I don’t remember the CPD stuff too much. I was a grown-up then and didn’t have any kids.
There are at least two ladies who make preemie dolls to order on line somewhere. You can send your specs (length, weight, skin tone, hair no hair) and they will customize a doll to match your preemie.
My darling young son was a ‘micro’ preemie (700 grams or 1 1/2 lbs, 23.5 weeks gestation). I’m signing him up for kindergarten today! I didn’t buy a preemie doll, but checked out the sites some time ago. I guess I was impressed by his impossible smallness and was looking for a way to relate it to others.
I resisted the rampage, but fell victim to the trend in the end. Previously, I had been a happy-go-lucky tomboy, content to play with Legos, run around in the woods, and read books all day in my treehouse. Then I was bitten by the bug. I have a clear memory of myself sitting on the floor by my mother’s bed in the early morning, rocking back and forth and crying that I wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid. What a little brat I was! Anyway, my mom caved and I got a CPK with “cornsilk” hair – remember those? Her name was Alberta Ramona. Soon after, I got another CPK, a baby with a little tuft of yarn hair, named Eleanor Phoebe.
Xavier Roberts was a boy? I thought he owned the company and was, you know, a man. His signature on the dolls’ butts sure looked, um, man-like.
Oh, how I wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid, especially a preemie one–they were just cuter. My mom announced that there was no way she was standing in line or fighting for a mere toy, however. (I wasn’t allowed to have Barbies, either, since they are evil and sexist. I had a more realistically proportioned Cindy doll.)
She did get me a much nicer handmade cloth CP emulation doll at a home craft sale. It was named Alison, I think, and I sewed clothes for it from kits. It currently resides in my closet after years of basement living; I may give it to my little girl or just get rid of it–haven’t decided.
I guess the Preemie label was supposed to be a cuter way to say ‘baby’ but I agree it’s kinda creepy. Or maybe in the CP universe the Kids come out of the Cabbage Patch more fully developed than human babies, like clones…
Ah, my darling Gloria Emmy. I loooooved my CPK. Got her that first crazed Christmas. I’m not sure who stood in line for her, but I was thrilled to get her.
Does anyone else remember Garbage Pail Kids trading cards? They were HUGE in my 5th grade class.
Huh. As the new mother of a preemie born at 31 weeks (he’s now 10 weeks old and growing like a weed!), I find that a little
creepy for some reason. Maybe I just saw too much brutal reality
during the week my son was in the NICU.
However, for all I know I could have had a preemie doll and loved it. “Preemieness” just never registered with me one way or another until C.R. was born.
It’s like going to TJ Maxx in search of baby stuff. I’d been to that specific store 18 million times, but had no idea where the childrens section was.
It was never on my radar!
I also had a homemade CP doll that I named Sally. My aunt’s neighbor made her, and my parents dressed her up in my baby clothes and I got her when I was five. I was thrilled.
Garbage Pail Kids! Oh my god-I had a ton, because my cousin Jeffrey once went out and bought me a whole bunch for some reason-I LOVED those things. I remember we weren’t allowed to take them to school.
Heh heh. My name is Sally.
'Course, having a doll with your name would be flattering, I think.
It gets funny when I meet people who have a dog named Sally, and they get all sheepish and fall all over themselves to assure me that they named her that because it’s a lovely name, etc. etc.
As if I would be offended or think that I own exclusive rights to the name!
My aunt bought my sister and I each one of the original Xavier Roberts Cabbage Patch Kids–they had cloth faces rather than plastic, and they were a little larger than the mass-produced ones–about the size of a real baby. Mine was Vera Paula, with long yellow pigtails and green eyes (my real kid has blond hair and green eyes, too!), and my sister’s was Genevia Belle, who was completely bald and had blue eyes. My sister and I loved those dolls, and we’d scour garage sales for baby clothes for them to wear. The only problem with them is that their little faces would get so dirty! The plastic ones were probably easier to clean. Oh well.
