Inside BabyLand, employees dress in scrubs and newborn dolls sleep in incubators and cribs. Largely the domain of foragers, the biggest edible fruit in the South has mostly been forgotten. Even Kelly Fields whips up a box of Jiffy every once in a while. He is shown on display in Babyland's Archive Exhibit. Related Stories:. However, no matter what she did, she lacked the dreaded copyrights to her own product.
She was trying to win a losing battle. Though she made a claim that the Cabbage Patch Kid was a mirror image of her own Doll Babies, Thomas was not an aggressive person. The lawsuit was filed in , it went to trial in It was six years of custody wrangling, but in the end, the lawsuit reached a settlement. The dispute ultimately fell in her favor, but nothing changed.
Glad to finally be over with legal action against Roberts, Thomas just wanted to continue with the rest of her life. What was emotionally important for Thomas was making sure her dolls had an impact on the people who adopted them.
She never did tell her friends and other members of her family how much she got out of the settlement. All she had to say was that all her children would be able to go to college, and she was happy with that feat. Eventually, the Cabbage Patch Craze died down. But the effects of the craze would be tenderly imprinted on the memories of the children who had them. Some still collect Cabbage Patch dolls to this day. Magic Crystal Valley store owners and Cabbage Patch Kids collectors, Pat and Joe Prosey own 5, Cabbage Patch dolls and consider each one of them as their own children, even though they themselves have a real-life adult daughter.
Those who want to adopt a Cabbage Patch doll for themselves can. But can you blame them? The Cabbage Patch Kid craze was everywhere. The name was on every lunchbox, pillowcase, vanity mirror, plates, and even hairdryers.
They were riding the money horse hard and it paid out. One was even sent into space. Of course, it was limited edition. At the tail end of the Cabbage Patch craze, Calico decided to do something stellar. They decided to send a Cabbage Patch Kid out into space. So, in the end, what became of Martha Thomas and her Doll Babies?
As time passed, Thomas sought other creative outlets with her artistic skills and talents. Over time, she sewed purses, quilts, and even created dolls out of the drawings from the youngest members of her family. Her little creations continued to spread joy, and her community valued her humility and kindness toward others.
Every creation sparked something in each child or each customer that made her special, if not memorable. Though she touched many lives, Martha Thomas passed away in at age 62 after a hard struggle against ovarian cancer. At her funeral, many arrived with a doll made by Martha and were placed seated on a pew before her casket. Before her death, Martha worked with children in schools and after-school workshops. She taught her pupils how to sew, quilt and weave while encouraging their creativity.
She helped fund art schools and encouraged aspiring artists, regardless of the bumpy path in her past. She was the kind of person who valued the worth of, not just art, but the people who created them. Today, Roberts still has his BabyLand General Hospital opened in Cleveland, Georgia where the original soft sculpture dolls are still being hand-stitched today.
Regardless of the questionable history behind the beloved Cabbage Patch Kids, they still held the same impact Thomas had hoped when creating the idea for the simple toy. They had hand painted eyes and their hair when they had it was usually made from yarn. Each Doll Baby was a little bit different, but their basic look was the same. They became popular and she began selling her dolls at craft fairs. In , a young art student by the name of Xavier Roberts met Martha at a craft fair and was very taken by her hand-crafted dolls.
Working at the time as the manager of a gift shop in a Georgia State Park, Xavier Roberts arranged to sell some of her dolls in the shop. After several dolls were sold, Martha decided to discontinue supplying her hand-made dolls to the shop due to a dispute over pricing. She felt he was charging too much for them.
Local seamstresses were hired and trained to create and customize the dolls, and despite its unusual concept — or maybe because of it — Babyland General Hospital became an almost overnight success, gaining attention from news publications and taking on more employees as demand grew.
In Martha Nelson Thomas sued Xavier Roberts for copyright infringement due to the similarity of the dolls, and also for claiming in his marketing materials that his product was original, a statement with which she disagreed.
Martha claimed that her million-dollar lawsuit was never about getting a piece of the growing Cabbage Patch fortune. Though the hand-crafted dolls did look quite similar, the judge determined that there were sufficient differences to dismiss that part of the case and ruled in Mr. The next part of the lawsuit — the claim of originality in his advertising — had yet to be decided. She was happy with the outcome and agreed to never speak of it again.
Xavier Roberts was fast becoming a savvy young entrepreneur, a rare quality in someone who was primarily a doll artist. In at the age of just 26, he granted a license to a company called Coleco to mass-produce a re-designed line of his dolls he named Cabbage Patch Kids. Coleco began distributing them to toy stores nationwide.
Roberts retained the rights to produce limited editions of his dolls at BabyLand General Hospital. The Cabbage Patch Kids were an immediate and unprecedented success, selling millions of dolls in a matter of weeks and creating long production backlogs as demand far exceeded supply. This in turn caused a desperate dash to toy stores by parents determined to have a doll for their child for Christmas. Parents lined up for hours outside stores for the chance to buy a Cabbage Patch doll, and once inside, tempers frayed.
This resulted in pushing, shoving and some all-out brawls with injuries as frantic parents physically wrestled each other for the dolls. In , with the extraordinary popularity of the Cabbage Patch Kids in full swing, Ms. The Doll Baby kits consisted of vinyl heads and pre-stitched bodies which were sold separately. Later, when Hasbro took over manufacturing to , the dolls shrank down to 14 inches tall.
Mattel, which manufactured Cabbage Patch Kids from to also kept the smaller, inch size. Toys "R" Us produced inch kids and inch babies between — The current official licensee is Wicked Cool Toys since ; the latest inch dolls still feature a unique name, birth date, birth certificate, and adoption papers.
On the left side of every doll's tush, you can find the signature of Cabbage Patch Kids inventor, Xavier Roberts. However, what you might not know is that just about every year the dolls were made, the color of the signature changed. For instance, in , the signature was black but in it was forest green. If you are an avid fan of Cabbage Patch Kids, you can go visit the Babyland General Hospital , and see the birth of a doll. Be forewarned, it is highly unlikely that you could bring kids here and escape without buying them a doll.
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