The Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids Craze of 1983

In the history of all Christmases that have come to pass, there never was another that so turned the American consumer into a stark raving lunatic like the Cabbage Patch Kids craze of 1983.

During the 1983 holiday season, 3 million Cabbage Patch Kids were sold. After Black Friday, stores were sold out across the country and frustrated shoppers were in revolt. News stories documented near riots at shopping malls and retail stores across the country: a pregnant woman trampled by a crazed mob, a shopper who broke her leg in a scuffle, another who was knocked unconscious in a customer rush.

At Hamleys, the top London toy store, hundreds of people clamored for the dolls when the store opened at 9:00am on December 3rd.

The original dolls weren’t called Cabbage Patch Kids at all; they were called “Little People” and were the creation of Xavier Roberts, a Georgia artist. Xavier made his dolls like his mother made quilts. Each one was handmade, and he signed their butts with a permanent marker — later, some of them would come to be stamped (or signed and stamped).

As the “Little People” grew in popularity, he opened Babyland General, a doll hospital that specialized in adopting out “Little People.” Xavier still made each doll, but his staff dressed up in medical attire and helped families pick their perfect new addition. These dolls came with a slew of adoption paperwork which was all very official and marked them as a Babyland General official “Little People.”

These original dolls have some really distinctive things about them that set them apart and make them particularly valuable. Original “Little People” were completely soft, even the heads — later when they rebranded as Cabbage Patch Kids, they gained vinyl noggins. They also had a huge thumb which was a signature of Xavier originals. The final detail is that every single one of the early dolls was hand-signed by Xavier himself. Later in the line, they were stamped, and most, if not all, of these signatures, had an associated date which makes year identification easier!

In 1982 Coleco was given the right to produce “Little People” under a new name, Cabbage Patch Kids. They created what most people remember as Cabbage Patch Kids from their childhood — the vinyl headed, soft-bodied, yarn-haired dolls that sold in stores all over the world.

“What we are experiencing is an unprecedented consumer demand for the dolls,” said a Coleco spokeswoman.

To satisfy the demand, Coleco promised to increase production significantly, but many store owners across the country were telling disappointed shoppers that more than likely they would not ever have enough to meet demand before Christmas.

Hamleys toy store, London

Hamleys toy store, London

Hamleys toy store, London

Hamleys toy store, London

See more»

Vintage Photos of Mr. T and Nancy Reagan Teamed Up to Light Up the White House Christmas Decorations in 1983

On December 12, 1983, Mr. T, star of The A-Team shed his tough guy image and donned a Santa Claus costume to assist First Lady Nancy Reagan in unveiling the Christmas decorations at the White House.

In a 2008 interview with The Independent, Mr. T admitted his invitation to the White House was one of the biggest surprises of his life:

“Nancy Reagan was campaigning to get kids to say no to drugs, and they heard about me going round schools telling kids to stay away from drugs. It was a real honor for a black kid from the ghetto who grew up on welfare.”

To his further surprise, the first lady even sat on the A-team star’s lap and gave him a kiss on the forehead, perhaps a thank you for the Mr. T doll he presented her with as a gift.

Four years later, Mrs. Reagan got some help from another popular television celebrity at the 1987 White House Christmas Party. The friendly, cat loving extraterrestrial ALF.

Miss Christmas Tree, 1951

Selected ‘Miss Christmas Tree of 1951’ by 40 members of the UCLA chapter, Sigma Chi fraternity, is 24-year-old Diane Dearborn. Miss Dearborn, who arrived in the United States seven weeks ago from Paris, France, is a singer. The collegians saw her picture in a newspaper, reported “she seemed prettier that the rest of them.”

(Photos by Los Angeles Examiner/USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images)

Beautiful Pin-Up Photos of Joan Crawford as Sexy Santa in the 1920s

Christmas is coming! Here below is a set of beautiful pics that shows American actress Joan Crawford as a sexy Santa in the 1920s.

See more»

40 Cool Pics Show Gifts That Children Often Received on the '50s and '60s Christmas

Which gifts did children often get on Christmas in the 1950s and '60s? Check out these cool snaps to see.

See more»

The History of Christmas Trees – How Did the Tree Come to America

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.

Nordic Christmas with candles and candle holders on the tree – a studio photograph from the late 1800s or early 1900s.

There is no evidence that the modern custom of a Christmas tree originated in paganism. The Romans did decorate their houses with greens and lights and exchanged gifts. Late in the Middle Ages, the Germans and Scandinavians placed evergreen trees in their homes or outside their doors to show their hope in the forthcoming spring. The modern-day Christmas tree evolved from these early German traditions.

The tradition was introduced to North America in the winter of 1781 by Hessian soldiers stationed in the Province of Québec (1763–1791) to garrison the colony against American attack. General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel and his wife, the Baroness von Riedesel, held a Christmas party for the officers at Sorel, delighting their guests with a fir tree decorated with candles and fruits.

A Christmas tree for German soldiers in a temporary hospital in 1871.

