Good or Bad: Stories!

Transcript

Forty years ago, our country had a moment. Nobody saw it coming. For some, it was magical, bringing joy and comfort to their lives. For others, it brought a level of desperation. They had never experienced and made them do things they never imagined they would do. The story is complex and will take us from Kentucky to Georgia to a magical garden hidden behind a waterfall inhabited by bunny bees spreading their magical crystals along the way. The brand will earn praise, criticism and billions of dollars. And that's why if you'll let us, this week's on brand is on the Cabbage Patch kids who grow jazzed up having a cat. But what's your favorite show right now? It sounds on John and John Brennan. Welcome to on brand with John and Marissa. Hi, I'm John Glover. I'm Chris. So you got my lettuce pun in that opening, right? Very delighted. I was like, I have to get that pun in there somehow. And I was like, It feels a little forced then, but you know, I love it. Nothing's to force on this pod. We love it. So, John, last week you alluded to a mysterious target trip that was pod related. So is now a time when you can reveal to us what that was all about? You know, I can reveal what it was all about, and let's change trip to trips and throw anthropology into it also. Oh, so for the last month, I have been on a mission going to retail stores, filming Guerrilla Style, a holiday campaign for on brand that will start dropping this week. I'm very proud of these. I have shown them to a handful of people and they are gobsmacked. You haven't seen them yet. And I am dying to show you. So gosh, it's been so fun. But yes, that's why I've been going the store. It's pod related. No rants and raves. Just something it just happened on during one trip at target. I wasn't even there for it and I was like, You know what? I could do this and I did it and just fell in love with it. And it's just been a real adventure. So it's going to come out this week. We'll drop the first one this week. Fantastic. I'm just relieved you weren't buying more fig candles. No, I didn't buy anything. Nope, it's all iPod related, and it's going to be a lot of fun. Well, that is wonderful. I cannot wait to see. Yeah, you'll enjoy that. So I do want to say I feel like I should stop going downtown. Why I go downtown every Sunday. If you'll remember, about a month ago I was downtown and a stranger said that I look like Newt Gingrich. Yes, yes. Yes. I didn't love that today. Right around the same area, I came across to man. And he's like, What year were you born? And I was like, Actually, I prefer not to love that question. In general, I think there was no right way to answer that. I was like, I don't, you know, I just don't like to talk about that. He's like, That's OK. He's like, I can tell that it was at least the early 1960s. It's like he was. And I was like, if the early 1960s means I'm in my 60s. You think I look like Endlich? No offense. Anyone in their 60s. It never feels great to be mis aged. My 60s. Your 60s? Yeah, 60s. So I definitely need a haircut. I don't know what else. The point of that, though, what was the point of that encountered is that where the conversation ended, it was just a drive by rudeness. I don't even remember why it started or how it ended. I went and I ran him over with your car and went about your day. Yeah. I don't remember anything after he said early 60s. I'm blank from that point on, but man, I'm really getting it downtown. So I think I'm going to stay here in the suburbs. I think that's a good idea and stop going downtown. That's that's really smart. I also apologize if I sound a little hoarse. Nay. No way. Are you your new girl? May. You're not sick, are you? No, I'm coming off. So I have two young children. One of them is in school, so that just means six months out of the year. I just have a low grade something. Yeah. So this is like leftover from last. It's just it's it's boring. But if you have kids, you know, I sound a little hoarse. No, I'm fine. But just for people listening. If you find it unpleasant to listen to somebody with who's a little hoarse, next. OK, fair enough. I do know other people have kids and they seem to kind of just recycle their diseases amongst each other. Discussing something funny happened this week, so as everyone knows, last week there was a huge debacle in the podcast. We both had research the same. Marissa did an episode that I had already researched, so I like to get my research done like a couple of weeks before we're going to do it. So I now I only had whatever like eight five days to like, find a new brand and put it together if people knew what we put so much energy into researching for this show. I definitely yes, it's a lot. It's a lot. So that's a lot. Yeah, I mean, five for you to say five days is less time than you're comfortable with. I mean, that gives you an idea of how much work goes into making this show. Well, I do also have a job like I do, you know, I have other things than this. But something funny happened this week. My friend Erin knew that I was picking a new episode, and I had mentioned to her that, Oh, I'm going to Santa Monica to do some research on the brand that I've picked. So I didn't think anything of it. Well, I'm in Santa Monica and I get a text from Aaron, who I forgot can track me on her phone. See, I'm on like, find a friend with her, and she was spying on me to try to figure out what the brand was. Oh my God. Because I went to Santa Monica because just randomly after I picked, I was going back. And forth between Toys R US and like doing an actual like holiday kind of toy and Toys R US felt. I don't know, but I didn't feel like there was a ton of meat on it. And the Cabbage Patch story, if you don't know, and it's really interesting, and I learned a bunch of stuff, but there happened to be a documentary about Cabbage Patch kids playing only in Santa Monica, and I was like, Well, hell, all they had. They've done the bulk of my research for me. I'm going to go watch this documentary. And so she writes me, she's like, Are you researching or at the movies? So she could tell I was in a movie theater and she's like, I'm trying to figure out your brand. And I was like, Well, I'll tell you this, you have all the information that you need. And she did not put together that all she had to do was see what movies were playing and look at the show times at the theater. Well, and I track you on find my friends, too, so I could have done the same thing. You could have done the same thing as watching Billion Dollar Babies, a new documentary about Cabbage Patch kids in the audience. There were two people. Did the other person there also have a podcast about brands, and they're also doing Cabbage Patch this week? I hope so. That's what I like to think. OK, so you've just learned what the brand is. We're doing the Cabbage Patch, kids. The story is crazy. But before we get into it, I'm curious. I'm assuming you're what? You're an 80s baby, 90s baby. Yeah. Oh right. This is the 80s and you don't have to do it. I mean, I know you told me, I know we've said it on. I think they even said. And so what did you have association with? I just forgot how old I am. How old am I? I was born in 1986. Thirty eight. No. Thirty seven. I thought we were going to be constantly