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Pop Goes The World
Over 40 years ago, a doll that did absolutely nothing was at the top of almost every child’s Christmas wish list.
In the months leading up to Christmas in 1983, the Cabbage Patch Kids were so sought after, riots broke out i n the stores that sold them. In mall stores like Sears and JCPenney, inventory of the much desired toy did not meet consumer demand, resulting in customers engaging in handto- hand combat in the toy aisles. Kmart stores would bestow “purchase tickets” upon the first several hundred lucky shoppers at their stores pursuing the elusive children of the cabbage patch, but those hundreds who didn’t get those tickets were left out in the cold. Even the biggest stores like Macy’s were only allotted shipments of a few hundred of the dolls at a time while thousands of Christmas shoppers surged their stores in search of the dolls.
I was 13 years old that Christmas of 1983. I had just ditched dolls for Duran Duran. But I became the adoptive parents of one of these kids that year and I couldn’t fathom how that came to be.
The doll was given to me by my Dad’s mother (I called her Grambear) and two of my father’s sisters. The box that contained the doll did seem a little beaten up. I couldn’t imagine my grandmother or any of my aunts going all Bruce Lee on someone trying to take the doll from their hands at Toys “R” Us.
Her name was Debbie Georgia. She had plump cheeks just like her fellow kids in the patch. She wore a blue and white checked pinafore. Her brown hair was styled in braids held together by blue ribbons (and rubber bands that disintegrated over time). Her eyes were brown as well. She wore a diaper that never had to be changed because unlike other dolls at the time, the original Cabbage Patch Kids did not talk, walk, eat or undergo potty training. They just sat around in toy stores waiting for someone to snatch them up, hoping to make it to the checkout lane somewhat intact before sitting on the shelf of a child’s room because they were too expensive to play with.
My Debbie Georgia was displayed in my room from her adoption up until the time I moved from my childhood home. She’s now retired from public life and is spending her golden years in the basement with several other toys of yesteryear such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Opus the Penguin.
It was two years ago that I found out I was not the intended adoptive mom of Debbie Georgia. Over lunch at Sweet Treats, my father’s youngest sister, Carolyn, asked me, “Do you remember getting a Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas one year?” I told her that I did remember receiving Debbie Georgia as a present one year. She smiled and then told me the real story of how Debbie Georgia came to be mine.
Carolyn was working as an associate at Drug Fair, a now defunct chain of pharmacies. She was still living at home with her parents then. Hearing that her store was receiving a shipment of four Cabbage Patch Kids, she decided one of them would be hers. She saved up money from her paychecks to purchase the doll. She brought the doll home and showed it to her mother, my Grambear. Grambear’s eyes flew open with excitement and she said, “Joann will love it!”
So I got the Cabbage Patch Kid that my sweet aunt Carolyn had saved for.
Let me tell you, Debbie Georgia missed out on a great life as Carolyn is a great mom to two pretty terrific kids, my cousins Whitney and A.J. They’re both grown now. I don’t see A.J. much because he lives in California now. I saw Whitney at a recent family get-together and she is as kind and loving as her mom, and probably the kind of person who would give up something saved for so that a child could have a memorable Christmas.