I remember the preemies, and I also remember hearing about real preemies a lot at the same time, and mothers who would have to buy doll clothes for their babies since they were so small. Were preemies (the real ones) big news in the '80’s for some reason? Because I remember hearing about them a lot. I think that’s what fueled the demand for preemie dolls.
Xavier Roberts did start the Cabbage Patch Kids. He did the original soft sculpture faces, which some woman sued him on, claiming he stole the technique from her.
I, too, had a CPK. Mine was named “Diana Elizabeth”, which was pretty cool since my name is Elizabeth. She had the long yellow braids and green eyes.
My aging aunt, who bought her for me, was literally almost assaulted by some insane female in the toy store, as Diana was the last CPK left. Overzealous, fucked up mommy, however, severely underestimated the raw power of an aging Italian woman. IIRC, OFUM got knocked on her ass in the middle of Toys 'R Us.
I was just having this conversation the other day with my girlfriends…and we were all horrified to learn that we could remember our CB’s names. My first one was Athena Marie, and she had icky yarny brown braids and I loved her anyway; my dad found her for me at Wynn’s (anybody remember Wynn’s?) and I just about lost my mind when he brought her home. Then I got a preemie for my birthday, and then a redheaded Cornsilk Kid. I still remember being awed by her fine yellow taffeta ensemble. (Did any of you have male CB’s? I never saw the point. Kind of like having a Ken. They were so superfluous.)
My best friend Stacey was a spoiled brat–loved her, but she was awful–and by the time I had three CB’s, she had twenty. And they were all tacked up on the wall by their backs in a strangely macabre display/storage method her mother invented.
Oh, and did someone mention getting a bogus homemade Cabbage Patch Kid? I always felt sorry for my friends who only had The Fake Ones. My grandfather gave me one of 'em for Christmas and I hated it. Don’t know where he found it, but it had this awful yard-long separation between its legs…like, literally, it was shaped like a shoebox…and I thought it was hideous. It was wearing this awful red terrycloth outfit and I remember pretending to be all excited about it so I wouldn’t hurt my Grandpa’s feelings.
I would assume my mother still has my CB’s somewhere; they were living in my closet when I left for college and she doesn’t ever throw anything out.
I wonder why I never realized how ugly they were. Didn’t ever notice it until years later, but damn those dolls are ugly!
You guys kept the names on the “birth certificates”? I didn’t! The way I saw it, they were mine now, and I could give them names of my own choosing. So “Tiffany Dolly” became “Molly” and “Reese Shea” became “Darrel”.
I actually wanted a black boy, so my mom grabbed Reese/Darrel, thinking he was black because he was darker than Tiffany/Molly. In fact, he was not (I later got a mini-CP who was officially black, and much darker). The manufacturers just had this outdated notion that little boys play outside and get tan, while little girls stay inside having tea parties and preserving their peaches-and-cream complexions.
I had two CPKs - Barbie Louisa who had red braids and a pacifier, and (I think) Elphia Giselle (although this might have been the name of one of my friends’ or cousin’s dolls). Elphia was a “World Traveler” CPK - she went to China and wore a red “silk” brocade outfit. The coolest thing was the passport with its genuine imitation leather cover! My cousin and I thought all the documentation stuff was one of the best things about having a CPK. When we played with them we’d come up with scenarios in which we’d have to whip out their adoption papers etc. for some reason.
My best friend had a preemie - I don’t remember the name. When we got tired of playing with our Star Wars figures or our Barbies, we played with our CPK dolls. It was good.
Memmmmmmmmmmm-ries…light the corners of my miiiiiind…
[BIGTIME DISCLAIMER]I never really wanted one - but my aunt had an opportunity to secure one for me and asked Mom if she wanted her to pick one up for my birthday.[/BIGTIME DISCLAIMER]
We renamed our daughters doll also, so it would have the same initials as she has. I don’t even remember what his official name was, but he became “Justin Nicholas”. As it turns out, the first boy to ever kiss her was named Nicholas and she’s in a promising relationship with a young man named Justin now - scary! :eek:
