Retro pic of the week - Cabbage Patch Dolls

From the Deccan Herald:

They are tubby, they are chubby, they are funny and rather adorable! They are the amazing Cabbage Patch dolls that made people around the world mad about them! And went on to create the doll success story of the century! Creating record breaking sales for its company - Caleco, Inc.

In 1983 the magical Cabbage Patch Mania overtook America! Everyone was obsessed with possessing at least one Cabbage Patch Kid doll. A riot started when a crowd got fed up of waiting for eight hours to buy this doll and one poor woman’s leg broke! The store manager had to use a baseball bat to save himself from the vicious crowd! In another store a crowd running madly to grab the chubby dolls, knocked down a pregnant woman. A postman in Kansas who could not get a Cabbage Patch for his daughter flew to London to buy one for her! This mad craze for a doll lasted for several years and it was hard for other companies to sell their dolls. What was so special about these chubby little newcomers? Who looked so cool and naughty and yet so innocently huggable? And where did they come from?

These unusual dolls brought in 600 million dollars in wholesale revenues for Coleco in 1985 and 540 million dollars the year before. The father of the Cabbage Patch Kids is a man named Xavier Roberts. He was the youngest of six children and his family was poor. His father died in a car accident and his mother Eula worked in a factory all day and sewed quilts at night to make more money.

Photo courtesty of igreetyou.com.