Christmas morning 1983: All the presents in the Fleming household had been unwrapped — or so I thought.
But then a package that had been hidden behind the tree “caught” my Dad’s eye.
It was for me. Ripping into the paper on the oddly shaped box, I came face to face with a chubby face smiling back at me. My very own Cabbage Patch Kid.
The name on her birth certificate? Zena Dena.
She was awesome, and I felt like the luckiest kid in the world.
That year, everyone had asked Santa for a Cabbage Patch Kid — but the big guy could not deliver them to all the deserving kids for reasons too sophisticated for my kindergarten brain to understand.
I recently asked my mom how she procured my precious Zena Dena.
I had long imagined her waking up at the crack of dawn, entering Toys “R” Us, grabbing a wiffle bat and jousting her way to the doll.
But no elbows were thrown.
“Our neighbor had a few, and she asked if I wanted to buy one for you,” she told me.
Not every Cabbage Patch Kid had such a bloodless introduction to their loving homes.
In a new documentary out Friday, “Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids,” director Andrew Jenks peels back the layers of cabbage leaves to tell the zany story how these baby sized cuddly dolls became a pop-culture juggernaut — and ushered in an era of Black Friday retail violence.
Forty years ago, adults flooded malls and toy stores, physically brawling to get their hands on this “It” toy.
In November 1983, the stories — and the injuries — racked up quickly.
Continued…
Approved ~ MJM
