Mary Lou and the Cabbage Patch Kids

I’m writing this Blog entry on what would’ve been my Mom’s 79th birthday. Happy heavenly birthday, Mom.

My siblings and I are “80s Kids”. Born in the ’70s and grew-up in the ’80s. Star Wars. GI Joe. MTV. After school specials. The Cosby Show. Miami Vice. Break Dancing. Atari.

My generation, and the ’80s, are defined by pop-culture and fads. And nothing is more early-1980s than Cabbage Patch Kids.

Before social media, somehow, fads happened. Some fads were obvious, like Star Wars action figures or anything born from the characters on Saturday morning cartoons. Other fads were driven by shopping mall culture which, by virtue of a thing being in stores (Jordache jeans, parachute pants, Member’s Only jackets), became a fad.

But some things, like Cabbage Patch Kids, literally came out of nowhere. My Mom was hooked immediately.

Cabbage Patch Kids burst onto the scene in 1983 and became so popular, so fast, they may have been the reason behind the first Black Friday and holiday season retail riots. Each Cabbage Patch Kid was unique. Each had it’s own name, it’s own birth certificate, and every Cabbage Patch Kid was just a little bit different than every other doll. Some had two dimples. Some had one dimple. Some had none. Some had bald baby heads while others had full heads of hair, and others had just little tuffs. That can’t be right, right? How could a toy company make thousands and thousands of completely unique individual toys? Well, Cabbage Patch Kids did it. The genius of this was that “shopping for a Cabbage Patch Kid” was like shopping for a puppy. Or like going to the nursery in a hospital and browsing each baby and picking out the one perfect for you.

My Mom fell in love with Cabbage Patch Kids. Well, she was known to fall in love with anything her kids were into, and my Mom is the prototype mall-shoppin’, first-in-line, fad-following ’80s Mom. Every Darth Vader looked like every other Darth Vader. But Cabbage Patch Kids broke that mold.

In 1983, my sister was 6-years-old, the sweet spot age for all toy marketers, and like very 6-year-old girl in 1983, my sister wanted a Cabbage Patch doll. And my Mom wanted to get her one. Seems easy enough, right? Go to the store. Find the Cabbage Patch dolls. Grab one. Buy it. Go home. Christmas solved.

No. Not even close. First, they sold out almost as soon as they hit stores. Second, because each was unique, sometimes even if you found a Cabbage Patch Kid at the store, it might just not be right for you.

My Mom was a great gift-giver. She shopped for Christmas like a lawyer working a major murder case. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it felt like she was out every night shopping. Hunting. Going from mall to mall to Toys R Us to Dunham’s, then another Dunham’s, then another mall. Then a Kay Bee Toys. Relentlessly hunting for and finding everything on our Christmas lists exactly as we listed them.

If I wanted the G.I. Joe hovercraft? She’d find it even if it was incredibly rare. When my brother and I were into He Man, G.I. Joe, or WWF, somehow she’d find all the guys we wanted.

My Mom was on a first-name basis with most store managers.

My parents sacrificed alot of their own time when we were kids. My Mom worked 3rd shift doing data entry because our family needed two incomes to make ends meet and have a little extra. Working 3rd shift allowed her to do Mom-Stuff (stay-at-home-Mom-stuff) during the day, be there when my brother and sister and I got home from school, allowed her to make dinner for us and we always had dinner as a family, and then she’d head off to work. Seemed normal to us. Now that I’m a parent, it was anything but “normal” and was an incredible sacrifice. My Dad would leave for work around 5am, right about the time Mom was getting off of work and …viola …Mom was there for breakfast and to send us off to school.

This dracula-esque schedule, however, gave her an incredible advantage during the Cabbage Patch era.

Right about that time, Meijer came to the metro Detroit area. Meijer was a marvel. It was a grocery store. It was a clothing store. It was a hardware store. It had housewares. And? It had a toy section. Until Meijer came to town, and a brand new one opened up at Dequindre and 16 Mile Road, we bought groceries at grocery stores and toys at toy stores. The world didn’t have Targets and Walmarts. Or at least, Sterling Heights, Michigan didn’t. And that was my entire world in 1983.

Meijer was also unique because it was open 24-hours. That was it’s thing. Open 24-hours a day. And had everything. Like, you could just go out at 3 a.m. and buy a loaf of bread, a shovel, and a coffee maker.

You could also buy toys at 5 a.m. You could buy Cabbage Patch Kids at 5 a.m.

Remember, Cabbage Patch Kids were the Tickle-Me-Elmo of 1983. The minute they hit the shelf, Moms were lined up in the aisles, they’d attack the shelves and they’d attack the boxes before some poor stockboy could unload them.

Mom worked 3rd shift. This allowed her to get to Meijer first. In fact, Mom befriended the poor stockboys and the manager of the toy department, as well as the key people at Toys R Us, and she learned when trucks arrived, which days trucks arrived, and which trucks had Cabbage Patch Kids on board. She proudly told us that she would follow the stockboys from the back, chatting with them the whole way, and she would be allowed to help cut open the boxes and start searching for the oh-so-perfect Cabbage Patch Kid. And it had to be perfect.

I’m not kidding, once she learned about the coming and going of the trucks, I think she told us she got off work at 4 a.m. or whenever, went over to Meijer, and the manager let her help unload the truck and then she was finally able to land the perfect, most beautiful Cabbage Patch Kid for my sister.

These relationships and logistical insights helped make sure we got all the characters from G.I. Joe, He Man, Strawberry Shortcakes, Barbies …you name it, she found it. If it was in the JC Penney wish list catalog and it was on our Christmas list, by God it would be under that tree on Christmas morning.

This was my Mom with everything. She lived to make others happy. I don’t ever remember her Christmas list (except the one year she actually gave my Dad a list and it was the longest shopping trip ever hunting for a “tunic top” and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a thing and my baby sister knew it, but it didn’t stop my Dad from dragging us all around to find this elusive “tunic top”).

Mom didn’t want anything except to make our faces light up on Christmas morning and our birthdays. It wasn’t about quantity or spending lots of money. No, instead, for my Mom, it was finding exactly what we wished for, or finding that perfect, perfect gift.

Judging by the 1980s mall and toy store riots, she wasn’t the only Mom like this. But she was our Mom on a constant mission of perfect gift-giving. With and emphasis on “giving.” Mom only gave. She never took. Mom was happiest when the spotlight was on us. Never on herself.

Now I’m all grown up and I’m still great at accepting and loving gifts and, sadly, I’m terrible at giving gifts. It was never about the gifts. It was about the love. And I hope I do give love, smiles, and make people happy. Like my Mom always did. Every time. 100%. And if I’m not quite 100%, yet …I’m going to get there.

Merry Christmas.