Stuff You Should Know - SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: Cabbage Patch Kids: Must-Have Toy of the Century

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Surprisingly, Cabbage Patch Kids have turned up on SYSK almost as much as the Nazis or Seinfeld. It’s finally time to dive all the way into CPKs, from their controversial origins to the Christmas craze of ‘83 to their alter egos, Garbage Pail Kids.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's my turn now. It's Josh. And for this episode on our Stuff You Should Know, 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist, we're talking about cabbage Patch Kids, one of the all-time top contenders for a must-have Christmas toy. I had one. His name was Weber Dino. He was very great. We had very fun time.

together, important times. At any rate, whether you had a cabbage patch kid or not, I think you're going to enjoy this episode. So turn up your cocoa, throw some marshmallows in there, and enjoy this up. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Josh Malcolm Clark, there's Charles Wayne Bryant. This is stuff you should know about cabbage patch kids who have two names, which is why I just did that. That's right. This remarkably the third time we've talked about cabbage patch kids on this show.

I only remember one other time. When was the third time, or the second time, I guess? Well, the last time was not even a year ago on our episode on Must Have Christmas Gifts. Yeah, that's all I remember. Yeah, and then while I was telling the story of my Cabbage Patch Kid experience, he said, yes, you've told everyone this story before. So I think this will be the third time that we hear these stories. I thought you didn't have a Cabbage Patch Kid. So you don't remember the other two times I told you.

the story. No, you've got to tell it again. It's called the hat trick, baby. Yeah, my sister has one of the first, like, 75 of them, of the little people dolls. Oh, wow. That she bought in North Georgia when she was a kid. Now I know why it didn't stick with me, because I didn't understand what the heck you were talking about. Now I totally get it.

And I think it will stay with me forever, Chuck. When we do our fourth, fifth, and six podcasts on Cabbage Patch Kids, I will be the one telling that story. How about that? Well, and you also told the story of yours that you ripped the head off and gave it a mohawk. Yeah. Weber Dino met a pretty terrible demise. And I have two of them myself that my mom every once in a while says,

hey, do you want these? And I say, no. I don't think they're worth much money. And I don't know even know if my sisters is worth a lot of money now, even though it's hand-signed and one of the first ones. I just don't think the market is as robust as it was at one point. So was hers a Calico little people or as Xavier Roberts, like original Appalachian artworks little people?

No, hers was one of the handmade... Xavier Roberts Oh, G. Craft Fair dolls. I think those go for like one, two, maybe $2,000, I think. Yeah, I guess it depends on where you look. Like, I saw the one of mine that was one of those originals, and it wasn't one of the first 100,

but people were asking like 150 bucks on eBay for those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm surprised to see that. Like, from what I've seen, if you really want the big bucks, it's the original Xavier Roberts little people. But we're probably getting ahead of ourselves a little bit because some people are probably like, what's a cabbage patch kid?

Right? Right. So, well, we'll tell everybody what a cabbage patch kid is. It's a little doll that was a huge deal in the Christmas of 1983. And like Chuck said, we talked about this on, I guess it was our, I think it was our Christmas episode. Or was it a different standard? alone episode from last year.

Now, I think the first time we did it was a Christmas episode, and then last year it was in November, it was just a must-have Christmas toys. Okay, gotcha, gotcha. So that's worth listening to, but in December of 1983, Christmas of 1983, everybody was going crazy for these dolls, but at the same time, there was, like, because it was such a huge craze, and they were so part of, like, popular culture at the moment, they were on the news, every night. People were doing just absolutely crazy things to get their hands on these dolls for their kids. There was a lot of talk about, well, what are these things? They're so ugly that they're

cute. Other people thought, well, no, they're actually just ugly. There's a journal article that came out in 1986 in the semantics journal, et cetera. And the cabbage patch kids were described as open arm denied, seemingly dull-witted, with mop-haired faces only mothers could love. which I think is a pretty accurate description of a cabbage patch kid, don't you think? Yeah, so on that, this is something I never knew. Apparently there was a rumor years after the fact that the design was managed by Ronald Reagan because he wanted to get Americans used to what mutant to offspring might look like if the big one ever drops and we go to war with the Ruski's,

we might want to get used to our babies looking like this so let's just it's sort of in the classic Hollywood like you know there are theories that that's why we make UFO movies they're commissioned by the government to get people sort of

adjusted to the idea that one day there's going to be aliens walking around right exactly but that's probably not the case Ronald Reagan probably didn't have anything to do with it but that's just such an 80s thing Cabbage Patch Kids Ronald Reagan in nuclear war with the USSR

are. That's about like the greatest 80s combination I've ever heard of in my life. Yeah, pretty good. So if you go on to the cabbage patch kids website, you'll find the enchanting magical story of where cabbage patch kids came from or how they came into our human world. And it goes something like this, that when he was a young boy, Xavier Roberts was wandering around the Appalachian Mountains, and he saw what is called a bunny bee. which is a magical bee or a magical bunny that can fly around, like buzzes around like a bee. And he followed it, and the bunny bee went through a waterfall.

