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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
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And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go.
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To help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means playing in a football game.
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Boom.
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42. You're going down, Doug.
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Oh yeah. Your price on car insurance when you.
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Customize and save is going down. Hey.
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Limu, what are you doing on their team?
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Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com liberty liberty, liberty, liberty.
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This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing if anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues. And it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don't sleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly A. Medicine company. Coca Cola for the big for the small, the short and the tall. Peacemakers.
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Risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts.
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The thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you. Vcr's, leather coats, cigarettes in the 1980s. If it somehow finds its way off a truck, the five families of the New York Mafia will find a way to make money on it.
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E
Well, here's what happens. There's hijackers. We were known as hijackers. Like, we wouldn't go steal the trunks, but lower level criminals would go probably hijack a truck.
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That's Larry Matzah, a former associate of the Colombo crime family. We're not going to get into all the colorful details of Larry's exploits. It's probably enough to just tell you that his boss was nicknamed the Grim Reaper.
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It could be anything from liquor to, you know, TVs. And we had, you know, the back of the club look like the Crazy Eddie warehouse at times with just, you know, stereos and things like that.
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The club Larry is referring to is his boss's social hangout, where wise guys convene to talk shop. But during the 1983 holiday season, their inventory is awash in another kind of contraband.
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Well, yeah, we knew they're the cab Track dolls.
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The walls of the Grim Reaper's office is stocked floor to ceiling. With Cabbage Patch Kids, the smiling stuffed dolls with an adoption marketing gimmick that have become the most coveted gift of the year, maybe even the century.
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E
We knew they were popular and we didn't go steal them, like I said. But we had somebody bring us a large truckload, and I'm talking about a tractor trailer truckload of these Cabbage Patch dolls. And we probably sold them in less than a week, thousands of them, you know, because people were just going crazy for them.
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The demand for these odd looking little dolls is such that violence is breaking out. Strangely enough, it isn't organized crime that's responsible. It's parents kicking, punching and clawing their way through store aisles, reduced to their most primitive impulses to score one of the elusive kids for their children. So what exactly was in the air? Or the culture that turned toy stores into fight clubs and the mafia into a doll dealership? And what happens when the owners of the dolls grow up? Welcome to Very Special Episodes, an I Heart original podcast. I'm your host, Dana Schwartz, and this is the Cabbage Patch Crisis.
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Welcome back to Very Special Episodes. I'm Jason English. I am usually joined at the top by Dana Schwartz and Zarin Burnett. Dana is going to be here in just a second. I just wanted to start by acknowledging that we lost a friend of the show this week with the tragic murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner. If you remember, last summer, Rob was our guest on an episode about the summer that John F. Kennedy spent as a journalist. Kind of a forgotten period in his history that Rob helped color in. I got to work with both Rob and Michelle on their podcast about the JFK assassination. Who killed jfk? And I just wanted to share how wonderful they were to all, all of us. Rob would ask about our kids, he'd want to know where we grew up. He was as good on a zoom with three people as he was on any talk show. I left every interaction just thinking like, wow, he was way cooler and nicer than he really needs to be. Just hopping on to talk JFK with us on this show, which he absolutely did not need to do. He offered to do it while still on vacation overseas. I remember we were working on trying to find a time that would work for everybody. He had been developing another podcast with us. We were supposed to have the kickoff meeting literally today, Wednesday, December 17th. It's kind of surreal. It's still on my calendar. And look, there were a million people who were a lot closer to him than me. I was a work acquaintance at best, but I just today feel compelled to Say how much I'm going to miss getting to work with him and how great he was to all of us. And we're going to miss him.
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Kids are materialists. Try as we might to teach them the true meaning of the holiday season, goodwill toward others, charitable endeavors, or at least shoveling the driveway. They're often happiest when they unwrap the big gift. A Nintendo, a bike, a pair of headphones. In 1983's A Christmas Story, little Ralphie was desperate to get a Red Rider BB gun, lest his entire world collapse. The concept of a hot toy everyone wants isn't a new phenomenon in the 19. In the 1930s, people went crazy for Shirley Temple dolls. The child actress with a halo of blonde curls was one of the most popular movie stars of the era. The toy company Ideal sold an astounding 1.5 million of them in 1935, right in the middle of the Great Depression. A couple of decades later, Barbie arrived on the scene with her endless accessories. If you're a child of the 1980s, you had an abundance of Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears or Baby Alive. Each year, Kenner sold a million of those dolls, which ate and filled their own diapers, just like a real infant. But the doll success story of the century doesn't start with a massive toy company, a movie star, or any special features. It starts with an artist named Xavier Ro and his line of one of a kind dolls that some people found, well, let's just say unconventionally attractive.
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Yeah, she shocked me with a little person named Lavinia Murrell that was in a box that we were wrapping for my daughter's Christmas present.