The Christmas tree became very common in the United States in the early nineteenth century. The first image of a Christmas tree was published in 1836 as the frontispiece to The Stranger’s Gift by Hermann Bokum. The first mention of the Christmas tree in American literature was in a story in the 1836 edition of The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, titled “New Year’s Day”, by Catherine Maria Sedgwick, where she tells the story of a German maid decorating her mistress’s tree. Also, a woodcut of the British Royal family with their Christmas tree at Windsor Castle, initially published in The Illustrated London News December 1848, was copied in the United States at Christmas 1850, in Godey’s Lady’s Book. Godey’s copied it exactly, except for the removal of the Queen’s tiara and Prince Albert’s moustache, to remake the engraving into an American scene. The republished Godey’s image became the first widely circulated picture of a decorated evergreen Christmas tree in America. Art historian Karal Ann Marling called Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, shorn of their royal trappings, “the first influential American Christmas tree”. Folk-culture historian Alfred Lewis Shoemaker states, “In all of America there was no more important medium in spreading the Christmas tree in the decade 1850–60 than Godey’s Lady’s Book”. The image was reprinted in 1860, and by the 1870s, putting up a Christmas tree had become even more common in America.

First published image of a Christmas tree, frontispiece to Hermann Bokum’s 1836 The Stranger’s Gift.

The Queen’s Christmas tree at Windsor Castle published in The Illustrated London News, 1848.

Several cities in the United States with German connections lay claim to that country’s first Christmas tree: Windsor Locks, Connecticut, claims that a Hessian soldier put up a Christmas tree in 1777 while imprisoned at the Noden-Reed House, while the “First Christmas Tree in America” is also claimed by Easton, Pennsylvania, where German settlers purportedly erected a Christmas tree in 1816. In his diary, Matthew Zahm of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, recorded the use of a Christmas tree in 1821, leading Lancaster to also lay claim to the first Christmas tree in America. Other accounts credit Charles Follen, a German immigrant to Boston, for being the first to introduce to America the custom of decorating a Christmas tree. August Imgard, a German immigrant living in Wooster, Ohio, is said to be the first to popularize the practice of decorating a tree with candy canes. In 1847, Imgard cut a blue spruce tree from a woods outside town, had the Wooster village tinsmith construct a star, and placed the tree in his house, decorating it with paper ornaments, gilded nuts and Kuchen. German immigrant Charles Minnigerode accepted a position as a professor of humanities at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1842, where he taught Latin and Greek. Entering into the social life of the Virginia Tidewater, Minnigerode introduced the German custom of decorating an evergreen tree at Christmas at the home of law professor St. George Tucker, thereby becoming another of many influences that prompted Americans to adopt the practice at about that time. An 1853 article on Christmas customs in Pennsylvania defines them as mostly “German in origin”, including the Christmas tree, which is “planted in a flower pot filled with earth, and its branches are covered with presents, chiefly of confectionary, for the younger members of the family.” The article distinguishes between customs in different states however, claiming that in New England generally “Christmas is not much celebrated”, whereas in Pennsylvania and New York it is.

Glade jul by Viggo Johansen (1891).

When Edward H. Johnson was vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company, a predecessor of Con Edison, he created the first known electrically illuminated Christmas tree at his home in New York City in 1882. Johnson became the “Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights”.

The lyrics sung in the United States to the German tune O Tannenbaum begin “O Christmas tree...”, giving rise to the mistaken idea that the German word Tannenbaum (fir tree) means “Christmas tree”, the German word for which is instead Weihnachtsbaum.

Vintage German Cards From Early and Mid-Century That Show Female Krampus Who Punishes Bad Men

Most people know of the European Krampus who collected and punished bad children. There are quite a few German cards from early and mid-century that show a female version of Krampus who punishes bad men.

December 5th marks the pagan holiday Krampusnacht! For those of you who haven’t heard of Krampusnacht, it is the night before Saint Nicholas Day where the demonic creature Krampus comes and takes naughty children to hell.

Edward Hibberd Johnson, the Man Who Has Been Called the “Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights”

As Christmas approached in the waning days of 1882, Edward Hibberd Johnson (January 4, 1846 – September 9, 1917) joined his fellow New Yorkers in decking the halls. Then as now, Yuletide traditions ran deep, and the 36-year-old once again undertook the annual ritual of decorating the parlor of his Manhattan home with a majestic evergreen. For this particular Christmas season, however, Johnson decided to freshen the cherished holiday tradition with a state-of-the-art innovation—electric lights.

Edward Hibberd Johnson

Nearly three years had passed since Thomas Edison demonstrated the first practical light bulb, and few people were better acquainted with the emerging electrical technology than Johnson, the Wizard of Menlo Park’s trusted business associate. As a manager of the Automatic Telegraph Company in 1871, Johnson had shrewdly hired the 24-year-old Edison, but the whiz kid proved so brilliant and entrepreneurial that in short order their roles reversed and the boss became employee for the famed inventor. Johnson worked as a vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company, and he was chief engineer for the electric generation system that Edison had unveiled in lower Manhattan that September.