And Xavier Roberts went and looked and saw that behind the waterfall, there was a tunnel. And he went into the tunnel, being an inquisitive type of Appalachian young boy. And when he came out of the other side of the tunnel, he was clearly in some sort of enchanted land because there were a bunch of bunny bees flying around over a cabbage patch, sprinkling some sort of magical dust. And Xavier noticed that when the dust hit the cabbage, the cabbage would start to move and a little baby would be born from it, a cabbage patch kid.

And one of those kids, a kid named Otis Lee, came up to Xavier and said, hey, will you take me and all of my friends over to your human world and help us find homes? And so Xavier Roberts agreed and he founded Babyland General Hospital for the purpose of adopting out cabbage patch kids and that's where it all came from. That's right. Babyland General right here in Cleveland, Georgia, and I just so happened to have driven by there but two days ago. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we went on a waterfall hike the family did on Sunday.

Did you see a bunny bee? Didn't see a bunny bee, but we drove right by Babyland General, and Emily was like, did you know that was there? I was like, yeah, I've been there. So, of course I knew it was there. But that's where Xavier Roberts went to college. He went to college at Truett McConnell there in Cleveland, so that was the connection. Right, right.

Yeah, if you want to kind of take it down a notch as far as magical enchantment goes, the official story is that Xavier Roberts, while he was at Truitt McConnell, while he was studying art there, he came across a German fabric sculpture technique from the 19th century called needle molding. And if you've ever seen, you know, that really famous, tomato pin cushion, Chuck, for the 70s? So, you know how, like, the top, the creases in the top of the tomato are made by, like, like, taut thread pulled through together to kind of create that, that molded look?

That, from what I can tell, is a form of needle molding. But somehow, Xavier Roberts was like, I really like sculpture, and this is a form of soft sculpture. I also like quilting, and this kind of has to do with quilting. I'm going to get into this. And we're going to figure out how to make baby dolls using. this needle molding technique. And he did just that starting in 1977.

Yeah, and for those of you that want to throw your car into a ditch right now because you're screaming about the story, because you know the true story, just put a pin in it. We're going to get around to it. That was very merciful of you, Chuck. Yeah, I didn't want people to think that we didn't know. But in 1977, Xavier Roberts, who sort of looked like a shorter-haired Kenny Rogers type, wore a cowboy hat and had this beard. And he developed these, like you said, soft sculpture, but they were dolls called little people. And here was the sort of hitch that really drove kids wild is that they were not dolls that you buy.

They were little people that you adopt. So you got adoption birth certificates. It was a brilliant idea that he had, put a bin in it. And he sold these things, little people originals. He went to arts and craft shows. He sold them, we bought ours at Unicoy Lodge at Unicoy State Park in a gift shop there. So that was the kind of place that would carry this kind of stuff. There were about $40, and I remember distinctly that my father,

could not imagine paying $40 for a doll. And I think even, I think we even left without little Chuck. And he went back because he felt so bad about how crestfallen my sister was and bought the doll later on for a Christmas gift or something if my memory served me. But it was a lot of money. $40 was a lot of money for a doll back then. Yeah, it was probably getting pretty close to $100. bucks. And I mean, who goes to Unicoy State Park's gift shop and expects to drop $100 on a piece

of folk art that's really just a baby doll? You know, I can kind of see your dad's. He thought he's going to have to get a Michelle miniature license plate for $250. Sure, exactly. And when you go on with an expectation like that and you are faced with a $100 soft sculpture payment that you have to make, that's a big shock. And sometimes somebody needs to get in their car and drive home and think about it before they can accept that. That's right. So, like you said, that's exactly the kind of place you would have bought this. You could have also found them at like craft fairs or something.

And in fact, Xavier Roberts won first place at the Osceola Art Show in Kissimmee, Florida, for little people that he named Dexter, which is one of the most uncanny, haunting, horrid dolls you'll ever see in your life. but it helped kind of generate some buzz and at that point he was like you know what this is things are kind of going well people are paying 40 bucks for to adopt one of these little people I'm winning first place

prizes I'm going to get together some friends and he founded what's known as original Appalachian artworks and they are the ones that actually opened up Babyland General they took an old medical center in Cleveland which is super creepy that they

they took an abandoned in hospital and opened it for, it's basically like a doll store. Really creepy if you step back and just look at the contours of the whole thing. It didn't look creepy though. No, no, it didn't. I'm just saying if you just

look at the words on paper. Oh, sure. You put it like that. It does seem to be creepy. Yeah, when you take hospital, it was like a little house. And it was the opposite of creepy. Like, it was delightful. And I guess it still is, because, I mean, it's still in operation today. But people would show up and, like, there were, like, the people who work

there were dressed up as nurses and doctors, and they would help the babies be born from cabbages, then they would be incubated. There were preemies that were born. It was a big deal operation to take this idea of that you were adopting a cabbage patch kid rather than buying a doll and then like adding that whole extra dimension to it of going to Babyland General to do it really helped generate a lot of buzz for these things. Yeah, and I should say that my sister's doll Chuck who was they come with their name she didn't name it after me but uh chuck had um you know if you see the the early versions of these things like you said it was kind of horrific looking they they weren't the cutest dolls at all chuck had a very crooked hairline um like it looked like