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That's Roger Schlafer in the 1980s. Roger is a licensor. His business is tracking down products that that had potential in retail, sort of like a talent scout for inanimate objects. It's Roger's wife who introduces him to Xavier's creation, which she had bought as a gift. It's an auspicious beginning, and I opened.
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It up and I was shocked to see this really ugly doll staring up at me.
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Xavier's handcrafted dolls, which he called little people, are rendered in what's known as soft sculpture. That's where an artist tugs and stitches fabric to create physical features like smiles, dimples, toes and fingers. They have yarn for hair and Xavier's distinctive signature stitched into their rumps. Roberts is a kind of Etsy seller before Etsy handcrafting dolls for a growing fan base devoted enough to make pilgrimages to Babyland General In Cleveland, Georgia, a delightful kitschy dahl hospital where babies are said to be born from an actual cabbage patch, complete with nurses, delivery rooms, and an earnest adoption ceremony that feels half performance art, half country fare. It's worth noting that the idea of adoptable soft sculpture dolls wasn't exactly original to Xavier. A Kentucky artist named Martha Nelson Thomas had had sold similar creations she named doll babies at a gift shop operated by Xavier Roberts years prior. Martha later sued him, alleging he had adopted her idea without permission. The two settled out of court, with Roberts admitting he was inspired by Thomas work. That debate over their origins aside, the Xavier Roberts is doing very well with these distinctive dolls, selling them one at a time. But Roger sees the bigger picture. Rather than craft them by hand, he envisions a process by which the little people can be mass manufactured while still retaining their unique handcrafted appeal.
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So every doll would be different. It would be the first mass marketed one of a kind doll. Every head would have different eye color. Some would have freckles, some wouldn't, some would have dimples, some wouldn't. The hair color would vary. And of course there are countless hair color and eye color possibilities. And hairstyle would be different and they'd be dressed differently. And that was like one of the biggest things in the history of the toy business. The first one of a kind doll. And it was done at the most affordable price imaginable.
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Unlike Robert's dolls, which could sell for hundreds, Roger's version will retail for just 28 bucks. But he has one immediate problem. The name Little People is already taken.
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And then they discovered that Fisher Price owned the name. So basically they had nothing to license. Their lawyer at the time, a fellow named Bill Needle, said, I don't see what you're going to license. And I told him, by the time I'm done, you'll see.
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Instead, Roger comes up with the name Cabbage Patch Kids, after the folk tale of babies emerging from a cabbage patch rather than being dropped off by a stork. Armed with a deal with Xavier Roberts, Roger finds a willing partner in Coleco. It's not a name you hear much about these days, but back in the 1980s, Coleco was doing well, thanks to its video game system, ColecoVision and other electronic toys. They weren't particularly known for dolls, but they shared Roger's vision for what the Cabbage Patch Kids could be. They agree to manufacture and distribute the 16 inch tall dolls, complete with adoption papers. In a clever bit of marketing, they're packaged in a see through box with their arms reaching out as though they're pleading for a hug, begging to be freed from their cardboard and plastic prison. Coleco's Cabbage Patch Kids debut at the 1983 Toy Fair. The annual parade of plastic is where manufacturers tried to wow retail chains like Toys R Us or Kmart into placing giant orders. The kids arrived with a tailwind. Word has already spread from a Canadian toy show that these dolls were the must see item.
- [13:42]
G
What the brilliant marketer for Coleco did. They had a 200,000 square foot facility in Quebec and they rebuilt an adoption center in the center of the facility. And they had OAA fly up three or four of their cutest nurses because they were dressed like nurses. And the nurses were the ones who took the buyers through.
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OAA is Xavier's company, Original Appalachian Artworks.
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So before the International Toy Fair even opened, every major toy buyer in the world had heard that the most exciting thing in the Canadian Toy Fair, bar none, was Cabbage Patch Kids. So almost on opening day in February 1983, every doll was on consignment and Coleco was demanding cash up front for whomever wanted them.
- [14:41]
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But Coleco isn't going to rely solely on word of mouth. As early as June, the company begins an extensive advertising campaign on television and in print.
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G
Well, it started the middle of June. We introduced in New York, and again there were some great marketers at Coleco in the New York market. The week of the introduction, they ran a full page ad, adopt a Cabbage Patch Kid dollar in the New York Times. And they ran spot TV with some really great commercials in the Tri State area. So kids were pumped up. They were asking their mother, even though it was off season, to get them a Cabbage Patch Kid. And part of the deal for the introduction was Macy's had agreed to give a 34th street positioning of the Cabbage Patch Kids on 34th street, which had tens of thousands of people walking by every day.
- [15:50]
A
Buzz is building around the kids, but stores actually do the opposite of what you'd expect. Instead of jacking the price up, they begin marking them down. They realize if people are coming for the Cabbage Patch Kids, they'll spend money elsewhere in the store too.
