Cabbage Patch batch
BUTLER TWP — Chelsea Huegel got her first Cabbage Patch doll as a christening gift.
The soft-bodied doll with a rattle inside so impressed the child she soon began to acquire more.
At 17 years old, Huegel's collection — estimated to number more than 1,000 — is crammed into shelves, closets and under beds.
The dolls range from the early, soft-bodied varieties to plastic versions now being made.
Some are equipped with pacifiers, which nudge a sensor inside the mouth to mute a prerecorded cry.
Some are dressed in Hawaiian clothes, with others in costumes from Russia and Spain. A few of the dolls are Olympic medalists. Others are dressed as astronauts.
"I like all of them," Chelsea explained, admitting the dolls with pacifiers were probably her favorites.
"She's got twins and triplets and quadruplets," said Chelsea's mother, Mary, of the duplicate dolls her daughter could not pass up.
"There's got to be at least 1,500 — probably close to 2,000," said her father, Don.
Although some of the dolls were purchased new, others were acquired at yard sales or passed on from friends and acquaintances.
Caring about the dolls more than about the strategy of collecting them, Mary Huegel said the purchases are made locally instead of through online sources.
Frequenting neighborhood yard sales for consecutive years, Mary Huegel said some people at the yard sale sites have come to remember her daughter.
"Here comes the Cabbage Patch girl: Come here, I have a doll for you," Mary said of comments from yard sale hosts who have begun to set the dolls aside, anticipating their visit.
"She always tells them (the dolls) are going to a good home and a big family," Mary said, adding the Huegels are grateful for such thoughtfulness from strangers.
The dolls, which originated in the late 1970s, were first called Cabbage Patch Kids. They were designed by Georgia sculptor Xavier Roberts, who used cloth for the bodies and yarn for hair.Each doll was slightly different than the next, and each went to its "adoptive" owner with a birth certificate and name.In the early 1980s, rights to create the dolls were granted to the Coleco toy company, which began manufacturing the heads of vinyl instead of cloth. Hasbro began creating the dolls in 1989, with Mattel receiving rights in 1994.Current dolls in the mass market are made with a cloth body and vinyl heads, however the doll's creator continues to make a hand-stitched version, said Margaret Hata, director of corporate communications for Cabbage Patch Kids Original Appalachian Artwork in Cleveland, Georgia.Hata said the company couldn't meet consumer demand the Christmas they were first released, and some of the dolls in original condition from that year and subsequent years are worth $700 to $800 to collectors. The astronaut is one such example, she said.But Chelsea says her motive is not having the rarest dolls or the largest collection — she simply likes the nostalgic toys."They're just my favorite doll," she said.The Huegels say they know of no one with as many Cabbage Patch dolls as Chelsea, and they have no way of finding out — since Guinness World Records doesn't document collections.Despite the number of dolls Chelsea has amassed, Mary Huegel said she occasionally stumbles upon a model not currently in her daughter's collection.Also despite the volume of dolls, the Huegels have not yet encountered a doll identified on its birth certificate as Chelsea.
