How marketers kept the Cabbage Patch craze going through the summer
Party aimed to promote 'birthday' of the dolls that parents had fought to buy the year before
Christmas was still months away, but the makers of the Cabbage Patch Kids didn't want real kids to forget about their dolls.
Hence the party being held at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition on Sept. 1, 1984.
The date was key, as it was precisely one year after the birthdate assigned to the many Cabbage Patch dolls found on toy store shelves the previous year.
"According to their official Cabbage Patch doll adoption papers, every winsome and dowdy little vegetable person ever grown is one year old today," anchor George McLean explained to viewers on The National that evening.
The CBC's Eve Savory was sent to cover the birthday party that saw 10,000 soft drinks, ice cream bars and slices of cake distributed to the parents and children who attended.
"The dolls' marketers didn't just give away food, they gave away dolls," said Savory, as viewers saw footage of a boy being handed a Cabbage Patch doll after becoming one of the lucky winners of a draw.
Of course, not everyone could win a doll — like the upset sister of that same boy who won a Cabbage Patch Kid, which he graciously turned over to her.
Though, as he revealed to CBC News, he wasn't really into the Cabbage Patch dolls because "they're not boy stuff."
From what that boy said, it seemed the marketers still had work to do if there were kids out there — including him — who didn't want a Cabbage Patch doll for Christmas.