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And instead of the dolls being $28, and this is a big part of it, every mass merchant in the country was selling them for what they were paying, which could have been 18 or $20. So in a year with a terrible economy, parents, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, whatever could be a hero for 20 bucks if they could get a hand on one. And the riot, somehow the notion of that spread around the Country.
- [16:42]
A
Come the fall of 1983, all any kid wants, boy or girl, is a Cabbage Patch doll. And all any parent wants is to make their kid happy. That proves to be a very combustible combination.
- [16:58]
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And the crowds were just literally fighting for dolls.
- [17:02]
A
At a Zayre store in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, a panicked manager climbs onto a counter wielding a baseball bat, hoping to hold off a Mob of roughly 1,000 people. He has good reason to be afraid. One woman is swallowed up by the crush of bodies and is trampled. She's wheeled out of the store with a broken leg. Four other shoppers also wind up in the hospital. In West Virginia, 5,000 people storm a hills department store like soldiers on the beaches of Normandy. Tables are toppled as shoppers practically hurl themselves through the air, matrix style, only to discover there are only 120 dolls go around. Elsewhere, people line up for hours in the bitter cold, sprint into stores at opening and find the shelves empty. That's when fists start flying. Grown adults rip dolls out of shopping carts and out of children's arms. When police are called and restore order, some desperate customers start fighting them too. Naturally, all this parent on parent violence attracts the media. News crews park side of toy stores. Newspapers run breathless coverage of Cabbage Patch riots. It becomes a feedback loop. The doll's in demand. That demand leads to fights. The fights goose media coverage, which ratchets up demand, which leads to more violence. Coleco is both delighted and blindsided. They charter jets to fly in 200,000 cabbage patch dolls from Hong Kong each week to keep up. They even pull their TV ads after parents and consumer affairs advocates complain that they're promoting a product that very few can actually buy. In a classic conspiracy theory, some even allege Coleco is holding back inventory on purpose. Stores begin taking extreme measures to cope with the demand. One in Lawrence, Kansas, keeps its limited stock locked in a bank vault and holds a lottery to draw winners. Others admit entrance to only 10 customers at a time, reducing the chances of bloodied noses. At least one store hires a full time employee just to answer the phone and say, we have no Cabbage Patch Kids in stock. A Woolworths in Jackson County, Florida, games it up. They announce over the loudspeaker that there is one doll hidden somewhere in the store, unleashing a frantic treasure hunt. Boscov's has the most brazen idea of selling vouchers that entitle the bearer to a doll whenever stock gets replenished, which they hope will be the following April. Just what every kid wants for Christmas. A coupon. The mania gets so out of hand that Time and Newsweek scrutinize it. Johnny Carson makes jokes on the Tonight Show. Not even the White House can navigate what has become the most frenzied and violent holiday toy season in history. First lady Nancy Reagan makes it known she wants two dolls to give to a pair of Korean children awaiting surgery in the U.S. coleco initially tells her they don't have any to give. They relent only when the media picks up the story. Children do want other toys, like the newly released Mr. T doll, but nothing else triggers the same full blown elbows out chaos as the kids in a bleak punchline. The Wall Street Journal reports a poll with where people say they're more anxious about getting a doll than about nuclear annihilation. By the fall of 1983, Cabbage Patch Kids are no longer just toys. They're a kind of currency, something parents, retailers, and, as we heard, even the mob can use to prove they're connected, powerful, or just lucky. Here's Larry Matzah again.
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I tell my five guys you could take the dolls for, you know, $25 and they'll go sell them for 50. So, you know, we were known for that, you know, for these different things. People would come and just the men would go out and have their people word of mouth. Before you know it, I mean, cops were coming in buying Cabbage Patch Dolls for their family.
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Unfortunately, or fortunately, not everyone could turn to the Mafia for their doll fix. But they weren't the only opportunists during the Cabbage crisis, which is how, across town, several lawyers and a judge find themselves in a courtroom in a heated discussion over doll butts.
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Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. The holiday season can be exhausting with all the parties and the end of year celebrations. But don't forget to take care of yourself by stocking up on your favorite nutritional products. Now through December 30th. Shop in store and online and save on items like Cliff Snack Bars, Luna Bars, Boost Nutritional Energy Drinks, Premier Protein Shakes, Z Bar Variety Packs, Open Nature Powder and Body Fortress Protein powder offers end December 30th. Restrictions apply. Offers may vary. Visit albertsons or safeway.com for more details.
- [22:55]
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10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
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A
You are the fittest of the fit.
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Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract worth $250,000.
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This is where mindset comes in.
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Someone will be eliminated.
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Pressure is coming down.
- [23:20]
C
Trainer Games on Prime Video January 8th.