thinking, I'm thirty eight. That was a callback to the joke from I got freaked out for a second that I was thirty eight. OK, I'm thirty seven. And yes, I was born in 1986 and Cabbage Patch was definitely. I mean, would it shock you that I played with a Cabbage Patch as recently as five days ago? Only because you have children? No. My childhood Cabbage Patch is still floating around my mom's house. You're like, it wasn't with Peggy. I was alone in my bedroom. I was tweaking that little belly button. You know, that belly button is like a little, Oh, that's a whole thing. People loved the belly button. So you were born in 86. We're getting to the tail end of the mania. You know what? It probably was. My sister was born in 81. So it was, you know, when you're the younger sibling, you're inheriting all of the all the toy mania that came prior. Well, I have no connection to it. I know I'm a gay boy. You're a man of the 60s. Yeah, I just played with the early G.I. Joe dolls that had real hair color, you know, and I had a pet rock. Well, actually, if I was in the 60s, I would have like a pet rock, so they would have had one in the box. And if they come in a box, I don't know. I'm too young for that, but I was not a doll, boy. That's all I'm trying to say. You are a lot of kind of boys, but a doll boy. I was never a doll boy. Thank God, because if you're collecting extended into the doll world, if you saw this movie and saw the couple, that is the number one Cabbage Patch doll collectors in the world, you would die. I want to throw a disclaimer out about the Cabbage Patch people. A lot of them, I do think, are crazy, and I say that in the most loving way. But for the guy who founded it, he I have not ever seen an interview with him without one on his lap. Like the couple that I just told you about, has it like in their wills, which dolls will be buried with them? I think, OK, so you don't. I think they're weird. I think they're like, That's they're weird. The people are the doll, the people and the dolls. All of it. It's weird. It's a scene, man. It's a weird scene. And I love that I've got into it. I put, you know, this brand is really exciting. It's like, you have this like, very eclectic leader. You've got this controversial story that underlines all of it. It's got nostalgia. It's got money and power. You have grandmas grabbing dolls from children. It's literally got everything. There's even a hospital. We're going to get into it. It's Matt Damon play. That's all I'm wondering. Oh, my god, can Matt Damon play maybe the inventor or I mean, controversial thought, huh? A cabbage patch? I'd have to see his belly button and have to get a prosthetic belly button on him. They probably spend $200000 on Matt Damon's belly button and then have to get like four of them. All right, so let's get into this. David, tell you how, David forever when I knew it, when I started dating him, he had lint in his belly button. Lint in the belly button was just kind of like, and I thought that was like, not even a real thing. I thought that was like lower like belly buttons collect lint. And for years, it was like lint in the belly button. And one day it stopped and there was no lint. Since, you know, it's kind of crazy you telling me that I used to have in my belly button and I'm not saying this to be. I feel like when I was younger, I would like dig in my belly button and now I didn't want this to be, you should do this discussing stuff in your shows. But now we're here and I'll just cut to. I no longer ever have. And, you know, maybe I wear different things, I wear a lot more t shirts now. Maybe I used to wear my sweater. No, this was from T-shirts. T-shirts were all in it. They were older T-shirts or newer T-shirts. It was like there was no distinction. And then there was one day that the lint stopped and it never came back. It was like, that's the name of his book The Day the Lint Stopped My Life with belly button. You know, if you're out there, if you're a print freak, we have a lot of scientists who listen to the show, apparently. We'll give some shout outs later on if anybody has any theories or experiences with. If you're a part of Lint Nation, I don't know if you're a part of it, then. Let us know. I'd love to hear hear your your thoughts on that, because that's been like a family. You know you have a family mystery. I love family mysteries. Yeah. And this is like a family mystery. Yeah. And you can direct those to Marissa, if I would, if I were to put a call out to the freaks, I would say, if you have any fun stories about Cabbage Patch kids or like your parents, like the lengths they went to to get you went content only send a picture of your belly button to John. But Al, don't believe that we can't put my email address out there. Good Lord, send him a photo of your belly button. We have an on brand note, email address or personal account. Oh, one thing before we get, I'm sorry that I did remember that I wanted to bring up about Cabbage Patch kids and my mom, my sweet mom who have told the story would take lacrosse alligators off the socks and put them on polo shirts just so like, we fit in with the kids for Cabbage Patch kids instead of getting in the high end like a Corbridge porch kid or something cause cause they're born on a porch made out of Corbridge. That's Corbridge could be like the foam that we finally find. Where we become rich, we get rich. God, I wish I had some Corvette rare Swedish foam. It's called Corbridge. Now we're all sleeping on Corbridge pillows. That's our real core of it, isn't it? That's worth a lot. No, but she would make like you could go to like a Joanne's type store and get like a pattern. It was literally just like a picture of a cabbage patch printed and you basically just make a pillow. And she made those for my sisters, and they were very sweet. And then once the Krays died down, they ended up getting real Cabbage Patch kids. She did that with care bears, too, and they were just my sisters and loved them. They were very sweet. That's so sweet. Love my mom so much. OK, let's get into the Cabbage Patch, kids. So let's talk about the history of Cabbage Patch kids. Of course, Cabbage Patch kids started with a man. It's a man's company. You've got Xavier Roberts, the man behind Cabbage Patch. But I would like to start this story with a woman because it's a very important woman and her name is Martha Nelson Thomas. So in the early 70s, Martha would color Martha. That's her name. She was a very shy American folk artist, and she did something called soft sculpture, which I had never heard of that phrase before. I don't know if you have. Yeah, it's seems like a fancy way to say Doll, but I think it could be doll. It can be more than that. It's basically creating like a 3D object out of a soft material. So you make these sculptures instead of like at a marble or whatever you make them out of rubber or plastic or foam or fur, or just a soft material. So she was making these dolls. And long story short, Dirk outright targets. They look exactly like a cabbage patch. They had all the features of a Cabbage Patch Kid, basically in a nutshell of their Cabbage Patch kids. She called them doll babies, and they were just these doll babies. That was her name for them. Not the best name. Not quite as catchy. I have a few notes. I mean, this 