The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots

Decoder Ring

Slate Podcasts

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2020

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1983, the Cabbage Patch Kids were released, causing widespread pandemonium in toy stores and in the media. How did a children'a toy inspire such bad adult behavior? On this episode of Decoder Ring we explore the strange world of the Cabbage Patch Kids to figure out why they hit it so big. The answer involves butt tattoos, slightly grotesque faces, industrial innovations, an origin story in a cabbage patch, and serious accusations of copyright theft. Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts and bonus episodes of shows like Dear Prudence and Slow Burn. Sign up now to listen and support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	When Sarah Lindenfeld Hall was nine years old, she really wanted a cabbage patch kid.
0:11.1	I wasn't even a big doll person at the time
0:15.0	just seemed like the right thing to have.
0:17.2	I promise to be a good parent.
0:19.2	My cabbage patch kid.
0:20.7	The cabbage patch kids.
0:22.0	Each style is different and you can pretend to adopt them.
0:25.0	It was 1984, cabbage patch kids, the soft-bodied plastic-headed dolls with eyes that
0:30.6	are just a little bit too close together had come onto the market the
0:34.3	previous year and become an unruly sensation in stores and in the media.
0:40.2	When the doors open that this Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania store, the pushing and shoving began.
0:45.3	One woman was knocked to the floor and suffered a broken leg.
0:47.8	This scene has been repeated in hundreds of stores across the country that advertised the
0:52.0	cabbage patch kids. across the
0:53.3	Cottage Patch kids.
0:58.0	Monday Sarah's mom heard that the KB toy store in their local mall was getting a shipment in.
0:59.3	I remember a big crowd of people.
1:02.1	I believe that we were there for quite a long time. In my
1:06.0	memory it is from nine to five. The line snaked through the aisles past the other
1:11.5	toys leading to a back storage room.
1:14.7	Sarah was close enough to see inside of it.
1:16.9	I remember almost like a pyramid of cabbage-patched kid boxes.
	...

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