- [23:22]
A
Watch the trailer on trainer games.com did you know?
- [23:25]
B
Microsoft has officially ended Support for Windows 10? Upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop voted PCMag's Reader's Choice Top Laptop Brand for 2025. Thin and ultra lightweight, the LG Gram keeps you productive anywhere, and Windows 11 gives you access to free security updates and ongoing feature upgrades. Visit lgusa.com iheart for great seasonal savings on LG Gram laptops with Windows 11. PCMag reader's choice used with permission. All rights reserved.
- [23:57]
A
In November 1983, customs officials in San Francisco, California, are facing a serious problem. In front of them are 12,000 soft sculpture dolls with cute faces and tiny vinyl sneakers. But these aren't Cabbage Patch Kids. They're Flower Kids, a near identical doll being shipped from Hong Kong to cash in on the insatiable demand Coleco created. Customs agents don't know quite what to do. Are the Flower Kids simply shameless knockoffs or counterfeit babies that need to be seized like illicit contraband? At the height of cabbage mania, this wasn't an unusual occurrence. For a period of time in 1983, Coleco and Xavier Roberts were both busy trying to swat off the endless copycat products popping up to meet the demand. Everyone wanted a doll. Well, almost everyone.
- [25:02]
E
I never tried to buy a doll. I didn't have a kid or sibling in that universe.
- [25:09]
A
That's Paul Friedland. At the time, Paul was a junior lawyer at a New York firm with a satellite office in Hong Kong. They'd been enlisted by the Blue Box Toy Factory, the US Distribution arm of the Flower Kids, to fight a lawsuit brought by Xavier Roberts. The suit alleged the flower kids were cute little copyright infringers. The problem? There wasn't much time to prepare.
- [25:37]
E
It was a phone call from Hong Kong. Morning in Hong Kong, and it was evening in New York and that someone had to go down to court the next morning to defend flower kids. And I, as a junior associate, was one of the only people in the office.
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A
If the flower kids are permitted to be sold, it's only fair they be made available in time for the holiday shopping season. There are only a few more weeks until Christmas. The opposing parties and the judge would have to arrive at a conclusion quickly.
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E
So I defended our fir when I was the advocate defended the flower kids from the claim that it was an infringement and a knockoff. And well, it was a knockoff, but that wasn't reported. The question whether it was confusing people.
- [26:25]
A
Things get off to a shaky start. The district court judge, Abraham Sofair takes a look at the six Cabbage Patch dolls and the one flower kids doll, and then loudly asks which is which. But Paul and his team argue the flower kids are different enough. There's no adoption gimmick with these dolls physically. The cabbage dolls have removable shoes. The flower kids don't. The cabbages have recessed chins and dimpled knees, diapers and a belly button. The flower kids have none of those. In the most striking exchange of the case, Paul declares his clients dolls are also missing one key feature.
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E
They don't have a cute touch.
- [27:18]
A
There's really no other way to say this. The flower kids are missing a butt crack, a distinctive signature feature of Coleco's Cabbage Patch Kids. And Paul argues, the flower kids were, on the whole, not as homely as the legit Cabbage Patch Kids might not remember that one ever go. In response, Xavier's team introduces a hastily collected bit of evidence they pulled shoppers at a mall, ushering them into a spare room and asking them if they could identify the doll sitting in front of them. 64% answered that it was likely a cabbage patch dollar, but it was actually a flower kid, reinforcing the idea of consumer confusion. Rather than risk the danger of harboring unguarded Cabbage Patch and flower Kids, Judge Sofer elects to keep the valuable dolls locked in his chambers when court adjourns for the day. Maybe he wanted time alone with them, to study their unblinking eyes for any hint of guilt or innocence. In the end, the judge sides with blue box. The flower kids, he reasons, could not reliably be confused for the Cabbage Patch Kids, Though they did look similar. So did a lot of dolls. That poll in the mall, it didn't prove much because the doll lacked the distinctive Cabbage Patch packaging. Most importantly, Judge Sofer argues, the sheer demand for for the Cabbage Patch Kids actually reduces the chance for confusion. If a parent brought home a cabbage bootleg, he reasoned, the child would recognize the fake instantly and be devastated. It was the overriding fear of disappointing their kids that convinced the judge that the flower kids posed no existential or commercial threat to Coleco. He denies the request for an injunction. Soon, hundreds of thousands of flower kids are filling store shelves. A desperate enough parent can pick up a flower kid or any number of other copycat products, like lettuce leaf babies, which are just nylon stockings stuffed with some polyester. You could look to the classifieds where some people sold the kids at a steep markup. Or you could do what Edward Pennington did and go to some pretty extreme measures. Edward Pennington is a mail carrier living in Shawnee, Kansas. During that fraught holiday season, like a lot of Dads, his daughter, 5 year old Lena, wants a Cabbage Patch Kid more than anything else in the world. Give Lena a choice between world peace and a doll with a copyright protected cute tush and Lena would probably pick the doll every time.
