Cabbage Patch Kids
Cabbage Patch Kids are a line of unique, soft-bodied dolls that became a cultural phenomenon in the 1980s. Created by Xavier Roberts, these dolls are distinguished by their individualized features, such as varying hair, eye, and skin colors, which were made possible through a computerized design process. Each doll comes with a backstory and an adoption oath, emphasizing a sense of personal connection and authenticity, reinforced by Roberts's signature on every doll. The marketing strategies behind Cabbage Patch Kids led to immense consumer demand, particularly during the 1983 holiday season, where the dolls became highly sought after, causing chaos in stores as shoppers clamored to purchase them. This demand was so great that retailers resorted to lotteries and purchase limits to manage the frenzy. With over 65 million dolls sold throughout the decade, the Cabbage Patch Kids are hailed as one of the most successfully marketed toys in history, demonstrating the effective use of technology in creating unique products and the power of inventive marketing in driving consumer interest. The phenomenon not only made Roberts a multimillionaire but also highlighted the ability of a toy to capture the imagination and affection of children and adults alike.
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Subject Terms
Cabbage Patch Kids
Children’s dolls
Manufacturer Coleco (licensee 1982-1989)
The Cabbage Patch Kids were one-of-a-kind, soft-sculpture, needle-art dolls that were sold with names and birth certificates. A major fad of the mid-1980’s, the Cabbage Patch Kids recorded sales of nearly 3 million units in 1983, a first-year doll-sale record that exceeded the previous record by more than 1 million dolls.
Profits from the Cabbage Patch Kids and innumerable tie-in products like clothing, accessories, games, and books resulted in one of the greatest modern rags-to-riches stories, catapulting the dolls’ impoverished Georgia creator, Xavier Roberts, into a multimillionaire. Driving consumer demand was an inspired marketing concept: Each doll was unique, thanks to a computerized creation process that produced variations in hair, eye, and skin colors and other facial characteristics. Moreover, a cabbage patch birth story and an adoption oath accompanied and humanized each doll, and each one also featured Roberts’s signature as a mark of authenticity. Through Roberts’s tireless promotional efforts, the Cabbage Patch Kids received unprecedented free publicity, appearing on children’s television programs and on network programs such as the Today show and Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. The dolls received national news coverage when they were presented to children at the White House and when celebrities “adopted” them.
As demand for the Cabbage Patch Kids exploded during the 1983 Christmas season, Coleco chartered Boeing 747’s to airlift dolls from Asian factories, an event that generated even more publicity but did not fully satisfy demand. Shoppers waited in lines for hours, and stampedes occurred in department stores as consumers fought to grab the coveted dolls. In one store, dolls were snatched off shelves in thirty-six seconds. Some stores held lotteries to distribute the scarce supply, while others placed limits on the quantity of dolls dispensed to each customer. A father made headlines by flying to London to buy a doll when he could not obtain one in the United States. Scalpers sold dolls for outrageous prices, with one doll reportedly selling for nearly one hundred times Coleco’s retail price of $27.99. At the height of the 1983 buying mania, Coleco canceled all paid advertising, resulting in an industry-low advertising expenditure of less than $500,000 for a toy introduction. Throughout the 1980’s, sales remained unusually high for the Cabbage Patch Kids, fueled by Roberts’s marketing genius, including the 1985 publicity coup of sending an astronaut Cabbage Patch Kid into outer space.
Impact
With 65 million dolls sold throughout the 1980’s, the Cabbage Patch Kids are considered one of the most successfully marketed dolls in the toy industry. The dolls fulfilled the usually contradictory criteria for toy sale success: They were steadily selling products that sold annually in relatively anticipated quantities, and they were a fad that required a high level of promotion yet brought in significant profits. In addition, the dolls proved that computer technology could be used to create one-of-a-kind, mass-produced products, and the uniqueness of each unit could be used effectively as a marketing device to drive mass consumer demand.
Bibliography
Hoffman, William. Fantasy: The Incredible Cabbage Patch Phenomenon. Dallas: Taylor, 1987.
Lindenberger, Jan. Cabbage Patch Kids Collectibles: An Unauthorized Handbook and Price Guide. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer, 1999.
Official Cabbage Patch Kids Web Site. http://www .cabbagepatchkids.com.
Sullivan, Kathleen A. “As Luck Would Have It: Incredible Stories from Lottery Wins to Lightning Strikes.” Library Journal 129, no. 7 (April 15, 2004): 148.