Cabbage Patch Kids

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 1983, all hell broke loose when a new toy hit stores in the United States.

Cabbage Patch Kids were so popular that people were getting injured when they tried to buy them.

But Martha Nelson Thomas, whose original design she said inspired the dolls, received little credit.

She watched on as sales of the toys generated hundreds of millions of dollars.

Martha’s close friend, Meredith Ludwig, told Madeleine Drury the story of how the strange-looking dolls became such a sensation.

(Photo: Martha Nelson Thomas with her doll babies. Credit: Guy Mendes)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations
0:07.1	with my sensational guests.
0:08.9	Do a leap, interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the Creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.6	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes
0:24.0	you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:28.0	Listen to all episodes on BBC Sales. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Madeline Drury.
0:42.0	Let me take you back to 1983 when a new toy
0:45.8	supposedly born in a vegetable patch was causing a sensation across the world.
0:51.2	Otherwise dignified, calm mannerly parents broke into a sprint and then the race was on.
1:00.0	People all over the country are clamoring for cabbage patch kids.
1:03.0	A full-grown woman taking a dowel out of a child.
1:08.0	Wherever cabbage patch dolls are sold, they're not sold for long.
1:12.0	In those news reports, there is a shop kit. sold they're not sold for long.
1:13.0	In those news reports there is a shopkeeper brandishing a baseball bat at crazed crowds.
1:19.0	People in one store were even sent to hospital for their injuries.
1:22.8	Meredith Ludwig is watching the frenzy around the cabbage patch kids
1:26.6	from her home in Louisville in the United States.
	...

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