies and a normal toddler’s proportions instead of the morbidly obese bodies on Roberts’ originals. It was those comparatively inexpensive--$18-$28 dolls, branded in packaging designed by Schlaifer and produced in Coleco’s factories in China, that the public went crazy over—rioting to get their hands on one in stores across North America. The consumer response was so great, Coleco cancelled all of its advertising as they tried to keep up with demand—shipping a doll-industry record, 3.2 million dolls. A huge success, but minor compared to 1984’s sales of dolls and Cabbage Patch branded merchandise (children’s apparel, bedding, sleepwear, books and countless other products that generated an industry record, $2,000,000,000 in retail sales across North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Coleco’s sales continued to climb right through 1986, when they reportedly over-shipped and lost ground in a bitter legal battle with Schlaifer and Roberts over his introduction of “Furskins Bears” —a collection of hillbilly bears that competed with the Cabbage Patch dolls. Coleco’s sales then plummeted from over $800 million in 1986 to nothing in 1988 when, after a number of questionable acquisitions, and paying Roberts a reported fortune for an extension to their CPK contract, and they went out of business.

After convincing Roberts of the need to change the dolls’ name to Cabbage Patch Kids, Schlaifer contacted all the major doll companies in the country. But with one small exception, they all turned him down—saying the look of Little People was too ugly to sell on the mass-market.[2] Though because of Schlaifer’s persistence, he found Coleco–then famous for its success with electronic toys—and sold them on being his Master Toy licensee—for which he negotiated a record-setting advertising guarantee.

At the peak of their popularity, between 1983 and 1986, the dolls were a must-have toy for Christmas.[5][6] Cabbage Patch riots occurred as parents literally fought to obtain the dolls for children. In later years, Coleco introduced variants on the original Cabbage Patch Kids, and derivatives of the original line of dolls continued to be marketed.

In the 1980s when Coleco was producing the dolls for the North American market,, they provided technical assistance to other doll manufacturers in Panama, Europe, Australia and Japan that wanted to use their molds.

Hasbro took over the rights to produce Cabbage Patch dolls in 1988 after Coleco filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy,[7] and continued to make the dolls with various gimmicks, including dolls that played kazoos. Some of the more popular doll lines to come out under the Cabbage Patch Kids name included the "Birthday Kids", "Splash 'n' Tan Kids", and "Pretty Crimp and Curl". Hasbro produced a 10th anniversary doll, reintroducing Schlaifer’s original packaging–a practice that other CPK doll manufacturers would do to give sales a boost on various anniversaries. Hasbro gradually began making the dolls for younger children, which led to smaller and smaller dolls. Although Cabbage Patch dolls were still best selling toys, continued to sell, the rage was clearly over. And with no TV or movie presence, there was seemingly no way to significantly revive them.

In 1994, Mattel acquired the licensing rights to the dolls from Original Appalachian Artworks. Their first Cabbage Patch dolls hit the stores in 1995.

The Mattel Cabbage Patch dolls were not limited to cloth bodies and included dolls made from vinyl, which produced a more durable play doll. The Mattel dolls are mostly sized 14" or smaller, and most variants were individualized with a gimmick to enhance their collectibility, e.g. some dolls played on water-toys, swam, ate food, or brushed their teeth.

Some memorable Mattel lines include the updated Kids line of basic cloth dolls that came with birth certificates, the OlympiKids that were made to coincide with the 1996 Olympics, and the Cabbage Patch Fairies. Additionally, to celebrate the dolls' 15th anniversary, Mattel created a line of exclusively female dolls with reproduction face molds, dressed in a reproduction dresses reminiscent of the original line and packaged in retro style box. These were 16 inches tall, the same measurement of the first Coleco Cabbage Patch Kids.

In 2001, with Mattel’s sales stalling, former Coleco marketing whiz, Al Kahn, acquired Original Appalachian’s licensing rights and sold retailer Toys "R" Us on producing 20-inch Kids dolls and 18-inch baby dolls, both with cloth bodies and vinyl heads. They were packaged in cardboard cabbage leaf seats. In 2001, the 20-inch dolls debuted in the Times Square flagship store. These were created to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the line, and were available both online and in stores around the US. Expensive and too cumbersome for most young children to play with, they didn’t last long at the high volume retailer.

