Inducted Year: 2023
Influenced by Martha Nelson Thomas’ Doll Babies, art student Xavier Roberts created fabric sculptures he called Little People in the 1970s. Roberts’ creations featured a pudgy face with close-set eyes and hair fashioned of colored yarn. Roberts did not exactly “sell” his Little People to customers. Instead, he offered the dolls up for “adoption”—in return for a fee. Roberts included a birth certificate and adoption papers with each doll.
As interest in his Little People spread, Roberts organized the Original Appalachian Artworks, Inc. The company opened BabyLand General Hospital to the public and dressed staff as doctors and nurses. The dolls soon attracted national print and television media, and Roberts’s operations struggled to satisfy consumer demand. In 1982, marketing wiz Roger L. Schlaifer acquired the exclusive worldwide licensing rights to the Little People and renamed the dolls Cabbage Patch Kids. Schlaifer created the Legend of the Cabbage Patch Kids with his wife, Susanne, and designed all elements of the new brand, ultimately licensing it to more than 100 companies. That same year Coleco Industries’ design team, headed by doll designer Judy Albert, designed the first Cabbage Patch Kids with plastic heads. The first dolls were ready in time for the 1983 holiday season.