1971 instead of baby dolls just like we'll call them doll babies. Listen, and I adore this woman. She's passed away, right? I'm not going to say anything negative about her, but she made these doll babies and each doll came with an envelope marked important papers. In that envelope was adoption papers. It was the name of the doll. It was a little thing that from the doll telling you the dolls, likes and dislikes, maybe this sounds familiar? Yes, ringing a lot of bells. If you're not familiar with Cabbage Patch kids, we're going to get to that. So in 1976, she's at one of these fairs, and guess who comes strutting into the fair? Matt Damon? I wish. Maybe young. Matt Damon is Xavier Roberts, a 21 year old art student who has like a shop in Georgia. He sees her dolls, falls in love with them. Asks if he can have some to sell in his shop in Georgia. She says, OK, this is a very short lived relationship. She finds out. She thinks he's selling them kind of for too little money. They're handcrafted, whatever she decides not to no longer let him have them. He tells her, Martha, I'm just going to let you know I'm going to sell these dolls one way or another, whether you make them or not. And she's like, OK, whatever that means. Well, set up spooky. I may be saying it a lot more like mainly than he did, but I don't know he is. He wanted these dolls one way or another. She didn't want him to have them. So he starts making his own line of them. He calls his line the little people. He handcrafts them. They look very similar. He modifies them just enough. The nose is a little different. The eyes are a little different. Her belly button wasn't any, and he was like, his is a big fat Audi, big fat Audi, a real cinnamon roll just stuck right on the edge. Something could non. And if you're into that, I'm sure there's people that are into. He was definitely gnawing on the belly button. Definitely. Nine on the belly buttons. It's like this big evil Xavier Roberts. He sounds like a villain. No, he actually seems like a pretty nice guy. And his story isn't. It is like it's it's not as black and white as by the end of it. It's not as black and white as it all seems. But he makes his doll. He makes his little people, though, and they become very successful. He starts on them for like $30 they end up. Some of them end up going for like a thousand dollars, and he does this business for like three years. You say three years and three years doesn't sound like a super long time, but if your friend was selling handmade dolls for three years, it would feel like an eternity. You'd be like, Is John still selling the Yes, the dolls? Yeah, he's been doing that for three years. Yeah, like that would feel like a long time, right? What happens if they don't celebrate yet? They just they start piling up. So pile up. There's a lot of dolls, a lot of dolls in the dining room. And I got to say both Martha and Xavier's dolls and to a certain degree, cabbage patches, but they kind of whittled it down by that point. Not all their dolls were attractive. Baby size dolls, some of them are huge. Some of them are like the size of like a five year old that is wild. And yeah, you just have a big floppy doll like leaning against your fireplace. Yes. So it was a disturbing scene. Listen, Martha is weaved throughout the years of this story. I'm going to wrap her up a little bit just to kind of finish telling. Her story just for conciseness. OK, so Martha, and does end up suing him over his dogs looking like her dogs. The thing is, he had changed his just enough to get a copyright. She never got a copyright. She is an artist. She didn't know that was something you had to do. They kind of went back and forth in court for several years. They eventually did settle out of court. She wasn't allowed to talk about it afterwards, so she got nobody knows how much she got, but she was satisfied with the sum she got. She wanted to put it behind her. She did say that her kids were able to go to college, and I think she got probably a decent amount of money, nothing compared to like the entire sure hope. It was a pretty penny. I hope it was a pretty penny to because I 1000 percent believe that Cabbage Patch dolls would not exist at all, absolutely if it weren't for her. But, you know, her kids are interviewed in that documentary song, and even by the end, they did say like what Xavier did with these dolls is not something that she would have been able to do. It wasn't what she wanted to do. Like, he wanted them to go around the world and be successful. So it was like more of like an artisan making a little bespoke handmade product you wanted to like, be in Toys R US, basically. Yeah. Well, actually, that's not even quite as linear because I take that back a little bit when he was selling his individual dolls. He was selling them mostly to adults like he wasn't really that interested in science kids. He saw his dolls more as art than a toy. Wow. And that is why, if you don't know, he famously had his signature is on every Cabbage Patch doll. Yes, so on the butt cheek of every doll, it says Xavier Roberts. And that started with him, with his little people. And he did that because he saw them as works of art. And that's what you do with the work of art. Why sign the a*s? A lot of people in the documentary that was a whole like, three minute thing in the documentary, like, it's so weird that he did the a*s and blah blah blah. I mean that little strings seem to make the butt cheek. They're a little strange. Seem to delineate the part that you could just like, pluck like a guitar. I mean, there's a lot of detail I would assign the foot. That's just me. Yeah, I guess. I don't know. Who knows? You would have signed the a*s? No. But I could see why you would do the ask. Because covered up, it's not like in your face the foot. You're probably going to see the exposed foot more than you are the a*s. I'm comfortable saying he is weird. Also, I might throw around the word weird to describe the people who are super fans of Cabbage Patch dolls, and that's something I'm comfortable with. Yeah, I think it's safe to say that they're weird. So he you know, he does, like I said, he did this for a few years, he ended up hiring some school friends and they worked like with his mom to make make all these doors because business was getting so good, it finally got so successful that he needed to grow. He needed to leave the house. It's very much like Yankee Candle. You can only be in the home with your parents for so long if you have a successful business. So what did he do? He went and got like a warehouse space. No, he found an abandoned medical clinic and took over that. And what he created was the Baby Land General Hospital. So this was actually this is kind of like Martha. I'm going to go through the hospital really quickly, as it is now. It took years for it to evolve into exactly what it is. But let's just go through quickly your experience, which you can still go to today if you want to. The Baby Land General Hospital. Wow. When you first enter the hospital, you're greeted by a nurse. You sign in like you would at any hospital, huh? And then you kind of get yourself a self-guided tour. You'll go into a room that has display cases with vintage little people. Some of them are extremely valuable. You can go through