Xavier Roberts Florida in 1978. Going into business as Original Appalachian Artworks, Inc., Roberts hired local seamstresses and started producing his dolls in a converted medical clinic in his hometown of Cleveland. "Babyland General Hospital" still exists today in a new location and is a popular destination for Cabbage Patch kid enthusiasts. By 1982 the Little People had evolved into Cabbage Patch Kids, licensed to a company called Coleco. The Cabbage Patch Kids were a huge hit, quickly becoming a major toy fad. In 1984 alone 20 million were bought, and by 1999, 95 million dolls had been sold worldwide. Roberts never
Xavier Roberts in a process known as soft sculpture. He even took her idea of issuing adoption certificates for each doll. Drawing on the early German craft of needle sculpting, and from quilting skills learned from his mother, Roberts created a line of hand-crafted dolls he called, "Little People". He and a group of friends began travelling from state to state in the southeastern United States attending craft fairs and folk art exhibitions. At them, he began selling these handcrafted dolls. He won awards for his work, including a first-place ribbon for a doll named Dexter at the Osceola Craft Show in