Toy Files · 🧸 Dolls & plush

G33Z3R Toy Files · 19831990

Why did people riot over Cabbage Patch Kids?

Cabbage Patch Kids

Introduced
1982 (mass-market), based on Xavier Roberts's 1978 Little People
Made by
Coleco
The craze
Christmas 1983: shortages, fistfights in stores, and about three million sold that year
Still made?
Yes, by several makers since; the Babyland General Hospital is still in Georgia

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The file

Each one came with a name, a birth certificate and adoption papers, and no two faces were alike. That was the pitch, and in the fall of 1983 it turned into the first modern toy riot: parents lining up before dawn, stores rationing, a Pennsylvania crowd that made the evening news.

Coleco couldn't make them fast enough, which was the point. If you got one that Christmas, someone in your family stood in a line. If you didn't, you got the knockoff with the wrong-shaped head, and you knew.

Sources: Wikipedia — Cabbage Patch Kids

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