Deconstructing Product Design

Cabbage Patch Kids

Xavier Roberts and Debbie Morehead, 1978

1. No doubt most U.S. retailers remember the Christmas season of 1983 as “Invasion of the Cabbage Patch Kids,” a line of dolls named after the 1901 novel Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, by Alice Caldwell. Although the dolls themselves appear harmless enough, the parental mobs that swarmed retailers to buy them were not — long lines and irrational exuberance combined with a limited supply of dolls creating a dangerous mix of hysteria and frustration that often resulted in violence and injury, all for want of a doll. What kind of doll drives otherwise normal people to this kind of behavior? Xavier Roberts comments: “The original idea was that they were really pieces of contemporary ...