Halloween sneak peak: spooky kids!

For Halloween we bring you a tale of Little Ichabod and the Headless HorseKid...

 

Here at Cabbage Patch Rehab, we are not above a decapitation now and then, especially at this time of year. With multiple factories in Asia making Kids during the heyday, the quality of plastic for the heads varied widely. Some have developed a yellow or gray pallor. For instance, see these two victims Kids.

A single plastic zip-tie holds everything together and with that gone these two experience a disembodied sensation. hahaha

This comes in handy if you need to do a Freaky Friday body swap. Sometimes a body's fabric is beyond repair, and we can match that Kid with a headless one. Here's a jaundiced soon-to-be-headless Kid.

These Kids are remarkably resilient. He managed to keep a smile on his face the whole time.

His bald friend needed a new body because all the soft sculpture in the legs had come undone during the years. Even a trained orthopedist wouldn't touch this case.

We reversed the process by using a new zip-tie from our favorite medical supply store--Home Depot.

We married up the head and its new body and cinched everything tight. We wouldn't want this Kid to...lose his head! hahaha

The result is one healthy, happy Kid instead of two sad ones. As we always say, "We can rebuild them."

 

Happy Halloween!

They keep coming and coming and…

How do you accumulate enough Kids to fill a rehab facility? Two ways. Gradually then suddenly.

 

We started out looking for a couple playmates for Casey and Zachary. No problem. Find another boy and girl or two and let them enjoy recess. After all, we didn't want to get carried away. Keep it simple. That's our motto.

 

The Kids from the classic 1983-85 period have multiple face types—e.g. dimples or no dimples—and hair colors. We could see adopting a few more to ensure we had a good mix. A job worth doing is worth doing well. That's our motto.

 

Now we’ve gotten the hang of eBay. At this point we are so close to having one of each face and hairstyle, might as well go for a complete set. In for a penny, in for a pound. That's our motto.

 

Oh boy. We're gonna need a bigger playpen. Bite off more than you can chew. That's our motto.

The way things used to be

If we step into the Wayback machine…the year is 1983 and America is losing its collective mind.

 

Why? Only a few years before, Xavier Roberts, a hillbilly artist and marketing genius, had created the first Little People. He had been making quilts and pottery to sell before rediscovering the old German folk art known as soft sculpture. Each Kid would be handmade and unique, that was his first insight. The second was that instead of buying the Kids, people would adopt them.

 

An agent would administer this oath to new adoptive parents: 

• “After meeting this special Little Person Baby and learning his/her needs, I want to make the major commitment of becoming a good parent to him/her. I solemnly promise to be a good parent to my best ability, to provide for his/her needs; handle with care; love and nourish with most of my affections; train him/her up in the way he/she should go; and cherish my role as an adoptive parent of the only Little Person Baby of his/her kind in the world.”

 

The local popularity of the Kids grew as Xavier and a few friends took carloads to arts and crafts shows in Georgia and Florida. In 1978 they founded Original Appalachian Artworks and set down roots in an abandoned clinic that they rechristened Babyland General Hospital.

 

National attention began in 1981 with the first appearance of the Kids on the cover of Newsweek magazine. 

 

The limited production runs—the Kids were still being made by hand at this point with clothes sourced from area garage sales—combined with their popularity led to a frothy secondary market.

 

The international frenzy erupts in 1983 when Roberts and toy giant Coleco strike a deal to begin mass production. As the official history notes, “By the end of the year almost 3 million of the Cabbage Patch Kids Toys have been adopted but demand has not been met.” The following year another 20 million are adopted and another 70 million find homes from 1985 to 1987.

 

During the 1983 Christmas season frustration at being unable to find the Kids boils over. (When a Wikipedia site exists for “1983 Cabbage Patch Riots” you know things have gotten out of hand.)

• “In November 1983, America went bonkers for Cabbage PatchKids. The dolls were so scarce and demand was so high that riots broke out in stores, parents were ready to drive hundreds of miles to buy them, and desperate gift-givers were willing to pay big bucks for a rare doll. At a Zayre department store in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, a riot broke out, with a store manager grabbing a baseball bat to protect himself.” Video of the event showed pandemonium at the store, with boxes containing Cabbage Patch Kids being flung about.

 

In the decades since, many of those Kids got lost in attics or dragged through the dirt or smothered in cigarette smoke or worse. That’s where Cabbage Patch Rehab comes in. We hope you’ll enjoy following along with us on this adventure.

For a virtual tour of Babyland General Hospital, click here.

For a timeline on the Cabbage Patch craze, click here.

Reviving the Patch

Forty years ago, and in different ways, we both got an introduction to Xavier Roberts' Little People (aka, Cabbage Patch Kids).

One of us became the proud adoptive parent of these two little cuties--Casey Jacqueline and Zachary Colin.

The other one worked at Toys-R-Us during Christmas and regularly had dolls ripped out of his hands.

Our reunion with Casey and her younger brother happened when they recently broke out of storage. They were adorable but seemed a little lonely. After all those years together we thought they needed a friend...or two...or more?

Little did we know we were embarking on a massive rescue operation to save kids from the mean streets of Ebay. What we affectionately have come to call—Cabbage Patch Rehab.

Rest assured that we are taking this endeavor seriously but not literally. We may be crazy (you don't have to agree so vehemently) but at least we aren't using real babies.