it was made by someone who didn't fully know what they were doing his little yarn hairline was like a good three inches higher on one side of his forehead than the other which oh my again further my dad did not see the charm in this he was like it's not even made well, and I got to pay $40 for these things. But supposedly with the preemies, Xavier Roberts has given some credit to just raising awareness for premature babies because the preemies in Cabbage Patchland were so cute. They also had C sections, cabbage sections. And by the time 1980 rolls around, he's selling a pretty good amount of these things,

but it really explodes in popular culture from sort of the early 80s. He was featured on the TV show Real People, which I watched a lot as a kid, made Newsweek, made the Wall Street Journal. And so the press is starting to kind of come around, and these things are just getting more and more popular at this point. Yeah, a lot of those stories just kind of focused on people who were paying a lot more than the original retail price to start collecting these dolls. So there was like a whole underground cult market that was developing around these little people. And it became very apparent that Xavier Roberts was not going to be able to keep up with supply. So he started looking for some help. And he found it in 1982.

And we will talk all about that partnership made in heaven starting after these messages. Hey, Harry Potter fans. Huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions are all being released on Audible on a monthly basis, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Baltimore, Riz Ahmed is Snape, and Cush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score. And the sound design? You'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear. The Hogwarts Express rumbling out of platform nine and three

quarters, and it's all in Dolby Atmos, which makes the wizardry even more magical. Plus, these are the unabridged versions, even more awesomeness. As I mentioned, the first book is out, and the next installments in the series will be released every month until all seven are out. Go to audible.ca slash HP1 and start listening now. Okay, friends, real talk. You are worth the wait. We've all been there, giving our energy to connections that didn't honor ours, and watching friends do the same.

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them in stock anywhere they're selling them. Unicoy State Park is on the phone every day being like, send us more, send us more. We don't care what the hairline looks like. We got to have them. And so Xavier Robert started looking for some, like a legit toy manufacturer to help him out. And he found it in Calico, who had made a name, I guess, around the same time as maybe a little bit before this, year before maybe, as the people who came out with Pac-Man. So they were riding high by this time. And they said, I think there's something to these little people. And we're going to buy in here. And so Xavier Roberts partnered with Calico and the rest of the story just kind of takes off like a rocket from there. Yeah. So this was in 1982. And at first, Calico said, you know what,

we're going to keep calling them little people. We think that's a good name, even though it wasn't. So they stuck with the name. They figured out the best way to mass produce these things. was to get rid of that hand-done hand-sown head. That was a real problem. That's what took the most time. Sure. It's also, frankly, what gave those early dolls all the personality, a lot of that was lost when they went to the plastic heads.

But they did keep the cloth bodies. They machine produced these vinyl heads. They size the doll down a little bit to about 16 inches. The initial dolls were pretty big. They varied in size, obviously, depending on how old. they were when you adopted them, but they were large. Like, Chuck was a big doll. The two I have were big dolls.

Yeah, they were like the size where if they were possessed by a demon and came alive, they could smother you. Like, you'd be in big trouble if they came alive while you were asleep. Yes, big time. But sizing them down made a big difference because then you could just box them up, get more shelf space that way. Sure. And they were smart early on, too, to realize that kids wanted a lot of variety.

They wanted different ethnicities. They wanted different skin color, different shapes. They wanted some with freckles, some with dimples, obviously different eye color and hair color and stuff like that. And that was one of the big selling points is it wasn't just this Samsey's mass-produced doll that every kid could have the same one. Every kid wanted a different version. Yeah, because, I mean, that was part of the whole marketing that you were adopting your own individual kid. your own cabbage patch kid who had his or her own name, his or her own, like, specific birth date.

He or she was a unique little baby that you were adopting. So the idea that you could take different head molds and different facial features and different types of hair, and you had like a few different from each category, you suddenly had like millions of combinations that you could randomly put together. It continued that uniqueness that was like part of the brand from the beginning. and like you said was part of like the big thing that like made this craze so huge you know they were very smart to identify that as a big part of the marketing and then figure out a way to carry it on while also mass producing these things it was pretty clever on calico's part yeah and it was also clever to change the name little people yeah just didn't have legs basically in the end and they thought cabbage patch kids they were born in the cabbage patch kids they were born in the cabbage It's, and, you know, looking back, it's a pretty brilliant name because it ties into being adopted, being born in the little cabbage patch. And it's, it was pretty brilliant, I think.

It was the kind of name like that you could end up making into a bunch of other things, which they did, and we're going to talk about that. But I don't think little people quite had the legs to do that. So, Colico also figured out that there was a really good sweet spot that. even if you couldn't really afford it, you would still stretch to reach that point. And they started adopting these, the adoption fees for Cabbage Patch Kids came to about $30, which is $78 in today's money. And then they took their, you know, comparatively much larger clout in context in the media and started getting way more press for Cabbage Patch Kids than Xavier Roberts ever managed to generate for little people. Oh, sure. I have to say, looking back, though,

Xavier Roberts did some really good work as just some dude from Cleveland, Georgia, who was hand-sewing dolls. I mean, he got some pretty good coverage. Yeah, I mean, that should have been very niche in regional. Right, exactly, and it wasn't. It became a big deal. But Colico just put it to shame.