The Toys "R" Us line lasted until Play Along toys obtained exclusive licensing rights to produce the Cabbage Patch Kids doll line. In 2003, again using Schlaifer’s original packaging, Play Along launched a Cabbage Patch Kids 25th Anniversary collection using some of the original head sculpts from the very first Coleco editions. Play Along also partnered with Carvel Ice Cream in a co-branding campaign. The resulting co-branded Cabbage Patch Kids were packaged with a Carvel-branded ice cream cone.

JAKKS Pacific acquired Play Along Toys and assumed the master toy licensee (c2011) for the Cabbage Patch Kids. Jakks introduced a 14-inch Cabbage Patch Kids Fashionality(TM) line and other Cabbage Patch Kid products. In 2013 Jakks Pacific released the Celebration edition to commemorate the 30th Birthday of the licensed Cabbage Patch Kids.

Wicked Cool Toys (Owned by Jazwares) is now the current master toy licensee for the Cabbage Patch Kids.[8]

In this line, WCT released new additions like Little Sprouts, a toyline of tiny collectable dolls, and Adoptimals, plush pets who interact with the Kids.

Though Xavier Roberts claimed to have originated the look of Little People, many of Little People’s defining characteristics – such as the dolls' overly round faces and that they came with an adoption certificate – were taken from Martha Nelson Thomas, an American folk artist from Kentucky. Before Roberts became involved in the toy industry, Thomas had created and marketed her own line of dolls, called Doll Babies, which she sold at local arts and craft shows and markets. The two crossed paths at a state fair in 1976, whereupon Roberts began purchasing Thomas' dolls to sell at a profit at his own store in Georgia.[11][12][13] Thomas eventually confronted Roberts about his unethical business practices and ceased to sell additional dolls to him, prompting him to turn to a manufacturing company in Hong Kong to mass produce dolls similar in appearance to Thomas' at a cheaper cost to him.[14] Thomas brought suit against Roberts and eventually settled with him out of court for an undisclosed amount in 1985. She and her husband, Tucker Thomas, told the press that she was more upset by the corruption of her dolls, for which she cared deeply, than the money she'd lost as the result of Roberts' actions.[15][16] Thomas died in 2013, at the age of 62, with her most favorite dolls attending her funeral alongside her family members and friends.[17]

Roberts’ company, Original Appalachian Artworks, later brought a $30 million lawsuit against Topps, the company that produced grotesque trading cards parodying his company's dolls called the Garbage Pail Kids, for copyright infringement.[18][19] Having sold over $70 million dollars worth of the cards, Topps settled with OAA for $7 million--tantamount to a license--and retained the right to continue producing the Garbage Pail Kids cards.

In a bitter legal battle with SN&C over whether OAA had violated their licensing Agreement with SN&C and Coleco’s exclusivity by producing a Cabbage Patch bear as a line of “Furskins Bears,” and failing to pay SN&C its share of the Topps settlement and refusing to allow ABC TV from doing a Saturday Morning, animated TV show, Roberts worked out a side deal with Coleco for tens of millions of dollars for a renewal of Schlaifer’s Cabbage Patch Agreement, and jointly litigated against SN&C.  The suit was settled in 1988 by OAA and Coleco paying SN&C an undisclosed amount of money. And Paula Osborne, OAA president until Roberts worked out the deal with Coleco, sued him over the share she was entitled to as a stockholder of OAA and received a seven-figure settlement. Six months after settling with SN&C, Coleco was out of business.

One of Mattel's line of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, the Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids, was designed to "eat" plastic snacks. The mechanism enabling this was a pair of one-way smooth metal rollers behind plastic lips. The snacks would exit the doll's back and "magically" appear into a backpack. The mechanism could be de-activated by releasing the backpack.[20] They were extremely popular during Christmas 1996. The line was voluntarily withdrawn from the market following an agreement between Mattel and the Consumer Product Safety Commission in January 1997 following several incidents where children got their fingers or hair stuck in the dolls' mouths leading to safety warnings from Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner, Mark Shiffrin.[21]