Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids: The Doll That’ll Eat Your Hair
At some point in history, toy manufacturers realized you couldn’t just sell a plain doll to children, each doll needed a gimmick to guarantee a sale. Cindy wasn’t going to play with a boring-ass wooden doll if she can get a Barbie that can dance, cry, and shit; sometimes doing all three at the same time.
“Mommy, Barbie had another accident while dancing.”
In 1994 Mattel gained the rights to manufacture Cabbage Patch dolls and they knew they were going to have to produce several sets with their own gimmick for huge sales. See, Cabbage Patch dolls were all the craze in the early 1980s but since then, no one had been able to capture that same magic.
Mattel was eager to try but, in the holiday season of 1996, Mattel ran into some huge problems involving some hungry dolls.
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Mattel’s Snacktime Kids
Mattel’s first few attempts to capture that 1980s magic included cabbage patch dolls with brushable teeth, miniature dolls, Cabbage Patch fairies, and the OlympiKids to coincide with the 1996 Olympics. The Olympikids and Cabbage Patch Fairies were basically just cabbage patch dolls in different clothes.
Yea but these come with gold medals, you can’t put a price on that… but it did cost $39.99
But for the fall of 1996, Mattel had something big planned. Their newest incarnation of the Cabbage Patch Kids Dolls could eat snacks. Naturally, they were called “Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kid dolls” which is a mouthful.
Playing with the doll was pretty simple. It came with several snacks like a carrot, celery, wafer cookie, french fry, etc. and all the child had to do was put the snack in the doll’s mouth. Once inserted, a battery-powered motor within the doll would move its mouth sliding the entire snack into the doll.
The snack would then fall through a hole in the doll’s back and into a backpack where the child could pick the snacks back up. In the commercial for the doll, this was described by the overly-enthusiastic narrator as “like magic”, and that is true… if you don’t understand the concept of a hole.
After the commercial aired, the Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kid dolls jump to the top of several kids’ Christmas lists and Mattel knew they had a hit. By the end of the year over half a million dolls had been sold, some reports say 700,000, either way, it was a success. Unfortunately for Mattel, there was a slight problem that threatened that success.
A Taste for Hair and Fingers
Remember that motor I mentioned that moved the doll’s mouth in order to pull the snack through the doll? Well, there wasn’t an off button for it and it couldn’t go in reverse. That’s not really a big deal except that the kids who were often playing with these dolls were girls with long hair; hair that could conveniently fit in the mouth of the doll.
By the end of the year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has received multiple reports of the dolls “eating” a child’s hair. Possibly the most well-known incident was that of 7-year-old Sarah Stevens who, while waiting for her aunt at a hair salon, got her hair caught in her Snacktime doll’s mouth.
As people took pictures for evidence and the incident was quickly reported to the media, Sara Stevens's story garnered national media attention with reports that it took 3 people over 30 minutes to dislodge the toy from Sarah’s hair.
This led to a wave of other reports popping up in multiple newspapers across the country with one parent calling the Snacktime doll, “the dolls from hell” and one reporter comparing it to the murder-loving Chucky doll from Child’s Play.
Exaggeration? Nah, look at that doll eyeing its prey
Some of you reading this might have heard that these dolls were sometimes known as the “Cannibal Cabbage Patch dolls” or, you’ve seen videos and articles that tell of horrific stories that say the dolls left children bald or ate their fingers. But are any of these stories true, were there dozens of half-bald children wandering around unable to point at things?
How Dangerous Were Cabbage Patch Snacktime Kids?
Turns out that over the years people have been repeating rumors and myths that are just over-exaggerations, and it started all the way back in 1996.
It’s important to note that the motor within the Snacktime doll wasn’t strong enough to break hair much less a finger. The motor wasn’t even strong enough to lift the doll itself up to a child’s scalp and most incidents were resolved when the portion of hair caught in the doll’s mouth was cut off.
At worst the doll left children with a bald patch, yet in many news articles I could find from 1996/97, the author or parent implies some horrible tragic event could have occurred had the doll not been removed. The doll’s motor just wasn’t strong enough to take a child’s face off, you needed lasers, John Travolta, and at the very least, a Nicolas Cage for that.
But for the Snacktime Kid’s cannibalistic tendencies to have made national news it must have been happening a lot right? Nope, by the end of 1996, there were only 35 incidents reported and several weeks after Sarah Stevens's story was reported, the number jumped to about a hundred.
If we assume there were half a million dolls sold, that’s only .0002% of the dolls that ate someone’s hair or pinched a finger. Of course, the number could be higher, people probably didn’t report it as there were no serious injuries but this wasn’t something Mattel could just ignore.
Mattel’s Response to “Cannibal” Cabbage Patch
Immediately after the first incident was reported in the paper, Mattel launched a new series of safety tests to ensure the dolls were safe. While that has major “we investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” vibes, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) also launched an investigation and ran multiple tests. Neither found any safety hazard.
But kids were still getting injured or losing hair so Mattel offered anyone who wanted to return the doll a full refund and started working with the CPSC to make a warning label. By early January 1997, when the incident number jumped to about 100, Mattel decided enough was enough and pulled the dolls off the shelves.
Although commonly reported, Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kid dolls were not, and have never been, banned. Mattel voluntarily took them off the market and issued a voluntary recall. This meant it was up to the consumer whether they wanted to return their dolls. After a few months, there were only around 2% returned.
Meanwhile, Consumer Product Safety Commission didn’t even issue an official warning about the dolls, they only issued a statement that amounted to “hey take out the batteries.” Unless you were Karen Barclay with a good guy doll, that shouldn’t have been a problem.
See, this is the kind of doll that should be recalled
In the end, the most probable reason Mattel decided to pull the doll was to stop the bad press. Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kid dolls were just one of the many lines of Cabbage Patch kids they were manufacturing so, after successfully selling almost a million dolls, ending the line wasn’t a big deal. Maybe sticking to selling the same doll in different clothing really was the best business model for Mattel.
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Quick Facts
While there have been dancing Barbies, no Barbie has ever been sold that could cry or poop. Although one version of the doll did come with a pooping dog.
At the height of their fame in 1983, many parents and collectors rushed to stores to get a Cabbage Patch doll. In what was later known as the Cabbage Patch riots several news reports showed frantic customers yelling, bum-rushing others, and fighting to get their hands on a doll.
One couple attempted to sue Mattel for $25 million due to the Snacktime doll eating some of their daughter’s hair. They claimed the amount was for emotional and physical damage. From what I could find, the lawsuit went nowhere.
Today the Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime Kid dolls are worth a couple of hundred dollars on sites like eBay depending on their condition.
