Parents camped outside toy stores in sleeping bags during Christmas 1983, desperate to get their hands on a Cabbage Patch Kid. Local news covered the shopping mayhem as stores sold out nationwide. These dolls with adoption papers and birth certificates changed toy history forever. But most fans never learned about their original name in a small Georgia art studio. What were they called?
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The answer is: Little People Originals
Art student Xavier Roberts learned an old German doll-making technique in the mid-70s and started crafting soft-sculpture dolls with carefully stitched faces in his Georgia studio. He called them Little People Originals, and each one looked completely different from the next.
He opened Babyland General Hospital in an old Cleveland, Georgia medical building. The staff wore real medical uniforms and new dolls came from a glowing crystal tree named Mother Cabbage. Parents couldn't leave without taking an adoption oath for their new baby.
Fisher-Price already owned the trademark for their "Little People" toys, so Roberts needed a new name when Coleco wanted to mass-produce his design in 1982. The dolls became Cabbage Patch Kids, launching a toy craze that turned normally sane adults into shopping warriors. The original handmade dolls still exist in collections, reminding us how a small-town artist accidentally created one of the biggest toy sensations ever.
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