- [30:26]
D
Yep, I came home and told my parents that I wanted a Cabbage Patch doll.
- [30:31]
A
That's Lena. She understands the Cabbage Patch frenzy now, but at the time, she didn't really grasp how wild things had gotten in the aisles of American department.
- [30:44]
D
At the time, no, I had no idea. The fact that people were going absolutely insane over these dolls and parents were going crazy trying to get these dolls for their kids at the time was not even in my mind.
- [30:58]
A
All she knew was that the dolls were a kind of magic. Babies with names, documentation, personalities. Surely her parents would come through. But in Kansas, like everywhere else, the dolls were impossible to find. Then Lena's mother, Maggie, hears an intriguing report on the local news.
- [31:20]
D
She heard on the news that the only place that they would be found, they weren't here in the States, but they could find the dolls in London.
- [31:30]
A
That wouldn't help most parents, but the Penningtons have an ace up their sleeve. Maggie is a flight attendant. That means perks like being able to score cheap airline tickets. So in early December, Edward takes a vacation from the post office and flies thousands of miles to London. He's greeted at Heathrow by reporters from the London Daily Star. The paper has promised to secure him five of the dolls in exchange for an exclusive interview. It all feels a little like a spy handoff. He's escorted to a vehicle in the airport parking lot where the reporters have stashed their Cabbage Patch cash. Back home, Lena cannot believe what she was seeing.
- [32:20]
D
He came back with five Cabbage Patch dolls.
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A
She gets to choose two.
- [32:25]
D
Oh, I mean, completely ecstatic and shocked. You're gonna bring me to tears. But I knew my family would come through. Like, it was an amazing feeling that like, literally is bringing me to tears right now.
- [32:45]
A
Edward gives one doll to the local newspaper that helped connect him to the journalists in London. While he could have easily sold the remaining two at a significant markup, he instead donates one to the Children's Mercy Hospital and the other to the local TV station where Maggie first heard the news. Edward's trip becomes another Cabbage Patch story, though one that appeals to our better angels. He touches down from London and is whisked off for an interview on Nightline with Ted Koppel.
- [33:21]
D
When he was flying back to Kansas City. He actually got pretty tipsy off of Remy Martin. And when we found out we were going to be on Nightline with Ted couple, they had to quickly sober my dad up for the interview. So my dad was absolutely amazing. He had an amazing personality. He was just a cool cat, you know.
- [33:46]
A
But not everyone is captivated by the story. A Toronto Star columnist argued that Edward Pennington's mission set up an impossible standard. Most parents couldn't hop continents on short notice. They had to hope they'd get lucky and find a Cabbage Patch Kid in stock, all while ducking an uppercut from a rival shopper. And the cabbage patch craze was sparking more than just pressure. The adoption gimmick, birth certificates, paperwork, the annual birthday card was raising hackles among adoption advocates. They argued that the concept trivialized real adoptions. Others worried that presenting these dolls as ugly but adoptable sent a damaging message to actual adopted kids, that they were the product of a low tier vegetable. It's hard to say how much the adoption gimmick actually influenced kids. But Roger Schlafer insists the craze wasn't driven by that marketing hook alone.
- [34:55]
G
When they were little people and people would go to Babyland General or one of the adoption centers, they would go through the adoption and there would be that ritual. But that was so secondary. I mean that was, that was neat. And the press picked up on the gimmick. This was the first non mechanical, non electronic gimmick. It was a piece of paper. But if you think of the riots, you have to say, well, nobody was adopting them then. And parents they were. When the kids opened the present, whether it was a birthday or for Christmas, they were thrilled. They weren't, you know, the adoption really didn't mean anything. But they got one. It had its own name.
- [35:39]
A
By the end of 1983, Coleco had sold between 2.5 and 3 million cabbage patch Kids, breaking the record setting sales of the poop producing Baby Alive. It had become the most successful doll launch in Toy history. By 1984, the kids were in 20 million homes with an array of tie.
- [36:05]
G
In me bedding and children's apparel, doing whole lines of clothes, not just T shirts but lunch boxes and doll accessories. They were all set up so by the end of 1983 they were already in production. And in 1984 when we hit an all time record of $2 billion in retail sales, two thirds of that was non dolls.
- [36:35]
A
There was even a low sugar Cabbage Patch Kids cereal, though it was not a big hit. By the mid-1980s, cabbage mania was waning, and not because of the cereal. Coleco, which had once struggled to make enough dolls, began making too many. The company went from boom to bust, entering bankruptcy proceedings after betting too heavily on their personal computing products. Not even getting the toy license for Rambo could save them. And that, seemingly, was that. The kids faded into a kind of toy obscurity, destined for future nostalgia. Think pieces online and ebay auctions. Shelves were cleared to make way for the next hot toy. Consumers bought Game Boys and Tickle Me Elmos, Bratz dolls and Furbies. But unlike most of these types of fads, the kids were about to have a second act. In a weird twist, these dolls were going to get more care and attention than they ever had before.