They got a lot of press, a lot of interest drummed up for Cabbage Patch kids, and all of that kind of culminated. in a December 12, 1983 edition of Newsweek when there was a cabbage pet, a little girl with her cabbage patch kid on the cover of that edition just in time for the Christmas buying season. That's right, because every kid in America was reading Newsweek and saying, Mom, Dad, look, it's on the cover. We have to get one.

Yep. And that was at the very quaint time when you would just start Christmas shopping two weeks before Christmas rather than eight months before Christmas. So, Colico, and by the way, just to save listener mails, Colico did not make Pac-Man. I just want to save you from that fate. Is that right?

Yeah, I think it was Namco if I remember correctly. Oh, man. I mean, they did do video games, but... Okay, well, thanks for saving me. No, no, no. There'll be plenty of people that write, that probably sent the email before I even got to this and

that want to retract the email, but that's okay. So they started selling these things like hotcakes. They sold 3 million plus by the end of 1983. And like so many Christmas items that came before and after, it is sort of, the frenzy is determined by availability and supply. And they were underprepared. And they could not keep up with demand. They weren't like the Rubik's Cube where they just made, you know, millions and millions and millions of these things. And it became a supply problem and it became a really big deal.

And this is the first toy where people were angry because there weren't enough of them to go around. Yeah. And I mean, they still made three million of them and they ran out like very quickly.

And when you say people were angry, like they were throwing elbows. They were pushing one another. They were like, they were getting physical trying to get these dolls. And now it's like, well, yeah, that sounds like

a Christmas, like must have Christmas toy. People hadn't done that up to this point. This is very new. And so in addition to, you know, the normal press they were getting, these dolls were also ending up on like the nightly news a lot that December with stories about how parents were like driving across state lines to get one of those cabbage patch kids. Or there was a story about a post carrier in Kansas City, I think, who flew to lunch. London to buy one, which I don't understand why, because London had its own frenzy going on as well. There was a whole lot of stuff going down that hadn't really gone down before Cabbage Patch Kids came along that Christmas. Yeah, I wonder if that became a technique to sell more things, was to either falsely, kind of falsely say that you don't have enough. I think we cover that in the Must Have Toys episode that that is a technique that they use, that they purposefully underproduce to create scarcity. Yeah, but then you can't sell as many.

I would think it'd be better to produce the regular amount and then just say you didn't. And then they're like, but we found a warehouse that we didn't know about. Right, exactly. Because you still want to move these dolls. I mean, Rubik's Cube, they sold 200 million Rubik's cubes in the first few years.

I know that's nuts. Because they were just pumping those things out. Yeah, well, at the very least, I think Calico was genuinely caught underprepared. I don't think it was in any way, shape, or form of purposeful scarcity. Oh, no, of course not. Scarcity. I think it was just straight up scarcity. And there was, there was, there's this footage from Zales department, no, sorry, Zeyer department store.

In Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania. Right. This is in Wilkesbury, Pennsylvania, or Wilkes-Berry. I've also seen Pennsylvania. But there's this manager, who I know we talked about before, but you've got to see this guy. He's the manager of the Zaire Department Store in December of 1983, at least. And this guy is like unhinged.

Have you seen footage of him? Yeah, I saw him last year. Okay. You got to see him again. I got to describe him again because he struck a chord with me this year that he didn't last year. But he's holding a baseball bat very famously. But if you listen to what he's doing, shouting at the customers. He's like, shut up. Listen to me. And he's like waving this baseball bat.

And there's this crowd of people filling every available inch of this department store wanting cabbage patch kids. And this guy decides that the way to satisfy the need is to just start tossing them into the crowd. So the crowd is like jostling going crazy trying to catch these cabbage patch kids while the manager of the department store is screaming at them holding a baseball bat. It's one of the worst forms of crowd management anyone's ever attempted, ever. And it was caught on film, and you've got to see it yourself. Yeah, he was, he wasn't doing his best work that day. I think that's, we can all agree on that.

He really wasn't. Agreed. A lot of times the problems were so big that they didn't even want people in the stores. So they would say, like, we can't have another fist fight in here. So what you do is you can arrive and get a coupon, and then you, you go around back to the loading dock and we'll distribute them there. The secondary market started booming. There were actual stores that were buying them up and then marking them up.

And then there was the black market that really, really marked them up. Right. And this was not WKRP in Cincinnati, but it was very much in that rich tradition of DJs kind of conning people into acting like fools. And this happened in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when some local DJs there said there's going to be a B-26 bomber plane, and it's going to drop $2,000 over the Brewer's baseball stadium. And all you got to do is show up with your baseball glove to catch these babies and hold up your credit card so the pilot can take a picture and charge you for it. And, of course, this is the dumbest thing you've ever heard, but that still didn't stop. A couple of dozen people from showing up with their baseball glove and credit card. Yeah, in negative 7 degree wind chill, which is very cold if you're in the centigrade parts of the world, that's very cold.

They're used to it. I guess so. But the, yeah, the fact that people would do that is, it's like I double check to make sure that that wasn't an urban legend. And it definitely is not. Like, that really did happen in Milwaukee in 1983. That was like the level the craze reached. And what's really to Calico's credit is they managed to keep the party going for a full another year because in Christmas 1984, cabbage patch kids were again the must-have toy.

And in just 1984 alone, not 1983 Christmas season, in 1984 that year, they sold $2 billion worth of cabbage patch kids in 1984 money. Yeah, I mean, this was, I think, one of the things that made it truly unique is, Like I said, the Rubik's Cube was really hot for a few years, but generally as these things go, it's sort of like you can count on the one Christmas season. If you're overlapping to the next Christmas season, that is a Grand Slam home run as far as toys go. Absolutely. So one of the outcomes of that of being a toy that manages to span two Christmas seasons that thoroughly is they become, you know, iconic. And they start popping up in other places. Like there was one named Christopher Xavier,

who's a very famous cabbage patch kid. I guess as cabbage patch kids can be famous. And he actually rode on the space shuttle on a genuine, legit NASA space shuttle mission in 1985. And that reminds me, Chuck. Have you seen the mini doc about the Challenger? No, not yet. It's good? Oh, boy. It is really good. I mean, it's a high-calibre documentary to begin with, but then, like, the, the emotionality that it manages to dredge up is really, it's a really well-done documentary in every way. I highly recommend it. Where's that showing? That one's on Netflix, I believe. I'm almost positive. And I think it's just called Challenger and then probably colon something. But it's good. It was, it's by, I think JJ isn't bad. Robot, J.J. Abrams production company?

Yeah. They did it. They were one of the companies that handled it. But it's very good. I did watch Anola Holmes on your recommendation. Yes. What did you think? I liked it a lot. It was good. It was just a good, breezy, light, fun movie to watch, which is just what we needed the night we watched it. For sure. And, but it was smart, too, wasn't it?

Yeah, it was smart enough. And she's just great. Millie Bobby Brown is, she's just, she's got a lot of personality and lovable charisma. So she's great to watch. And it's fun to see her outside of playing 11 with all her personality, able to come out like that. Right. Yeah. Well, I'm very glad that you liked it because I think we would have had some sort of awkward wedge between us for the rest of our lives. Had you not.

You haven't seen the octopus doc yet, no? I did. Oh, okay. So I think if we're going to talk about octopus, my octopus team. or you should just turn down your volume for about a minute and you won't have it spoiled. All right, fair enough, fair enough. And actually, I think that guy is terrible. I think he's a terrible human being for not rescuing his companion friend on two different occasions.

Really? Yes, and I know that he's a documentarian, so they're not supposed to interfere. I've seen Drop Dead Gorgeous. I know the rules. But this is different. He crossed the line. He crossed boundaries when he became friends with that. that octopus. He stopped being a documentarian, started being its friend, and then he, as

his friend, wasn't there for his friend when it was attacked not once, but twice. And I really dislike that guy for that reason. Oh, interesting. Well, I don't concur, but I guess that's part of the beauty of that movie. You can have different takes. So, but there's not a gulf between us, a wedge between us now, is there? I mean, did you hate the documentary? No, I otherwise thought it was amazing. All right. Well, then there's no gulf. Amazing. It really was. It really was great, except for that one thing times two. All right. No wedge.

So let's see. Back to cabbage patch kids, there was another kind of landmark they reached in 1992 when they became, I think maybe Christopher Xavier became the official mascot of the U.S. Olympic team and got to go to Barcelona with them. Yeah, I mean, this is pretty impressive. This is 10 plus years after these things were the hot ticket, you know, which is crazy, crazy time. They were on a postage stamp. Eventually, of course, though, his star, well, not his star. It was more than Christopher Xavier, but their collective star was going to fade, like all toys and all dolls.

We've all seen Toy Story. We know what happens in the end. It never completely went away, though. You know, Colico eventually was like, you know, we've got to offload these guys. We're going to sell it. We're in the video game industry, like big time. And so we got a... Have you heard of Pac-Man?

Well, the video game industry starts tanking, so they're trying to, I guess, recoup some money on their investment. So they sell the Cabbage Patch Kid license. And then, you know, this is not before trying a few things. They tried, like, talking Cabbage Patch Kids and stuff like that. But eventually, they went bankrupt in the 80s. And the license moved on to different people over the years. Mattel, Hasbro, Toys R Us.

And then right now it's owned by Play Along, Inc., which it just seems like those are, it seems like there's a lot of toy companies named weird things like that now. I agree. I agree. And I find it unsettling. Like, their slogan should be, we're watching you. It just seems like we talk about those a lot. Like, there's still the giants like Hasbro and Mattel. But I feel like when we've done our toy podcast, it seems like the newer ones, they don't have these.

sort of name brands that you think of as toys? No, I know. They all sound like Russian fronts. It's really weird and unsettling and kind of off-putting. And all the Cs are K's? It's really strange. It's very sinister. So, yeah, along the lines, like all of these companies

were like, we've got to figure out a way to capture lightning in a bottle again a second time. It just doesn't happen. It's hard enough the first time. And so they tried different things. Like you said, Colico tried that talk. one, didn't work. I think Hasbro had one that swam, which is kind of impressive.

Sure. And then Mattel had one that they had to withdraw. It was called Cabbage Patch Snack Time Kids. And they, these things would, like, eat. Like, they came with, like, French fries or something, and you'd put, like, the French fry in their mouth, and they'd start chewing, and the French fry would go down their throat and actually come out of their back of their head

and fall into their backpack, and then you could feed it to them again, which is great. fine, but if you're a little kid and you get your fingers in there, your hair in there, that cabbage patch dolls just kind of keep eating and eating, and you're going to start screaming, and your parents are going to be like, I don't want this doll anymore. Give me my money back. Yeah, and these things also declined in quality. I think of the mid-90s, Mattel shrunk them even more down to 14 inches, and they were like, forget these cloth bodies even. We're going to make the whole thing vinyl. And people didn't like that at all. And it took.

I think the 20th anniversary in 2003, it took Toys R Us, who took over the rights at that point to jack these things back up to 18 inches. They had cloth bodies, I think they had an 18 inch and a 20 inch, and then they finally brought back those cloth bodies, which were a big deal. And they debuted them at their flagship store in New York City, and they sort of recaptured the magic a little bit. And it's about this time, and I think a year later is when Play Along licensed it, but it's about this time that people started buying them again a little bit for nostalgia. Like kids that grew up with them were now buying them for their kids. And I think, you know, they sold okay. It's nothing like they were at first, but they're still around.

No. Yeah, and Play Along Inc, if that is their real name, was very wise to basically recreate the original 1983. style cabbage patch kids. Like, they're basically indistinguishable from the ones that the people who are buying them now for their kids had when they were kids. And it's, like you said, it's all nostalgia.

They're doing pretty good trade on it without having to reinvent the wheel. That's right. A little quick stat before we take a break that is remarkable. Over the past 32 years, there have been 130 million of these babies born, which would, if they were real little people,

it would make them the 10th most populous country in the world with one being born every 6.8 seconds. But having said that, we're going to take a little break, and right after this, we're going to tell you the true origin story of the little people. Hey, Harry Potter fans. Huge news. Harry Potter, the full cast audio editions are all being released on Audible on a monthly basis, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is already out. You have never experienced the wizarding world like this before. They've taken it to another level. The cast is perfect. Hugh Lorry is Dumbledore, Matthew McFaddy and is Baltimore, Riz Ahmed as Snape, and Kush Jumbo as the narrator. And there are too many others to name. There's even a brand new musical score. And the The sound design, you'll feel like you're right there. Footsteps echoing down the halls of Hogwarts, a golden snitch flying past your ear.

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Hellofresh.ca. Hellofresh. Canada's number one meal kit delivery service. Okay, Chuck, I'm curious. Why did you say true like that? Well, if you listen to the show a year ago, it's already ruined, but we didn't go into that much depth. Here's what really happened, though. Xavier Roberts ripped off a lady.

It's the easiest way to say it. There was a very kind-hearted, soft-spoken folk artist named Martha Nelson Thomas. Went to art school in the 70s. She experimented with the same exact German soft sculpture molding, and she created what was called Little Doll Babies. If you Google Martha Nelson Thomas Little Dolls, and you see this now-famous picture, when it, you know, hasn't been swept under the rug by Xavier Roberts people

and maybe Kaliko's people, this black and white picture of this woman surrounded by what are clearly and obviously cabbage patch kids. Yes, and there's actually, funny enough, there's another famous picture of Xavier Roberts taken probably about 10 years after that, and he's surrounded by straight up cabbage patch kids, you know, with the vinyl heads and everything. But the fact that that picture was taken of Martha, Nelson Thomas in 1975 is photographic documentary evidence that she is the person who came up with cabbage patch kids. Not cabbage patch kids, but what cabbage patch kids were based on.

And if that were it, if that were the photo, if that was the only evidence whatsoever, you'd be like, that's a, I don't know, people can have similar ideas, you know, there's only one, you know, old German technique called needle molding. other people could have found it, but that is not the only evidence. And in fact, Xavier Roberts has gone on public record saying that he was inspired by Martha Nelson Thomas, but he changed it enough. But if you go and look at the actual story and the facts along the way, and there's actually a pretty good 16-minute-long vice documentary on this whole thing, that you will see that it went way beyond him just being inspired by Martha Nelson Thomas's work.

and in fact, like you said, he basically ripped her off. Yeah, so he, from what I could tell, and there's a bunch of different sort of versions of this online, but from what I saw is they actually did have an agreement early on that he would sell these for her. He said, hey, these are great. Can I take some of these to my gift shops and sell them for you? And I think I could sell a lot more than you could.