several different rooms that have new cabbage patches. There's local artist in Georgia where this is located that may still make hand stitch ones there. Everything's immediately available for adoption. But the centerpiece of the hospital is the large open room, and in there you're going to find a large, magical crystal tree. And in that tree, you'll find crystals of physical crystal tree, a physical thing, a big tree in the middle of the room with crystals hanging from it, surrounded by cabbage patches with baby heads in them. So what you're going to want to do when you're in this room is wait for an announcement that there's a mother cabbage that's gone into labor. When you hear that you're going to want to gather around the tree, get the families, get the kids, everyone run to the trees, wind up your disposable camera, we're ready to go. Exactly. Because what you're going to find if the tree is a human nurse in a nursing home, she didn't go to nursing school for this. She wanted to save lives. She works here. I love the fact that in Georgia, like nursing school, they're like this. We have good news and we have bad news. You're not right for our program, but I'm going to give you a card. You know what? You're doing a four year residency at the Cabbage Patch Hospital, OK? This human nurse will reunite or actually act out the birth of a Cabbage Patch kid. What that means is she's going to squat down. She's going to pull a baby out of a cabbage. Uh huh. Spank it to bring it to life a naked doll, spank it and then introduce it to the audience to to how many spectators we think in 15 15 seems really generous. I picture, like me the documentary like just me and this old guy who probably was in his 60s, by the way. I don't know. I didn't do research on what their attendance is like. It must be good enough if it's still available. We have to go. We have to go. This is our first on road on brand on road trip. So, yeah, so then you know, they have these babies. That's what the whole point of this hospital is. We'll put some pictures of what that looks like on Instagram, too, because I'm trying to look that out. I pulled plenty of pictures. Oh, I forgot. If you do decide that you're going to adopt a child, for the record, you never buy a Cabbage Patch Kid's Cabbage Patch. Kids are not for sale. Cabbage Patch kids are available for adoption. You pay an adoption fee. You're not buying a child. That's an important distinction to make. It was for Xavier. It was very important. He thought that if he did that, that kids would be less likely they would take care of the doll better. Why? Because if you adopt a child at this hospital, you were then taken in to an adoption office where you take an oath of adoption, where you promise to take care of this baby. Wow. And you were their parent, and this is now your child, and this is the oath that you take. And one year later, you will get a birthday card or like a one year anniversary card in the mail, congratulating on making it a year with your adopted child. Does Xavier do like home visits to ensure that the child is still being cared for? You laugh. But in its heyday, he did go on like signing tours like he would go around like a rock star and actually sign your dolls, but a nut? Yeah, it was a it was a scene man who inseminated the cabbage. I have that answer. I know Xavier. I know how it all happens. We're going to get to that. We're so close to it, actually. You know what? Let's get to it now. So at his peak success with making his little people. This guy named Roger Schleifer came up to him and was like, Look, I think what you're doing is great. I think it should be licensed to a toy company. Let's get these out there. I want to be your guy. I'll go ourselves. And Xavier had no interest in having a company and doing this, but he loved the idea of it being out there, so he agreed to it. So this guy, Roger takes it out to all the big toy companies and they're all like, What is this? They're like, Absolutely not. This is the ugliest thing I've ever seen. This is not marketable. Get out of my office. Don't we love, by the way, a get out of my office story like something that has gone on to be wildly successful, that it began with a get out of my office. I love. I even put a note in there. It reminds me of like Harry Potter and all those things. I was like, every successful thing has to be rejected by everybody in order for it to be what it becomes. For sure, I find those stories very inspiring. I do, too, and this is one of those cases. So he finally takes it to Calico. And I don't know if you're familiar with Calico. Another very 80s brand, it was known, mostly known probably for being like a portable electronics gaming kind of company. Weirdly enough, just a side note I learned this in the documentary. In the 60s, Calico was known as the number one manufacturer of above ground swimming pools. So this is a company that was on a journey like they were the number one swimming pool company. Then they gobbled up a bunch of toy companies and then they did electronics. And they're kind of an interesting company. That's wild. So Roger Chase, it took Calico and they're like, You know what? We can see this. I think that we can do something with these dolls. And they decide to do a licensing deal with them. So they had a couple caveats. They were like, if we're going to do a doll, we feel like all the dolls should be the same. They should be blond, they should have blue eyes. And Xavier was very adamant about this. And this is kind of what makes me like them a little bit more. I still think they're ugly, but he was like, Here's the thing with cabbage patches, I want it to be like real life. I want it to be the real world. I want everyone to be able to find themselves in these doors. And if you remember, they came in every skin tone and he won that argument. So because of them insisting that what became the big question was how to do that. So they've got this company, that's a toy manufacturer, and they're going to mass produce these dolls. But they wanted every dollar to be different. And those two things contradict themselves, like the whole point of mass production, is that everything looks the same for sure. So they had to bring in like this doll expert couple Judy and Arnie Albert love that job. Who does it? That's such an aid. Actually, there's probably still doll experts now. Yeah, but that they're like married. I know I love. What do they talk about at dinner to be a fly on that wall guide? What do they talk about? I feel like and what I love is I feel like she gets a more press. I feel like she wears the pants in that doll family. What year is this like this? This is 80s. This is 80. Yeah, we're in 1982. So she's got her shoulder pads or pumps. Oh my tilapia. At the dinner table, she's yammering about doll business tilapia. They order like when it was super expensive to have food ordered like some from some fancy restaurant. Wow. She's totally inspired by working girl like she is living that life. Wow, what a fantasy. So they come up with this whole thing, like to use computers and come up with this whole way for them to create these individual dolls. So apparently, unless it's a set of twins, no two cabbage patches look alike and it's gone. That's what they say. None. That's what they said. I mean, how