My Patch

Jenifer, a bald #8 transitional Preemie from Hasbro with blue eyes, was my very first Cabbage Patch Kid. It must have been 1989 or around there because that’s the year that Hasbro took over manufacturing rights. I remember finding her at K-Mart and I just knew she was the one I wanted. The photo on the left is Jenifer with my daughter when we were in California. Since we moved, I haven't been able to find her. Her birth name wasn’t Jenifer, but that’s what I wanted her name to be. As a child, I didn’t think anything about keeping her certificate or anything for a memento.

Then in 1990 I received Jessica (again, not her birth name) for my birthday. Bi-Mart had a sale on CPKs so I got to pick one out. I was looking for one that looked like me, and even though I was disappointed in their new poseable bodies and “weird” outfits, I found one with blue eyes and yellow hair.

One year ago, all I had was my Jessica from childhood. I had lost her sister, Jenifer, some time in the last 8 years. The sad thing is, I didn’t even know she was gone until last year when I pulled all my childhood toys out of the plastic totes in the shed and she was nowhere to be found. Luckily I was able to find her twin on eBay.

Anyway, Easter was coming up and I wanted to give my son, who was almost 2 at the time, a little boy doll. I didn’t want the doll to be girly and I remembered that my cousin had a Cabbage Patch Kid when he was a little boy. So I looked for a CPK at a thrift store out of town, and lo’ and behold, I found a Preemie CPK in a blue outfit. Perfect! I also found a girl CPK that giggled, so I bought her for my youngest daughter. She ended up not liking her because she “wouldn’t shut up”, as my daughter would say.

I decided to look up CPKs on eBay and I found one that had been rerooted with purple hair.

She was amazing. I wanted her, but high bid was just too high for me. She sold for $117. I decided that I would learn how to reroot and restore CPKs on my own and then I could have whatever hairstyle I wanted.

So my collection began, and it kept growing, and growing . . .

I started out just buying cheap TLC (dolls in need of restoring and cleaning and perhaps rerooting) dolls on eBay that I planned on fixing up to resell to help make some money since I wasn’t working. The problem was, I kept liking the ones I got, liking others that I saw on eBay, liking the ones I’d rerooted, and now my collection is bigger than I ever thought it would be.

I purchased this guy from ebay and when I got him, was very disappointed because he was filthy, his clothes were ripped, and he smelled. He was $20 and because of the condition he was in, he should have been no more than $5.  I contacted the seller for a partial refund, refunded me $5. I scrubbed his head, and everything except the lighter spot on his cheek came out, I washed his body, and I reblushed him, so he looks much better.

The one on the right with brown hair is my daughter’s favorite. The other four are no longer with me.

This little guy is going to have monkey overalls when I ever get around to sewing them. He has a twin #8 that will also have overalls. I even have ty beanie monkeys to go with them.

The photos below are dolls that I no longer have.

I still have the Transitional in the front, far left, that I will be making into a twin because I have another one like her. Alfred, which is my son’s favorite, is in the back row, far right. The rest I no longer have.

I no longer have these:

The preemie on the far left has been rerooted. The others are gone.

My Jesmar (the only one with hair) is in the middle. I still haven’t named him yet. No name seems to fit him. He was my first Jesmar and he needed a lot of work. The others are either gone or ready for a reroot.

These are gone:

***Update: As of August 2012, I have added some CPKs, some for my collection, a lot for TLC, and I have a lot less that I sold on ebay because I needed the money, and I needed to downsize because I was running out of room