The Strange Cabbage Patch Craze

Troubled Coleco is cashing in big on the year’s hottest toy

So what are we to think about the great Cabbage Patch Kids madness of 1983? What are we to think of a homely, vinyl-faced cloth doll that has become such an object of desire to so many people that 5,000 of them staged a near riot last week at Hills Department Store in Charleston, W. Va.? Manager Scott Belcher could provide no explanation. He could only describe a Christmas crowd becoming a Christmas mob: “They knocked over the display table. People were grabbing at each other, pushing and shoving. It got ugly.”

What are we to think of a woman’s suffering a broken leg when another crowd of 1,000 turned violent after waiting eight hours to get into a Zayre store in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.? Departmental Manager William Shigo could provide no explanation either. He armed himself with a baseball bat to defend his position behind the counter. Said he: “Get back, you’re breaking my legs.”

Perhaps America can survive only so long without losing its head over a new fad, and then something or other has to be seized upon, advertised, yearned for, bought and sold. Coleco Industries’ surprised president, Arnold C. Greenberg, who manufactures the Cabbage Patch Kids, does not have much of an explanation for his stunning success either. His version: “The fact that the child can literally have a unique, loving, bonding experience separates it from other dolls.” But Greenberg, who has been criticized for his extreme optimism, also likes to say: “We really create the market. We create the demand itself.”

Quite a creation. Coleco, which introduced the Cabbage Patch Kids last February, expects to sell 2.5 million of them this year, which would be a record for any doll in its first year. Nobody knows how many more Coleco could have sold had it not been caught unprepared by its own success. The company says it is chartering planes to bring in 200,000 more dolls a week from factories in Hong Kong. And faced with a false-advertising charge by the consumer affairs department of New York’s Nassau County, which accuses Coleco of “harassing” children by advertising dolls that are not available, the manufacturer has temporarily suspended its advertising.

The dolls have actually been around for years. Back in 1977 a Georgia artist named Xavier Roberts, now 28, began to turn out handmade cloth models that he insisted on calling “little people,” each different from all others. Roberts invented a syrupy ritual for selling the dolls. They were not made but “delivered” and “adopted” at a former medical clinic in Cleveland, Ga. His employees had to wear nurse’s white uniforms, and each prospective “parent” had to raise a right hand and vow undying love. Roberts has sold 250,000 dolls, many to adults for themselves, at prices ranging from $125 to $1,000. But the national madness began only when Roberts’ Original Appalachian Artworks Inc. negotiated a licensing agreement with Coleco. The Coleco computers began churning out $25 models in Asian plants, giving each a slightly different face. Says Roberts: “I’m just amazed. Sometimes I just stand there watching, and no one knows that I’m the one who started it all.”

Actually, the $25 price is just for openers. Like Ken and Barbie of an earlier mania, the Cabbage Patch Kids are mannequins waiting to be outfitted with all the costumes and accouterments that Daddy can afford. There is a Cabbage Patch folding stroller for $14, a Snuggle-Close Carrier for $10 and an array of wardrobes that include School Days, Nightie-Night, Country Kid, Winter Warmer and so on, at about $9 apiece. Still ahead lie Cabbage Patch T shirts, shoes, games and who knows what else from other licensees. All of it, according to one perhaps rosy estimate on Wall Street, should earn Coleco $150 million by the end of 1984.

Not a minute too soon. While Coleco has been reveling in the profits and publicity growing out of its cabbage patch, it has also been afflicted by delays and criticisms of its promising Adam home computer. There have been rumors (hotly denied by Greenberg) that the cost of launching Adam has left the company grievously short of cash.

Riding a roller coaster is a Coleco tradition. Maurice Greenberg, a Russian immigrant, started the Connecticut Leather Co. in Hartford in 1932 to sell supplies to shoemakers, but his sons Arnold and Leonard began conglomerating in the 1960s. They shifted from leather into plastics and soon became the world’s largest manufacturer of above-ground swimming pools. That was a seasonal business, so they bought a snowmobile manufacturer and suffered heavy losses during the mild winter that followed. They admired Atari’s pioneering home video game, Pong, and they made a fortune on an imitation named Telstar. But they overinvested in that, lost $22 million in 1978 and nearly went bankrupt. Then they gambled heavily on ColecoVision, which could play both Atari and Mattel games. It is still selling well (1.9 million units so far) at $175.

Coleco was the best performer on the New York Stock Exchange in 1982, up from $6.87 to $36.75 a share. This year the Greenbergs put most of their chips on their Adam computer, to retail for less than $700, the first complete home system to sell for less than $1,000. They promised to deliver 500,000 units by Christmas, but all summer there were delays and reports of faulty equipment. Most experts think the Adam will live up to its promise, however, and by last week Coleco said belated deliveries were running at 2,000 a day. And the stock, which had sunk in pre-doll times, gained 5⅛ points in two days, in large part because of the mysterious Cabbage Patch mania.

What is there about these creatures that makes so many people wait in line for hours for a chance to push and shove and generally go bonkers? Two disc jockeys in Milwaukee wisecracked that a load of the dolls would be dropped from a B-29 bomber to people who held up catcher’s mitts and American Express cards; two dozen believers actually turned up at County Stadium, braving a wind-chill factor of — 2° F, in the vain hope of manna.

Psychologists offer their usual blizzard of explanations. One theory is that the very homeliness of the dolls is appealing. “It is comforting,” wrote Dr. Joyce Brothers, “to feel the Cabbage Patch doll can be loved with all your might—even though it isn’t pretty.” Still another theory emphasizes the doll’s adoption ritual. The computers have given each doll a mellifluous name like Cornela Lenora or Clarissa Sadie, and each comes with its own birth certificate and adoption papers, ready to be signed. “Most children between the ages of six and twelve fantasize that they were really adopted,” says Dr. Bruce Axelrod, director of Comprehensive Mental Health Services in Milwaukee. “A child who adopts a Cabbage Patch Kid can act out that fantasy.”

Maybe such psychological explanations are mainly pseudo explanations. Maybe children want Cabbage Patch Kids because other children want them or because television says other children want them. Maybe they do not want them as much as parents want them. Or perhaps there are other reasons. A New York Times reporter in New Jersey saw five-year-old Eileen Napoli clutching a Cabbage Patch doll named Laura and dutifully asked the girl why she liked her doll. Said Eileen: “She has a real belly button.” —By Otto Friedrich. Reported by Robert Carney/New York