are we ever going to prove it? We're going to now spend the next three years looking for two cabbage. There's probably four options for hair color. OK. Let's talk about you have long hair, you have short hair, you have curly hair, you have ponytail hair. You have all the different styles of hair. Yes, you have all the different colors of hair. You have all the colors of eyes. You have dimple one, dimple two, dimple other dimple. You have freckles, you have outfits. There's so many components. Even this feels like 80 possible iterations. You think all of that? Yeah. Well, I think that's 80. I'll be honest, I was trying to do the math earlier today. I was like, How does that work? I don't know, but that's what saying no to a life. They say that. No, because the head is the same. OK, so something no dimple. The face shape like none have like strong jawline buck teeth like nobody. Oh, there was definitely some with buck teeth. But I do think there might have even been subtle changes with head, which was another component high cheekbones, high cheek, big nose, little nose blush, no blush, red lip, no bold lip, smokey eye, no lip mom. You got the no lip wins. The only one left mom Hawaii is mine. Just a blank face that was Black Friday. There was just a painful and no lips. This is what you get. You're lucky to get it. Black Friday, no lip. I love it. Everything must go. So whatever they did with this, they kept bringing up the computer. So I know the computer was a very important element of it. There'd be a scene in the movie of this, this working girl woman like crunching the numbers I see like 80's hacker like code streaming down the screen as she's like figuring out how to come up with this on the computer. Yeah, and that's on one side of the screen. The other side, the screen has a very light doctor doll had a green printed doll. I had it slowly spinning around its lips. Come on in. She's clicking on the spacebar and it's like lips on lifts off space. Far more. One Dimple, two dimple. Like, yeah, it's like a whole montage. Her husband, Matt Damon's pacing in the background. It's like, we've got to solve this riddle. How do you make an individually mass-produced doll? And you know what? They did it. They did it. They did it. And that is what became the Cabbage Patch here. The reason it's called the Cabbage Patch Kid is because little people, as we know from our Fisher-Price episode, was already taken. Yes, by Fisher Price. So Xavier said, let's call them Cabbage Patch kids, because if it ever came up where babies came from, I guess a lot of mothers at that time would say they came from the Cabbage Patch. He wasn't eating like a cabbage salad. We'll call them tilapia, 'cause if it's just whatever he was eating at the time, no, it was something that he got from his mom. So now, like I said, I do want to get into the law. So when this went to Calico and they changed the name to Cabbage Patch. Roger, if you remember, the license guy was like, You know, I feel like we need to have the story behind the Cabbage Patch kids. If the name is Cabbage Patch, you have to provide some context. You need a back story. You can't just show a baby's head being birthed out of a cabbage and go. You figure out what the hell that means. You need a booklet, honey, you're on your own. I do too. Like in the world we live in today, it would come with no booklet. Yeah, in the 80s, you're going to get like a like a hard drive around the book, like three page book with drawings and the whole back story. Absolutely. So it's like a QR code to download the Cabbage Patch PDF. Don't get me started on my love and hate for QR. QR codes are the hideous were hideous. I have to scan a code and look at a menu on my phone that gets terrible reception everywhere. Terrible. Don't get me started. Don't even get me started. Now, if you'll indulge me, I would like to share with you and Alister and all the boys and girls out there in Portland. The Legend of the Cabbage Patch, kids. Once upon a time, a young boy named Xavier Roberts was playing in the woods near his home in the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, a curious creature buzzed by his head. It looked like a bunny, but it flew in the air and buzz like a b x. Xavier started chasing it and it flew into a waterfall and disappeared. Xavier thought the Boney B had drowned, but he found a cave behind the waterfall. The cave was full of millions of beautiful, sparkling crystals of all sizes and colors. He saw the bunny be flying off deep into the cave, and he followed. They got to the end of the cave, but the opening was covered with kudzu vines, so you couldn't see what was on the other side. Xavier took out his pocket knife to cut away some of the vines and poked his head in and there were cabbages everywhere. Bunny bees were flying all around, sprinkling magic dust from the crystals onto the cabbages. There was something different about these cabbages. Xavier thought there was movement over there by the cabbage leaves and there were lots of small children and babies sleeping and playing among the cabbages from the nearest cabbage. A little boy came towards Xavier and introduced himself as Otis Lee, one of the Cabbage Patch kids. Otis Li explained The Cabbage Patch kids are kids and babies that are born in the secret cabbage patch. The bunny bees flying all around sprinkle magic crystal dust on the mother cabbages and the magic causes Cabbage Patch kids to be born in the Cabbage Patch. But the garden has been neglected. They needed to be kept safe from being forced to work in the gold mines operated by the villainous Lavender McDaid and her partners in crime, Cabbage Jack and Bo Weasel. Young Roberts promised Otis Lee that he would build a special place called Baby Land General Hospital, where all the Cabbage Patch kids and babies can live and play until someone adopts them and takes them home. Because, after all, everyone should have a family. To love. And so that's the story. So that was intense of the Cabbage Patch kids, did you know that I didn't expect there to be like a weird child labor angle? I was shocked at the gold mine twist in the last parent. It's also gold. Mine is oddly like earthly like because everything else is magical, like crystals and bunny bees. And so it's just like, no, a gold mine. Yeah, it's that is very odd, very wild. Where do the cabbages make milk? Well, do the cabbage make milk? That's your question. After hearing all of this, since the cabbage make milk. You're wondering if they breastfeed. They have to hold two cabbages up. I think they might. I think once they're born, they're they're just on their own. I mean, some of them are born kids. They're already past the milk stage. What do they eat? Babe, I I've told you and I don't know what they eat. They're adopted. They just it's up to the parents at this point. They're no longer in our control. Oh my God, that was really a. So if you didn't know where cabbage patches come from, Cabbage Patch, kids, now you do. You know, the lower you know the hospital. You know the back story? I don't know if your team are third team. Xavier, I'm curious to know. So that's the bulk of the story of how they came to be. Now I like to go through the timeline a little bit. 1983 Let's go back to 1983. This is 40 years ago this year. Even just