- [37:49]
G
Foreign.
- [37:54]
H
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Flu season is here and the in store pharmacy has you covered with a free flu shot with most insurance plans. And as a thank you, get up to 20 off your grocery purchase. Plus it's cough and cold season. Stock up on all the season's essentials and get ready for relief with discounts on items like Hall's Menthol Cough Drops, Tylenol Cold and Flu, and Mucinex Fast Max products. Offer ends December 30th. Restrictions apply and offers may vary by location. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
- [38:25]
D
Ten athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
- [38:35]
A
You are the fittest of the fit.
- [38:37]
D
Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
- [38:44]
I
This is where mindset comes in.
- [38:45]
D
Someone will will be eliminated.
- [38:48]
A
Pressure is coming down.
- [38:50]
C
Trainer Games on Prime Video January 8th.
- [38:52]
A
Watch the trailer on trainergames.com did you.
- [38:55]
B
Know Microsoft has officially ended Support for Windows 10? Upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop voted PC Mag's Reader's Choice top laptop brand for 2025. Thin and ultra lightweight, the LG Gram keeps you productive anywhere, and Windows 11 gives you access to free security updates and ongoing feature upgrades. Visit lgusa.com iheart for great seasonal savings on LG Gram laptops with Windows 11. PCMag reader's choice used with permission. All rights reserved.
- [39:29]
A
Abra Zion remembers her first Cabbage Patch kid. Well, her first Cabbage Patch knockoff kid.
- [39:36]
I
And I actually had a fake one at first that my parents bought me at like a local festival and I loved her, but she was fake and my friends would be like, oh, she's fake.
- [39:49]
A
Having a Phony Cabbage Patch Kid was socially unacceptable. Fortunately for Christmas 1984, Abrah got her first real kid. Like millions of other 80s children, cabbage patch Kids weren't just toys. They were tiny, manageable relationships. They engendered a feeling of nurturing and satisfied, a need to be needed.
- [40:15]
I
I just felt like these, to me somehow were like real babies that I needed to take care of, that I wanted to take care of. They were just adorable and they were just so cute.
- [40:25]
A
Of course, Abrah got older and her Cabbage Patch Kids were relegated to the metaphorical box of things from childhood. But a few years ago, in her 40s, Abrah came to a realization. The kids still meant something, just a different something.
- [40:44]
I
Just bringing back some of my innocence and tying in not just Cabbage Patch Kids, but also just the whole, you know, 80s and Gen X kind of thing somehow brings me comfort. I feel like things were more innocent back then.
- [41:01]
A
It was around this time that Abra discovered a Cabbage Patch Kids group on Facebook. This isn't the official group, but a looser, more convivial gathering of mostly adults who have maintained or rediscovered a strong emotional bond with their kid. Virtually strolling through the group is a fascinating experience. While nostalgia is part of it, there's something else going on. A lot of the discussion revolves around the restoration of kids whom they affectionately call cabbies. Time can be unkind to mass produced toys, and the plastic heads of the dolls can develop what devotees refer to as pox. Abra's doll had them, too. Little black spots embedded in their once flawless skin.
- [41:58]
I
Hers was mostly in her scalp, which I was able to cover with the hair. From what I understand, it's a deterioration in the plastic and from improper storage or being, you know, in, like, locked away in basements or attics.
- [42:14]
A
There are a number of home remedies to ward off the pox.
- [42:18]
I
I did follow some treatments where you literally use zit creams, some, you know, Oxy 9, Oxy 10, whatever you know, the oxy zip cream's called, and you apply it and you wrap their, their heads in cellophane and you just let them sit out in the sun and it lightens it a little.
- [42:40]
A
Like other adoptive cabbie parents, Abra has to deal with dirty and disheveled dolls encrusted with filth from decades of neglect.
- [42:50]
I
The other thing is their bodies sometimes are really stained. I soak them in. I have a little basin and fill it with hot water and some oxiclean along with a little bit of dawn soap, and I let them soak some.
- [43:07]
A
Like to restore cabbies to their original condition and clothing when possible. Others, like Abrah, are into using the kids as a blank canvas to fill in with touchstones of their youth.
- [43:20]
I
I completely rerooted her and cleaned her up, and I made her into Dorothy Gale from the wizard of Oz, which is a favorite movie of mine growing up. You know, in the 80s, it would come on TV once a year and, you know, I'd stamp and watch it. When I'm restoring them, I'm making them into something that reminds me of my childhood.
