Babyland General Hospital

[WildHearted]

Originally Posted by dnightshade

This is very cool. Not many people know that before the patent for the Cabbage Patch kids was bought by Hasbro (or one of the big toy companies) they were individually hand-made, and autographed, by Xavier Roberts - the creator of these unique dolls. At the time they were called Little People and were a bit larger than the mass produced dolls for kids. They ran about $200 per doll and came with the "adoption" papers, etc. For a matter of fact, someone "adopting" a Little Person had to take an oath that they would care for them and love them, etc. at the time of purchase (adoption).
I got one of these Little Persons as a gift in 1982 (tho I got to pick her out, and swear to love her forever, etc.) ~Deborah Helen. She sits in my bedroom in a place of prominence to this day.

Yep. In fact, @ Babyland General, they have dolls in the style of the original ones (larger, all cloth, etc) that you can buy (although I'm sure they were recently made), along with every type of the mass-produced ones you could ever want. They also have a plethora of "exclusive" dolls that are totally unique and only sold there - those are bigger bodied but do have plastic faces [although all of the faces are differently shaped).. They give you adoption papers and all of that when you buy the doll. If you buy a doll there and request it, they will do the birthing ceremony for your doll.

I'm not sure how much they had priced originally styled ones at - I know the exclusive dolls were $70. Those were the ones I liked best, mostly because I liked how their plastic faces smelled.

I've never been much into dolls (although I had some as a child, of course, and even a couple of cheap cabbage patch dolls) but after going there, I'm telling you, I really want a Cabbage Patch doll to keep. There were several that were just crying out to me.
Literally. They had positioned some so that their arms were reaching up over a fence because they wanted to be held.