Today we're looking at a group of dolls,and a house to go with them.
These are obviously Cabbage Patch Mini Figures.
Some of them are larger figures.
One even has yarn hair.
The house is actually a hospital. It's the Babyland General Hospital from 1984.
The hospital originally came with a bed,a crib, a rocking chair,and a playground toy that spins,and four dolls. (I have two of them: the nurse and the boy in the red overalls.)
The Babyland General Hospital is supposed to be where Cabbage Patch dolls are born. This one even has a cabbage patch full of babies.
The hospital opens up,with a piece of floor, and that cabbage patch,that fold down and hook into place.
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| The Babyland arch has to be removed to close the hospital up,and replaced every time it's opened. |
There are four rooms,including a nursery on the top right,and a maternity ward on the bottom right.
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| Maternity ward. |
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| Nursery. |
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| Playroom? |
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| An alcove? A stair landing? |
There is a set of stairs too,with a crank that moves the figures up the stairs.
I'm not sure what this is, or what it's for. Anybody want to guess?
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| It's a clock tower,obviously. But why is there a detachable cabbage head inside? |
The hospital closes up for storage. Mine is missing the piece that hooks it shut,so it won't stay closed unless I hold it.
The outside has shutters,and a bunch of babies peering from the upstairs 'window'.
You can watch a commercial for the Babyland General Hospital play set
HERE.
"Babyland General Hospital" is the name given to the shop Xavier Roberts
opened in Cleveland, Georgia in 1978 to sell and produce the cloth versions of Cabbage Patch
dolls that were sold before they were mass marketed as vinyl and cloth
dolls. These days you can visit the real Babyland General Hospital in Cleveland Georgia,where you can witness a Cabbage Patch 'birth', adopt a 'baby', and view some 'original' Cabbage Patch dolls. (Roberts' originals, that is.)
That brings me to a point. I was sure I had written about this point before, but for the life of me I can't find it anywhere in the blog. So bear with me if you've read me say this before.
Since it's Women's History Month, let's talk about something a woman created that has been credited to a man for decades: Cabbage Patch dolls. That's right. Xavier Roberts did not create Cabbage Patch dolls. He stole them.
Cabbage Patch dolls began life as the creations of a Kentucky woman named Martha Nelson Thomas. Thomas began experimenting with soft sculpture dolls in art school in the early 1970's. No two dolls were alike. She called her handmade version Doll Babies,and sold them at arts and
craft fairs,where they were 'adopted' by their new owners,who were given
'important papers' for the adoption.
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| Martha Nelson Thomas with some of her creations. |
In 1976 she sold some of her dolls to a young man who resold them in his gift shop. That young man was Xavier Roberts. After Roberts began to sell her dolls at his shop,Nelson visited the shop and was upset at the high prices Roberts was charging for the dolls. She thought they were overpriced and she refused to sell him anymore dolls. Afterward, Roberts wrote Nelson a letter stating that if they were her dolls or not, he would 'continue to sell your style of doll'. Pretty cheeky. But he went even farther,when he began producing his own dolls in Martha's style. He called the dolls Little People. In 1978 he renovated an old medical clinic,calling it Babyland General Hospital,created the Original Appalachian Artworks company,and hired a staff to produce the dolls in quantity.
Thomas filed a suit against Roberts in 1980. It was conceded that Roberts had seen Martha's dolls and produced something similar, but unfortunately she had failed to copyright her designs. Roberts had. There was later a settlement reached in 1985,but Thomas's family claimed the money was not the point. Thomas felt her creation had been corrupted,and hated that the dolls had become mass produced.
Nelson went on to produce a line of dolls called 'Original Baby Dolls'. This time she did copyright them. Their boxes stated Thomas had been making the dolls since 1971. There were even kits sold to make your own Original Doll Baby. Ironically,these would be some of the dolls considered Cabbage Patch knockoffs,like the one my sister made for her daughter, Unsentimental Niece back in the beginning days of the Cabbage Patch craze. Martha Nelson Thomas died in 2013 at the age of 62.
More irony: Roberts filed a complaint of copyright infringement himself in 1987,when Topps began producing the popular Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. Topps agreed to change the Kids appearances to less resemble Cabbage Patch dolls,and to change the style of their logo,but they did continue to produce the cards.
In a TV interview Roberts claimed he studied soft sculpture in art school,where he came up with the idea for his dolls. The official Cabbage Patch page's 'Our History' claims that in 1976 '21 year old art student, Xavier Roberts rediscovers “needle molding” a
German technique for fabric sculpture from the early 1800s. Combining
his interest in sculpture with the quilting skills passed down from his
mother, Xavier creates his first soft-sculptures.' I decided to check and see if Xavier Roberts even attended art school. His Wikipedia page has almost no information on him. It's one of the shortest Wikipedia pages I've ever seen. There is no education information listed except White County High School.
You can watch a short documentary about the Thomas/Roberts story
HERE.
See you again tomorrow for another doll,when I get back from taking Ivy back to college. It will be Mothering Sunday in Britain by then,so Happy Mother's Day to all celebrating it.