- [43:43]
A
If you take a closer look at the Facebook group, you'll find something else happening, something a little deeper. Not long ago, Abra posted a. Was anyone else using their Cabbage Patch Kid as a way to deal with unprocessed trauma?
- [44:00]
I
I started noticing that pattern on the group that a lot of people were all kind of, like, around the same age. We're all, you know, Gen X. You know, we all seem to be, the majority of us from age 45 to 55. I was a little scared to ask at first, but I said, hey, you know, why not? And I went ahead and I just said, hey, you know, you don't have to tell me what it is. And some people started revealing what their trauma was. I just was curious, are a lot of you guys, you know, did you have childhood trauma? Did you have something? And, you know, this is why you got back into collecting. And that opened up that discussion, which was really interesting. And I resonated with.
- [44:41]
A
The responses came quickly. Yes. People said caring for the kids helped them navigate certain emotional issues, from childhood abuse to illness to being unable to bear children of their own. For Abrah, her cabbies are a way of rain, reconnecting with something that provided solace as a child when her world was in upheaval.
- [45:05]
I
As a child, I didn't know how divorce worked. And I remember just being at school, like, just stomach ache all day because I was so afraid I was gonna come home and find my parents divorced. And so these Cabbage Patch Kids, they were something I could go to my room and just play with and take care of and dress them up. They were a safe haven for me. You know, I could tune out my parents, you know, arguing and stuff.
- [45:33]
A
Today, she's still caring for the doll, just in a different way.
- [45:37]
I
It was a caregiver role, and I think that did bring me joy and now, too. Yeah, you know, restoring them is an act of love and caring, and it is, you know, I'm restoring them. I'm fixing. I'm bringing them back to life.
- [45:53]
A
Abra is onto something.
- [45:56]
J
So I could project my own uncertainties, my own anxieties and fears onto it, and then I can in turn soothe it, which fits in well with the Jungian notion of projecting out these constructs that might be unconscious. So this is a way I don't have to directly say the world is.
- [46:17]
A
Scary, but that's David Bosch, a consumer behavior expert and associate professor of psychology at New York University. David studies how businesses connect with consumers and how consumers connect with material goods, or in this case, dolls.
- [46:36]
J
What the hell can I do instead? I can turn to my Cabbage Patch Kid, and I can nurture myself through nurturing the Cabbage Kids. Patch Kid.
- [46:47]
A
But nothing exists in a vacuum. Remember Shirley Temple dolls? They succeeded at the height of an economic crisis, when the country was feeling despondent in the 1980s, things were fraught too, just in a different way. That jolly Christmas season also brought the day after a disturbingly realistic made for television movies movie about the consequences of nuclear warfare. It was seen by over 100 million people, generating fresh anxiety over mutually assured destruction. So called latchkey kids were in the news, too. Coming home from school to an empty house while both parents were at work, the kids were a welcome companion, or what some psychologists believed was an adoption fantasy. A Cabbage Patch Kid didn't just want care, they seemed to need it.
- [47:47]
J
Yeah, so sure. The idea of it wanting your attention, of it having an urgent need, of it having its arms stretched out, waiting for a hug, wanting to give a hug, Right? So that brings up this notion that in this case, dolls can serve different functions and can be mentally represented, which includes emotional representation in different ways. This doll is not a product. This doll is not something that you own. This doll is something that you interact with. So in this case, it's not about acquisition. It's not about their uniqueness. It's not that I want the exact one that my favorite celebrity also has. In fact, that's not what I want, because it's not about possession in this case. It's about a relationship.
- [48:39]
A
And sure, marketing was a big part of it. So was the thrill of the chase, the idea you could be a hero for finding an elusive doll coveted by the masses. A Cabbage Patch Kid wasn't some elitist Acquisition. They often sold for cost or around 20 bucks. It wasn't about the money. It was proving that you as a parent had the stamina, the fortitude to obtain it. For a child, it was tangible proof they were loved.
- [49:13]
J
There's uncertainty about what we can provide for our kids for our family? Can we fulfill those roles? We believe we should. Can we be the. The stand up people that we feel we are and should be? And this represents a way to compensate for that.
- [49:29]
A
But for Abrah and the thousands of others still caring for the dolls, the marketing hype has ceased to exist. There are no more long lines in front of a department store, no media hysteria over broken legs and baseball bats, no fear of missing out. It's only when you strip away the kids as a commodity that you get to their essence. The kids were someone to care for, a tiny brother or sister. That part seems obvious. But the reverse was also true in darker times. These dolls provided a feeling of security. They seemed to care right back.
- [50:11]
I
You know, in a way, I think. I think felt that they gave me love. Their love wasn't going to be taken away. And now that, you know, I'm really processing stuff, you know, going through some repressed memories and finally dealing with it. These Cabbage Patch Kids bring me back to that simpler time. They were a safe haven for me.