that is really shocking to hear. I 1983 was 40 years ago. I know. But I mean, is there anything more quintessential than the 80s than a cabbage like it's in there with, like the Rubik's Cube? It is one of the if when you hear a Cabbage Patch, I only think of the 80s for sure. And that's why it's so wild to me that this Baby Land Hospital is still doors are open because I have not seen a cabbage patch in the wild in ages. I know I don't even I can't remember ever seeing them at Target. I'm sure they seem to like something that's probably made a comeback a few times, but doesn't seem to me like I was shocking that it would still be a viable anything. Absolutely. But apparently it is enough, but not like in 1983. So in the summer of 1983, Calico starts releasing tons of commercials. This is the first time the public is hearing about it. They start selling the dolls in that summer. Some store owners are like, Why are you launching this doll in the summer? That's not when people buy dolls, you do it at Christmas. Roger went to a Macy's, one of the first places that had them, and they had, I think, he said, a couple thousand. He won on a Friday and he pretended that he wasn't involved. It was like, So what's the deal with these dolls? She's like, I don't know. She's like, I don't know why we have them. She's like, It's not Christmas. It makes no sense that we have these dolls. He leaves. They're crestfallen. He's like, Maybe she's right. Maybe nobody's going to want my little dolls. Maybe I didn't need to spend the time writing that elaborate story. What am I doing with my life? Well, he goes back to Macy's on Sunday just to see that lady's not there. The great Matt Damon moment, by the way. Hundred percent. Because not only is that sales lady, not at Macy's, neither is one Cabbage Patch doll, every one of them sold over that weekend. Every doggone he's like because of the commercials. Who knows why? Word spread, word spread. Someone back then. Word spread. Back then, there would be like a full page newspaper ad on Cabbage Patch. Kids like come to Macy's new doll in town and everyone had to have one. So the question is why that was? Why are they so popular? Well, there's a lot of reasons why this kind of is like the perfect storm doll one the media started doing press on it. It became stories in newspapers and on the news. The news breaking news. A new doll hits the scene. The belly button is blowing people's minds. Anyone with a belly button fetish you are in luck of this year, my friend. I guess probably. The news came a little later in the year when we get to the riots just to tee that up. But apparently, kids really love the adoption papers they love like that. This is like kind of new level of responsibility with one of their dolls. I found an article from a psychiatrist that says the reason he thinks that they were so popular is because the dolls were ugly and kids could relate to that because and they're kind of helpless. And kids feel that way. They feel like they're helpless and helpless. Yeah, they're unattractive. Barbie, you're like, She doesn't need me. She's a veterinarian. She has a dream house. She has a husband. She doesn't need me. She's had over 200 careers. She's got a convertible. She doesn't need me. Now this ugly potato doll over here, I can connect with this thing. Yeah, I'll adopt you. You're mine, and I will. Now someone is lesser than me. So he thinks that's part of the reason, you know something funny. I don't remember my Cabbage Patch dolls name, but I asked my mom what my sister's was because hers is the one I was playing with Philomena Areola. Is that your? Has word that was probably like one of your early passwords, accounts are really good files, you're like first email password. I was going to say about the names because they do all come with the names and they showed a million of them in the documentary. It does seem like two very random names, not like a traditional last name. It might have been like generated by that like doll expert, married couple computer whiz like they might have made, like a program that could generate 800 million seemingly nonsensical words to combine, and that would have been a very smart way to go about it. But that makes more sense than, like, that's literally for people's jobs. You're on the name team. It's 2:00 a.m. You're like Philomena Aureole. I don't know. I'm exhausted. Can I go home? Just write it down. We'll pick up in the morning. Actually, I think the signature on the butt was something that made people attracted to it because it was like it gave them a thing to look for because once they got popular, there were so many knock offs, so people were always looking on the bus to make sure that they had an original cabbage patch. Everyone you always want to have like the the right Beanie Baby, the real thing, you want the original. And then I think a lot of it was FOMO. Like it became a thing that a lot of people would say. This is really ugly, but I want one because they got one or because I know it's hard to get it. It was like a peer pressure kind of thing. Definitely. Just this whole recipe of why. And it's 1983. There's no internet. Like, what else are these? What else are people going to do? They're just going to chase a doll like they're bored at home drinking. They have to is assume. I assume so. This all comes to head in the winter of 1983, and this is when we have the Cabbage Patch riots. We now are in a position that all of these things, it's out there. It's you can't you can't look in a paper without seeing something about cabbage patches. But there's no more cabbage patches to sell. They can't. They couldn't make enough supply is no longer meeting demand. Stores are getting 100 hundred at a time if they announce that they're going to have $100 a thousand people were getting in line. This is in the dead of winter. This is all anyone wanted. This is crazy for this month, December of 1983. They would try to, like stores, would try to run it like in a civilized way. They would give people tickets and you would supposedly go in one at a time, get your dawn leave. It was mayhem. They would as soon as the door open, a crack pushed the door open. And there's so much footage of this I implore you to watch it. People rushing in, grabbing anything, they could get adults grabbing toys from kids, grabbing it from each other. There's a there's a shot of a toy store owner literally just throwing doors out into the crowd like you saw in me to lions. He's holding a baseball bat in one hand because he's worried for his life. Like people lost their minds over this now. And it's just like this dark blemish. I had a fantasy of finding like someone that was at that event. Well, and that level of violence contrasted with Christmas morning exactly the look on your child's face when they open the president and then they employ you with the bat, throwing the meat to the lion. That is just like the perfect juxtaposition. It really is. It's just one of those things where you just let your kid would rather get a Corbridge porch than grandma, you know, getting trampled on Black Friday. Nope, no problem. Getting Corbridge porches in December of 98, the store next door has has stacks and stacks of corporate forges nobody wants of. There was one story that did something that I thought was