A Cabbage Patch Christmas

Every Christmas, there's one hot toy or game that is all the rage: XBox 360, Tickle Me Elmo, Nintendo, Teddy Ruxpin.
People camp out for days ahead, trample over people to get their hands on their item, and pay top dollar to give someone a Merry Christmas.

This entire phenomenon can be traced directly back to the Cabbage Patch Dolls. First created in 1976 by an art student named Xavier Roberts, the handmade dolls started off slowly and sold quite well. Roberts came up with the cutesy-wutesy idea of "adoption papers" and "official birth certificates" and people went "Awwww" to the tune of $60 million in the first year.

By 1980, the demand had begin to build and dolls were reselling for 100 times over the original price. Toy companies were clamoring for the chance to mass reproduce the toys and Roberts eventually went with Coleco in 1982. The world was about to be flooded with Cabbage Patch dolls.

Everyone remembers what happened next: the lines of people waiting, the huge amount of accessories for the dolls, the lotteries to get a chance at a doll, the fistfights, the scuffles, the news coverage, the mass hysteria. By 1985, sales of the Cabbage Patch Dolls stood at a staggering $600 million.

This Christmas album was released in 1984. It's a mix of kiddie, bluegrass, and country music that features Colonel Casey as a narrator and introduces us to "Christmas in the Cabbage Patch". Cue the banjo, the kiddie chorus, and the cutesy-wutesy songs and stories. By track three, I went into epilectic sugar shock. There is good kiddie Christmas music, bad Christmas music, and jaw-droppingly disgusting kiddie Christmas music. This falls below that by a great margin.

The Cabbage Patch whirlwind began to die down and by 1986, only $250 million of the dolls were sold. Coleco tried in vain to revive the doll but the fad had passed and in 1989, Coleco went bankrupt. Hasbro picked up the dolls from 1989 to 1994, couldn't do anything with them, and sold the rights to Mattel. Mattel continues to produce the dolls to this day. It's been estimated that nearly 80 million dolls were sold since the inception of the Cabbage Patch Dolls.

This album was posted by Pastor McPurvis at Vinyl Orphanage and is still available to download!

On to the next new Christmas CD in my collection...


Capt