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The Cabbage Patch Crisis [from Very Special Episodes]

Astray

iHeartPodcasts

Religion & Spirituality, True Crime, Society & Culture, Religion

4.4824 Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1983, a cherubic, homely doll triggered something close to national hysteria. Parents fought in store aisles. Shelves were stripped bare. Even the New York mafia found itself selling children’s toys.  

Cabbage Patch Kids went from handmade curiosities to the most coveted object in America — igniting riots, corporate battles, and a moral panic that stretched from suburban malls to federal courtrooms. All in a single Christmas season. 

And the frenzy didn’t end when the Kids disappeared from shelves. In an unexpected twist decades later, these dolls would get more care and attention than they ever had before.

*

Very special thanks to all our guests! You can hear more of Larry Mazza’s story in his book The Life, available on Amazon.

Today's episode is a production of iHeartPodcasts and School of Humans. 

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is an I-Heart podcast.

0:02.5

Guaranteed human.

0:11.2

VCRs, leather coats, cigarettes.

0:15.0

In the 1980s, if it somehow finds its way off a truck,

0:19.0

the five families of the New York Mafia will find a way to make

0:23.1

money on it. Well, here's what happens. There's hijackers. We weren't known as hijackers. Like,

0:28.7

we wouldn't go steal the trucks. But lower-level criminals would go probably hijack a truck.

0:35.9

That's Larry Monsa, a former associate of the Colombo crime family.

0:41.0

We're not going to get into all the colorful details of Larry's exploits.

0:45.9

It's probably enough to just tell you that his boss was nicknamed the Grim Reaper.

0:52.1

It could be anything from liquor to, you know, TVs.

0:56.4

And we had, you know, the back of the club looked like a crazy Eddie warehouse at times

1:00.6

with just, you know, stereos and things like that.

1:03.6

The club, Larry is referring to, is his boss's social hangout,

1:08.5

where wise guys convened to talk shop.

1:12.6

But during the 1983 holiday season, their inventory is awash in another kind of contraband.

1:20.6

Well, yeah, we knew the cap strats calls.

1:22.6

The walls of the Grim Reaper's office is stocked floor to ceiling with cabbage patch kids.

1:30.8

The smiling stuffed dolls with an adoption marketing gimmick that have become the most coveted gift of the year, maybe even the century.

1:41.2

We knew they were popular, and we didn't go steal them, like I said, but we had

1:46.4

somebody bring us a large truckload. I'm not talking about a tractor trailer truckload

1:51.3

of these cabbage patch dolls, and we probably sold them in less than a week, thousands of

...

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