very clever. I found an ad for this in an old newspaper. They did something similar. Are you familiar with the Star Wars early bird package? No. So in 1977, Star Wars came out and it was a huge success. They weren't planning on that. And they toys for movies was not a big thing at that time, but they wanted toys for Christmas, and they had none. They literally had nothing to sell. That's so the opposite of now. That is crazy. I know it seems mind boggling. So there's the infamous story as they came up with the plan to sell the early bird box so parents would buy literally an empty box that had a certificate and had cool graphics on the front with the action figures and on the back. And it came with a certificate that said you will get these action figures in April of 1978. But they pulled off selling people basically nothing like a voucher for a future toy. Yeah. And so this story followed that example and started selling people adoption kits so you could buy an adoption paper for a cabbage patch and you were guaranteed whenever they got him in. You were in the first batch of people to get it. And they absolutely guarantee that you would get your doll by April of 1984. You know, it really slowed it down as the gestation period of a Cabbage Patch baby is too long. Well, I mean, we don't really know. I mean, I have to assume it's at least nine months. You've got that bunny being sprinkled magical crystal around trying to save those Cabbage Patch kids from being taken of a gold mine by Violet McKay, the evil assistants. And so people were trying to be very clever. But when it was all said and done and the dust settled by the end of 1983, they had sold over three million Cabbage Patch kids, and it is seen as one of the most successful doll launches in history. So that's why we're talking about it today. It did foreshadow future toy riots. I'm sure we can all remember the Tickle Me Elmo debacle of 1996, the Hatchimals in 2016, and I did not know this, but it did inspire the entire plot of the holiday film Jingle All the Way, which I've never seen. But now I kind of want to see that Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger great film who I have an autograph book from. So if anyone anybody is looking to buy an Arnold Schwarzenegger autographed biography, it is still for sale. Currently for sale hasn't made it to the storage unit yet. What price? Let's say one, twenty one, twenty one hundred and twenty dollars, OK? The price is firm one twentieth. Any brand freaks are interested in an autographed book by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Send us a message, and I don't know if this would hurt it or help it. I'm also happy to sign the book. How about you throw? You throw in a bonus surprise item, a bonus surprise from you. Like a giant item? Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, that's that's good. So that now this podcast is just a yard sale for your stuff. And so this is slowly turning into we don't make any money from podcasting, so resorting to becoming a virtual yard sale. All right, let's finish this timeline up. And then I have a fun thing to read, and then we'll call it a day. So 1984 Cabbage Patch kids earn $2 billion in 1984, and that's a lot of cabbage honey. Do you know what that is now? What, $6.1 billion today? Six point one billion dollars? Holy Moly. In a year, that's freaking insane. Insane. That's why we're talking about it today. 1985 The Cabbage Patch Kids join the young astronaut program, and the first Cabbage Patch is sent to space. You know, I like all this because people are there on their drive home from work. David, listen to us prattle on about cabbage patches for an hour and they're like, This is this really culturally significant? Well, well, well, well, yes. I forgot to mention in the end of 1983, Cabbage Patch kids are on the cover of Newsweek magazine. OK, here we go. Newsweek magazine, a cabbage patch doll, is elected president. It's funny you say that because in 2012 they did create a line of the presidential candidates as Cabbage Patch dolls to auction off for charity and raise like $32000. 1992 The Cabbage Patch kids are honored by being named the first official mascot of the U.S. Olympic team. They travel with the athletes to Barcelona for the Games, and many stay behind as friends for life with the patients of the local children's hospital. That's super nice. Great. And then in 2000, the Cabbage Patch kids were on a US postage stamp. So I mean, it doesn't get bigger than this. Maybe the most culturally significant dolls of our lifetime? It is definitely, I would say, the most culturally significant dolls of our lifetime. And so while you're driving home, you're thinking we're a bunch of fools to be talking about Cabbage Patch dolls. Maybe you'll remember that is the most cultural significance of our lifetime. OK, so something I like to do is, you know, is I like to go down little rabbit holes on the Wayback Machine. So I jumped on the Wayback Machine and I visited Cabbage Patch Dotcom in 1998, right? That was the first gram they had. And that was the 15th anniversary of Cabbage Patch. So what they were doing that year was asking people to write in and let them know, like why Cabbage Patch was significant in their lives. I spent an evening going through these letters, cute letters that people had written to Wally. What is that? Twenty six years ago about why Cabbage Patch kids were important to them. And if you'd allow me to, I'd like to share one of those with you. Great tonight. This is from a woman named Cookie. She wrote this in 1998, a year after Taylor, and it came out just one year after Titanic. She's feeling emotional after reading this. She was definitely emotional at this time because of seeing Titanic from seeing Titanic and just everything that she was going through. The letter is entitled How the Cabbage Patch Kids Helped Me Find My Mr. Right. Oh Right is spelled wri t. It was the summer of 1983, and I just returned home from a hectic day in the communications office of a large department store and adult where she's an adult. She's an adult. OK? What made you think she was it? Not just she's an adult? I owe you. I guess you were thinking that, yeah, this would be a kid who maybe this was important to them. OK, you know, this is a woman, great adult woman, huh? I've always wanted to chew on a belly, but this is serious. OK, great. Serious face. I sink into my comfortable chair and click my favorite TV talk show. Rosie O'Donnell, bad you got let me get. This is a long letter, a long letter. But yeah, I was actually thinking was probably Rosie or Oprah. OK, you keep going. You can chime in that day against authority on single women stated that any woman over the age of 40 had a better chance of being struck by lightning than she had of ever finding her. Mr. Right. A chill ran up my spine. I had always dreamed that someday find Mr. Right tall, wavy hair, blue eyes and handsome. And now, according to these authorities, that day would never be. I was 44 years old and I never married. The odds against me were overwhelming. The next day at work a co-worker. I'm laughing because I remember how it ended. I've only read this once. Oh Lord. The next day at work, a co-worker noticed my doldrums. Those are some visible doldrums of a coworker is noticing. You