And for a little while, they did have an agreement, but as it turns out, he ended up marking them up and charging too much money, and she wasn't happy about that. She was like, no, these shouldn't cost $40. It's, you know, it's 1978, for God's sake, and that's a doll. And he's like, yeah, but they're... What do you think this is, Unicoy State Park? They're handmade, and, you know, you should put a value on your talents.

And they had a disagreement about that, and she said, you know what, forget it. I don't want you to sell these anymore. He follows up with a letter saying, well, you know what, if you don't let me sell your doll, I'm, he basically said, I'm just going to start making my own, and that's exactly what he did. Supposedly, he wrote her a letter, and I don't remember who mentions it in the Vice documentary, but basically they said that in the letter, he said, if I can't sell your dolls, I will sell something just like them. And she apparently was like, whatever, and just went her own way.

She was satisfied to have her dolls back and probably thought she was done with the matter. And then supposedly one of her friends said, hey, I saw your little doll babies for sale at the Atlanta airport. Way to go. She said, I'm not selling these at the Atlanta airport, and apparently that's when she knew she had a big problem on her hands and found out that Xavier Roberts had come up with the little people dolls that were just the spitting image of her little doll babies. Yeah, so she filed a lawsuit that went on for years. I think by the time they were selling out in stores in 1983, she was about seven years into this lawsuit. And for her, She asked for, I think, a million dollars, but she said it wasn't about the money.

She was like, I don't want to see this as a commodity, and I don't want to be ripped off, and I don't want this guy to come along and basically not have the same respect for these little dolls that I had. And if you look at the court case, you think, you know, open and shut. She's got this picture from 75. They had a prior relationship. She's got this letter where he basically says he's going to rip her off. but she didn't copyright these things. And you would have had to copyright because they were all handmade

and they were all, I guess, unique into themselves. You would have had to copyright and sign or stamp each doll. And she didn't want to do that. And he had no problem doing it. Our little Chuck has an Xavier Roberts hand signature on his butt if he pulled down his little corduroy shorts. Yeah, it's one of the famous things about cabbage patch kids aside from their distinctive faces is that each one of them has Xavier Roberts' signature.

stamped onto its butt. And I guess Martha Nelson Thomas was like, there's no place to put a signature on a child. And these are like children to me. That's why I adopt them out rather than sell them. So I'm not going to sign this. I'm not going to copyright them. And that basically, you would think it would have sunk her case.

And after almost eight years, Xavier Roberts finally said, okay, fine, let's settle this. I suspect it had to do with, he sold out at some point in the 80s. He sold his portion, and I would guess he probably needed that court case to go away to finalize that sale. And for whatever the reason, in 1985, he was suddenly ready to settle, and they settled for an undisclosed sum that apparently Martha Nelson Thomas was satisfied with. Yeah, and he also said, And hey, lady, you say you can't copyright these things, you can sign it right next to their little butthole.

you're right he sounded cockney there for a second cockney like i started to get nervous like oh my god why does he sound cockney and then you pulled it out with the real appalachian mountain folk twist at the end there yeah so he uh he settled as shit was enough money to put her kids through college she said uh it's still sort of a sad story to me that you know that this you know man came along and ripped off this lady's design and then later on complained that he was getting ripped off he complained about knock-offs and said, you know, my point is not take my product to my creation and tarnish it. Yeah, which was pretty audacious because he said this like, you know, I believe it right when he was settling with this other case in which part of the settlement was he had to acknowledge

that he had taken her idea. And for him to be complaining about this on TV, it was a little audacious, especially if you know that, you know, the full story. But Even though it was an open secret or even a widely known tale in the toy industry and even some parts of the press, even still today everybody thinks of Xavier Roberts as the creator of Cabbage Patch Kids, and technically he was because he came up with Cabbage Patch Kids and Martha Nelson Thomas came up with Little Doll Babies. Yeah, and he sold it to – well, he didn't come up with Cabbage Patch Kids. He sold it to Pac-Man, and Pac-Man named him Cabbage Patch Kids. Yeah, I guess so. I hadn't thought about that. So one of the groups he was complaining about was Tops Trading Cards.

Topps trading cards around the still in the height of the Cabbage Patch Kid Craze in 1985 came out with one of the greatest parodies anyone's ever come out with the beloved Garbage Pale Kid Series. Yeah, I didn't, I wasn't into these. I was a little too old. I certainly, I was 14. I certainly remember them. the zeitgeist, and I knew it was a very big deal. But this was probably more for kids, probably around your age. I imagine you were probably into these, right?

I loved garbage pill kids. I believe Yumi had a pretty impressive garbage pill kid collection herself, too. Oh, really? Yeah. And she actually, yeah, she actually bought me a couple of garbage pill kids I have somewhere. I think one is squash, Josh. I can't remember the other one. But they are, for people who don't know what a garbage pail kid is, go look up G-P-K-K-com, and I think it's like

G-E-P-E-E-K-A-Y.com. I'm not sure. But they have every single series scanned, so you can see all 15 series that came out between 1985 and 1988. And they're just awesome. But they're basically like, if garbage, if Cabbage Patch kids were meant to get us used to, what mutant offspring of nuclear war survivors would look like. Garbage Pail kids were the mutated version of that.