Edison “ate at this desk and slept in a chair,” Johnson later recalled. “In six weeks he had gone through the books, written a volume of abstracts, and made two thousand experiments... and produced a solution.”

Thomas Edison's first public demonstration of incandescent lighting, 1879.

Now at Christmastime, Johnson prepared to make some history of his own. For centuries—according to some folklore all the way back to the 1500s when Protestant reformer Martin Luther wished to replicate the wintertime sight of stars twinkling among the evergreens—people had used wax candles to illuminate their Christmas trees. The candles may have been beautiful, but they were obviously a huge fire hazard. Every year as year the holiday approached, without fail newspapers printed tragic stories about Christmas trees accidentally catching fire and houses burning to the ground, sometimes with deadly consequences.

Steel engraving of Martin Luther's Christmas Tree, from Sartain’s Magazine, circa 1860.

By replacing candles with electrical lights, Johnson not only greatly reduced the risk of Christmas trees going up in flames, he added flash and color as well. According to a reporter from the Detroit Post and Tribune who visited the home of Edison’s right-hand man, 80 brilliant red, white and blue hand-wired bulbs “about as large as an English walnut” lit up Johnson’s Christmas tree. An additional 28 lights sparkled on two wires mounted on the ceiling.

The first electric light Christmas tree, 1882.

Johnson’s electrically lit tree was revolutionary—literally. It spun in a circle six times a minute on a little pine box as its lights flashed in “a continuous twinkling of dancing colors.” An electric current drawn from Edison’s main office powered the lights and the crank that rotated the tree. “I need not tell you that the scintillating evergreen was a pretty sight,” gushed the newspaper reporter. “One can hardly imagine anything prettier.”

Unbeknownst to Johnson, he also launched the annual Yuletide tradition of trying to one-up the neighbors with dazzling Christmas light displays. Once electrical power spread to Manhattan’s Gilded Age mansions, the city’s prominent socialites coveted the novel lights to showcase their Christmas trees at their ornate holiday parties. Those first bulbs, however, lacked screw-in sockets and required the tedious process of wiring each lamp individually, a task that few had the knowledge or time to undertake. As a result, members of high society spent as much as $300 per tree to hire electricians to install lights on their conifers and be on call in case a bulb burned out or broke.

Original G.E. ad for their ‘then’ new Electric Lighting Outfit. The lights cost $12.00 to rent. That would be more than $300 in today’s dollars.

The White House Christmas tree became electrified in 1894 when President Grover Cleveland’s daughters were delighted by the evergreen that the Wheeling Register described as “very beautifully trimmed and decorated with tiny parti-colored electric lamps in place of the old time wax candles.”

The White House Christmas tree in 1899, just before Roosevelt took office.

For most of the country, however, candles still remained the primary means of illuminating trees because of the limited availability of electric power and the cost and hassle of the Christmas lights themselves. That began to change at the turn of the 20th century when the General Electric Company started to produce and sell electric Christmas lights that did not require the services of an electrician to wire. The company accentuated the safety advantages of electric lights in their advertisements in popular magazines of the day such as The Saturday Evening Post and Harper’s Bazaar. “No danger from the lights on Christmas trees when Edison Miniature Lamps are used,” boasted the copy of one ad next to a dramatic drawing of a candle-lit tree engulfed in an inferno.

In 1903, General Electric began to offer Christmas lights in eight-lamp strings, called festoons, that featured pre-wired porcelain sockets, miniature glass bulbs and a screw-in plug that attached to a wall or ceiling light socket. The $12 price for a three-festoon set was beyond the reach of most consumers, but department stores in some cities made the lights available for rental for $1.50.

Early 1900s ad featuring General Electric Christmas lights.

Now that the Christmas light industry had officially kicked off with Edison’s Christmas light kit, it was time for the U.S. to do what it does best: innovate.

Over the next two decades (and beyond), string lights became more powerful, longer-lasting, and perhaps most importantly at the time: less expensive. By 1919, G.E. made its first major innovation by debuting their flame-shaped bulbs using MAZDA tungsten filament. G.E.’s original round bulbs were then discontinued by 1922.

By the 1940s when electrification had become standard in rural America, electric lights had replaced wax candles on most Christmas trees, and the danger of trees bursting into flames had been replaced by the annual frustration of untangling gnarled webs of Christmas light strands. For that, thank Johnson, the man who has been called the “Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights.”

(via History.com)

45 Cool Pics Show What People Often Posed With on Their '60s Christmas Day

What would people often want to pose with for photographing on Christmas Day in the 1960s? Just check out these pics to see.

See more»

25 Vintage Christmas Cigarette Ads From the 1960s

“Remember all your friends who remember how great cigarettes used to taste.”

Here are a few vintage Christmas cigarette and cigar adverts from the 1960s. Including Benson & Hedges, Kool, L&M, Lucky Strike, Marlboro, Pall Mall, Tareyton, Viceroy and White Owl...

See more»