can't see my daughter, you know, she told me how a friend of hers had found her Mr. Right by reading a series of books on the subject. How to act, how to dress, how to cook, etc. determined to beat the odds against me. I buried my head in these books to the exclusion of friends and co-workers. Alas, it was now Christmas week, and after months of reading books on how to find Mr. Right, I came to the sad conclusion that they had made no change in my love life. Anyway, I was much too busy now to worry about such things. My phone lines were swamped with holiday callers asking questions about something called Cabbage Patch Kids. In order to gain more information on the kids, I paid the toy department manager a visit. What's a Cabbage Patch kid, I asked him. And it's not even funny yet. The handsome manager. I give you the handsome manager, flashes, smile and answered my questions with a question of his own. You mean you don't know the legend that you? He asked. All I know is my lines are busy with callers who want one for Christmas, I answered sheepishly. There's a little more to it than that, said the attractive toy manager, who then took a Cabbage Patch kid from off the crowded toy shelf and suggested we all take a soda break. Together, we sat at a booth in this store cafeteria where he whimsically introduced me to his Cabbage Patch friend Sadie Jane. I playfully shook her overstuffed hand and said, Pleased to meet you, Sadie. Sadie didn't reply, but her oval face, gleeful expression, told me she was happy to meet me too. During my conversation with the manager, I learned of Xavier in the enchanting Cabbage Patch. I also learned a lot about the handsome manager whose name actually was Mr. Right. Tall with wavy brown hair, blue eyes and single. He was truly my Mr. Right. I had been so dedicated to my reading that I had failed to notice him just across the hall from me. I threw away those books and started paying more attention to Mr. Wright. Thanks to help from the Cabbage Patch kids, we began to date and eventually married the day of our marriage. We adopted our very own first book. And although her marriage wasn't blessed with children of our own through the years, we've become mom and dad to a large family of Cabbage Patch kids. I'm glad we met at that wonderful time of year when childhood dreams and adult wishes magically come true. Cookie. Cookie. Cookie. If you happen to be one of our small but loyal listeners, or if anyone knows of a cookie that is married to a handsome old toy manager with lots of dolls, I'm guessing her name is Cookie Wright and her Facebook profile photo is probably a Cabbage Patch doll. Definitely a Cabbage Patch doll. We are obsessed with you. We worship you. We love you. And we wish you nothing but health and happiness. Oh God, that really guy. God, I'm sweating. I'm weeping. That was a lot. That was a lot. Sorry, there's been so much of me reading on this pie, but they were all things I just felt like really need to be in the show. Really special. Couple of quick, fun facts. We're almost done, guys. Are you if you're about to pull in the driveway? We're really close. I am so close. Kansas City Mailman wanted Cabbage Patch Kid so much. He flew to London in 1983 to get one. OK, we're close. We're close with another one. He scored one for his kid about four more that he donated to charity. Oh boy. Good guy, labor. We're so close to birthing this episode. Can we just get it over with? If you're ever round, Xavier never mentioned the word doll. If you need to say the word doll, you have to spell it. So when you're watching the documentary, they'll be like in the doll. And I was like, Wait, what? And then I know that you can't say Doll just for future reference. Last fun fact The Cabbage Patch Kid sued the Garbage Pail Kids because of the likeness they won. They had to change the way Garbage Pail Kids looked. Is that it? Are we done? I'm sweating. I don't know what happened, but I'm sweating. I feel like I need to sleep for 12 hours after this. This was so much to digest. I need to. I need a life size Cabbage Patch to cuddle up late and go to sleep now. A journey into the cave and out again. We've been rescued from the cave. We've we've been around the world. We've been bludgeoned by a grandma trying to get a Cabbage Patch doll and we're exhausted but so grateful. And in my defense, whether you loved it or hate it, I was doing Hallmark. So this is a last minute punishment. This is your punishment. Learning all about the Cabbage Patch kids. Ooh, that was that was a really fun one. That was a journey I hope everybody liked. Like learning about that too, because I found it very fascinating. There'll be a lot of fun support documents showing up on Instagram this week. You're going to see the first of our series of holiday videos. I wanted to give a quick shout out to a fun Apple Podcasts review that we got. And again, I know we say this all the time. If you have a second, it really helps us when you write a review on Apple podcast and now you'll see if we like it, we could read it. This is Momo. Bert was able to answer two jeopardy questions because of the Yankee Candle episode, and the nerd in him was very happy, and he was happy to exclaim to everybody how he knew the answers. My quick question to him is Why was there too? Like, was the Yankee Candle a category? Because it seemed like that would be the only way. I cannot imagine why there would be more than one jeopardy question about Yankee Candle unless it was a category. Yes, so Momo reach out to us on Instagram and give us some more details about that particular game. And I wanted to mention last week I had a question I had posed why hard cookie goes soft y soft cookie go hard in regards to staleness, and a few of our brand freaks are scientists. Apparently, the answer is a change in moisture in the cookie composition compared to the moisture composition of the air. So air will suck moisture out of a soft cookie and air will put moisture into a hard cookie. The moisture content is always trying to match the air around and a few brand freaks. I want to shout them out for answering that question. Dan J. 98, Sarah Kotz and Zoe Well, so thank you to our brand freaks scientist for answering the questions that were too dumb to even Google. I love it. So many people knew that answer. I know and a tip. If you have a soft cookie that you, this is actually very helpful for the holidays. If you have your soft cookies, you're baking for your Christmas cookies. Put a piece of bread in with the soft cookie and that will balance the moisture. Keep them soft. So there you go. A cookie tip for you. I love it. I personally, beyond exhausted from this. U u. I'm actually sweating. I'm not even lying about that. Thank you so much. This was another wonderful episode. We'll be back next week with an all new episode. In the meantime, like John mentioned. Please subscribe rate and review. Give us a positive review. Positive reviews only on Apple Podcasts. Write us if you have a brand you'd like us to talk about, or if you have a brand new brand news. We would love to hear that from you guys. A suggestion about that, and we'll be back next week. Thank you so much. Thanks for indulging me and learning all about Cabbage Patch. What a journey. See you next time ! Bye ! It's great.