Yeah, that's a good way to say it. They were deformed and they were plagued and diseased. And they had names like Adam Bomb and Bonie, Tony, and I guess Squash Josh and Rumi Yumi. I don't know. No, they didn't have names for everyone. But it was a big deal. They sold a ton of them.

And Xavier Roberts was not happy with this. And I think ended up in the lawsuit being successful in getting them just to change enough to where it didn't look like it was officially tied to the Cabbage Patch Kids. Yeah, like they had the cat, you know, how it says like on the box for the Cabbage Patch Kid, it's like in a banner, kind of like semicircle banner.

They had that originally as garbage pill kids. They had to turn that into a straight bar. They made them look less like lifelike and more like plastic dolls in the later series. There were a few changes, but, I mean, it was still pretty clear what the whole thing was a riff off of. But one thing I didn't realize is that one of the art directors who helped conceptualize garbage pill kids from the outset was Art Spiegelman who created Mouse. Did you know that? I mean, I've heard of Art Spiegelman. but I really don't know anything about him, so I didn't know that.

But I know the name. I've not read Mouse, but I know it's like just a legendary graphic novel about fascism. But that guy helped create Garbage Pale Kids just a couple of years before he created Mouse. Amazing. And there was a bad TV show that eventually only aired in Europe. There was a bad movie that is pretty legendarily bad. But it was a big deal, though. sold a ton of them. They didn't quite have the spinoff power of the CPKs, but the GPKs did okay for

themselves. Yeah, I mean, like, that really goes to show you just how big cabbage patch kids were, that it could sustain a cottage industry for a parody even. That's how big cabbage patch kids were in the movies. So hats off to cabbage patch kids. I can't wait to talk about them again next year and another episode. It'll be great. We'll figure it out. We'll spend 2021 figuring out how to do that, Chuck. And in the meantime, everybody, since we're thinking about how to talk about Cabbage Patch Kids some more,

it's time for listener mail. That's right. Before we do listener mail real quick, I just want to give a shout out to the Budge family. Not really going to get into what's going on with them, but just want them to know that we're thinking about them and sending them lots of love and support over the Internet airwaves.

But this email is called Oh, I know I'm going to call it The Beave This is about beavers again And it starts out as this is seriously not a please read me on the air email And that's a pretty good way to get on the air, by the way Thanks for the amazing show Been a listener since they were Paltry 20 Minutes, love everyone

Keep me company while walking, driving, cleaning, cooking And providing an endless source of interesting topics for my English students in Spain. I kind of think Chuck is my podcast soulmate as we grew up in much the same circumstances around the same age. We have very similar cultural outlook on different things. I do have a small difference of opinion, though.

Your Bigfoot podcast was great. And I was happy to hear you say the possibility exists. Did we say that? Yeah, I think we were... I don't know if it was we so much as you. Yeah, maybe so. But a while back, you were...

I'm just teasing. I think it was we. You were adamant that Nessie does not exist. Buddy, show Nessie some love. Wouldn't it be amazing if she did exist? So she has her fingers crossed on that. But the real reason she wrote in, she listened to the Beaver episode and came across Beave the Beaver.

So just get online and Google Beave. It was this beaver that was found, I think abandoned by its parents and then adopted as a young baby and then raised for a while to eventually be put maybe a wildlife center or something. But the long and short of it is, Beave makes dams in their house.

So there are all these videos of Beave dragging stuff into this one specific doorway that Beve is trying to dam up and like dragging a shoe rack, pillows, tissue boxes, like anything Beve can get a hold of in his little paws and teeth, he'll drag over to this doorway and try and dam up. And it's really one of the cutest, funniest things I've ever seen.

Yeah, it is very cute because he looks like, should this go here? Maybe a little bit to the left. Okay, that's all right right there. Or like, when he brought the pillow over, he's like, oh, this is very useful. I can just squish this into place. It was very cute to watch him do that. It is amazing. And that email, by the way, is from Carrie Keely.

Thanks, Carrie. That was a great email. And yes, way to get it on the air by saying it's not meant to be on the air. We fall for stuff like that all the time. And if you want to try to make us fall for something, have at us. You can send us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app.

Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late. He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause? Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle the dangerous past,

one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. As is our annual custom, we are raising money for our favorite charity, the Cooperative for Education, which helps break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala by making sure that kids who otherwise wouldn't have an education get to school. That's right. And here is this year's call to action. You can join Co-Ed for $20 a month to collectively sponsor students in the Rise Youth Development Program.

and if you set up that gift by December 19th, you can have a chance to win a virtual Zoom hangout with Josh and I. We do it every year, and it's a lot of fun. That's right. You can go to cooperative for education.org slash sysk, set up your $20 a month sponsorship. You can also go make a one-time donation if you like, and we may see you for a virtual hangout this January. Thank you for giving.

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