- [50:34]
A
Today, mass produced Cabbage Patch Kids are licensed and manufactured by Wicked Cool Toys out of Bristol, Pennsylvania. If you want an original kid handmade, you can visit Babyland General in Cleveland, Georgia, which is still in business. Many people we spoke to for this story still have a Cabbage Patch Kid. Abrah, of course, but also Roger and Lena. We'll always have toy fads. You might be scouting for a lobooboo or whatever TikTok declares the thing of the week, the toy that disappears online faster than you can hit refresh. Parents still drive too far, spend too much and hunch over their laptops at 3am trying to beat a bot army to the checkout button. But not every craze leaves its mark the way that Cabbage Patch Kids did. Four decades after their debut, the Cabbage Patch Kids are still being washed, restuffed, rewigged and renamed. Not because anyone's worrying about Christmas morning, but because the feelings they carried never expired. That's what makes them more than a weird 80s footnote. They were a way for latchkey kids, divorced kids, the ones who watched the day after and went to bed scared to practice being caregivers. And in a world that often felt unstable, that still feels unstable. Eventually, Abrah says, some members of the Facebook group will have an in person meetup. If so, they'll be easy to spot.
- [52:19]
I
There's no doubt in my mind that we would have some Cabbage Patch Kids with us. I bought a Cabbage Patch T shirt and I have Cabbage Patch earrings, and I think you just find us all kind of decked out in cabbage patch attire and with our dolls.
- [52:36]
A
If that happens, it won't look like the department store riots of 1983. No elbows to rib, no baseball bats. Just a room full of middle aged kids and the dolls that helped them get through. Who knows, maybe Larry Mazzo will join too.
- [52:53]
E
I don't remember them being homely or anything. I just don't remember that I thought they were cute, you know. I remember the most people loving them and cuddling them and things like that.
- [53:15]
F
Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. Today's episode was produced in partnership with School of Humans. This show is hosted by Dana Schwartz, Zarin Burnett and Jason English. Our senior producer is Josh Fisher. Today's episode was written by Jake Rawson. Our story editor is Virginia Prescott from School of Humans. Producers are Amelia Brock and Edelise Perez. Editing and sound design by Jonathan Washington and Josh Fisher. Additional editing by Mary Dew. Mixing and master by Josh Fisher. Research and fact checking by Jake Rossen, Virginia Prescott and Austin Thompson. Original Music by Elise McCoy show logo by Lucy Quintanilla Social clips by Yarberry Media. Executive producers of Today's episode are Virginia Prescott and Jason English. We'll be back next week with one more holiday episode before Christmas. If you ever want to show, share a comment or a question, hit us up. Very special episodesmail.com we'll do another mailbag episode at some point. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart podcasts.
- [54:37]
H
Hey it's Ryan Seacrest for Albertsons and Safeway. Flu season is here and the in store pharmacy has you covered with a few free flu shot with most insurance plans. And as a thank you, get up to $20 off your grocery purchase. Plus it's cough and cold season. Stock up on all the season's essentials and get ready for relief with discounts on items like Hall's Menthol Cough Drops, Tylenol Cold and Flu and Mucinex Fast Max products. Offer ends December 30th. Restrictions apply and offers may vary by location. Visit Albertsons or Safeway.com for more details.
- [55:08]
D
Ten athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points.
- [55:18]
A
You are the fittest of the fit.
- [55:20]
D
Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000.
- [55:26]
I
This is where mindset comes in.
- [55:28]
D
Someone will be eliminated.
- [55:30]
A
Pressure is coming down.
- [55:33]
C
Trainer Games on Prime Video January 8th.
- [55:35]
A
Watch the trailer on trainergames.com did you.
- [55:38]
B
Know Microsoft has officially ended Support for Windows 10 upgrade to Windows 11 with an LG Gram laptop voted PCMag's Reader's Choice Top Laptop Brand for 2025. Thin and ultra lightweight, the LG Gram keeps you productive anywhere, and Windows 11 gives you access to free security updates and ongoing feature upgrades. Visit lgusa.com iheart for great seasonal savings on LG Gram laptops with Windows 11. PCMag reader's choice used with permission. All rights reserved.
- [56:08]
A
Season 2 of unrivaled basketball is here and the talent is unreal. The best women's players on the planet are running it back with even bigger moments and bigger stakes. Don't miss as Paige Becker, Snafeeza Collier, Kelsey Plumb, Brianna Stewart and more take the court and redefine the game. This isn't your regular season. This is Unrivaled, where the pace is faster, the energy is higher and every athlete shines. Unrivaled basketball Season 2, sponsored by Samsung on Galaxy, tips off January 5 on TNT, TruTV and HBO Max support for.
- [56:38]
C
The show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available@public.com Disclosures this is an iHeart podcast.
- [57:49]
A
Guaranteed Human.