Cabbage Patch Kids Connecticut's consumer protection commissioner, Mark Shiffrin. Cabbage Patch Kids Cabbage Patch Kids are a line of soft sculptured toy doll like creatures sold by Xavier Roberts and registered in the United States copyright office in 1978. The doll brand was one of the most popular toy fads of the 1980s and one of the longest-running doll franchises in the United States. The characters appeared in many other Cabbage Patch merchandising products ranging from animated cartoons to record albums to board games. According to Roberts, as a 21-year-old art student, he utilized the quilting skills he learned from his mother and
Cabbage Patch Kids to develop his own line of fabric sculptures. He called these hand-stitched, one-of-a-kind, soft fabric sculptures "The Little People". (Other soft sculpture dolls dating back to the 19th century were created using similar needle molding techniques.) His Little People were not offered for sale, but were "adopted" each with their own individual name and birth certificate. Instead of paying a purchase price, buyers of Little People would have to pay an adoption fee. The Little People were first sold at arts and crafts shows, then later at Babyland General Hospital, an old medical clinic that Roberts and his friends-turned-employees converted