Forty years ago a toy baby doll prompted a nationwide fad. Which prompted a Black Friday riot like no one had ever seen.
Over, yes, a doll.
“Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids” is an engrossing 40th anniversary documentary that gets the complicated history and puts the aftermath in perspective.
Toys fads are eternal, from ‘30s Shirley Temple dolls to Barbie, Ken and GI Joe. Where do the Cabbage Patch Kids stand in toy history?
“At the top. I mean there’s no question they are at the top of the toy fad phenomenon,” said toy historian Jonathan Alexandratos in a Zoom interview.
“What Cabbage Patch managed to do is they took a really old idea — the baby doll in the US goes back to 1850 — and basically promised so much more than a doll. Cabbage Patch hit at a certain intersection of American history where their success is extreme, but also, entirely understandable. On top of that, you’ve got camcorder footage of people wielding baseball bats in Big Box stores. That’s never really been seen before!”
“This was crazy, the first time retail shopping turned violent,” executive producer Dan Goodman noted.
Why, you wonder, did this hysteria happen? What did it mean?
“It’s two things. Going into it,” Goodman said, “we thought it would be: What was it about this doll? About 1983? About we as a society? What exactly led to billions of dollars being made over what some people would call an ugly doll?
“However, as we went on, we realized there was an entirely different story, which was this question of who started and who really invented the Cabbage Patch Kids?
“It’s a larger question if you see it in terms of a capitalist mindset versus an artistic mindset. I never thought that this ugly looking doll would create this larger conversation about how far we go being inspired by it.”
“Billion Dollar Babies” highlights the Appalachian creator of the doll, Martha Nelson Thomas, a shy, intuitive woman, and Xavier Roberts who copyrighted his version of her doll – and made millions.
Thomas died a decade ago having settled a lawsuit with Roberts. He, for the first time in 25 years, spoke to the filmmakers.
“We feel like this movie isn’t just a Wikipedia doc that’s giving you the history,” Goodman said. “There’s real insights and lots you haven’t heard before, especially from the likes of Xavier, Martha’s family and a lot of people who never have spoken out in this kind of depth or detail.
“It really gets to the heart with a nuance that is unexpected.”
“Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids” opens Monday at suburban theaters
