Troubled Coleco is cashing in big on the year's hottest toySo what are we to think about the great Cabbage Patch Kids madness of
1983? What are we to think of a homely, vinyl-faced cloth doll that has
become such an object of desire to so many people that 5,000 of them
staged a near riot last week at Hills Department Store in Charleston,
W. Va.? Manager Scott Belcher could provide no explanation. He could
only describe a Christmas crowd becoming a Christmas mob: “They knocked
over the display table. People were grabbing at each other, pushing and
shoving. It got ugly.”What are we to think of a woman's suffering a broken leg when another
crowd of 1,000 turned violent after waiting eight hours to get into a
Zayre store in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.? Departmental Manager William Shigo
could provide no explanation either. He armed himself with a baseball
bat to defend his position behind the counter. Said he: “Get back,
you're breaking my legs.”Perhaps America can survive only so long without losing its head over a
new fad, and then something or other has to be seized upon, advertised,
yearned for, bought and sold. Coleco Industries' surprised president,
Arnold C. Greenberg, who manufactures the Cabbage Patch Kids, does not
have much of an explanation for his stunning success either. His
version: “The fact that the child can literally have a unique, loving,
bonding experience separates it from other dolls.” But Greenberg, who
has been criticized for his extreme optimism, also likes to say: “We
really create the market. We create the demand itself.”Quite a creation. Coleco, which introduced the Cabbage Patch Kids last
February, expects to sell 2.5 million of them this year, which would be
a record for any doll in its first year.
Nobody knows how many more Coleco could have sold had it not been caught
unprepared by its own success. The company says it is chartering planes
to bring in 200,000 more dolls a week from factories in Hong Kong. And
faced with a false-advertising charge by the consumer affairs
department of New York's Nassau County, which accuses Coleco of
“harassing” children by advertising dolls that are not available, the
manufacturer has temporarily suspended its advertising.The dolls have actually been around for years. Back in 1977 a Georgia
artist named Xavier Roberts, now 28, began to turn out handmade cloth
models that he insisted on calling “little people,” each different from
all others. Roberts invented a syrupy ritual for selling the dolls.
They were not made but “delivered” and “adopted” at a former medical
clinic in Cleveland, Ga. His employees had to wear nurse's white
uniforms, and each prospective “parent” had to raise a right hand and
vow undying love. Roberts has sold 250,000 dolls, many to adults for
themselves, at prices ranging from $125 to $1,000. But the national
madness began only when Roberts' Original Appalachian Artworks Inc.
negotiated a licensing agreement with Coleco. The Coleco computers
began churning out $25 models in Asian plants, giving each a slightly
different face. Says Roberts: “I'm just amazed. Sometimes I just stand
there watching, and no one knows that I'm the one who started it all.”
