Evil Toys : Snacktime Cabbage Patch Kids

With children the world over getting gifted with all kinds of new and exciting toys this past weekend, I figure there's no better time than now for me to kick off a brand new feature here on Freddy In Space, a recurring column that will take a look at some of the most evil toys to ever hit the marketplace ... and then promptly be pulled off store shelves for maiming, terrifying and even killing their innocent owners. Toys attacking little kids happens more often than you might think, and not just in horror movies. Let's begin our stroll through the dark side of children's toys with a look at the most demonic Cabbage Patch Kid ever unleashed upon the youth of the nation!



It's likely that everyone reading this has owned at least one Cabbage Patch Kid over the course of their lifetime. Released in the late 70's, the line of slightly creepy baby dolls became a massive fad in the 80's and are in fact still produced to this day. In the Fall of 1996, Mattel decided to up the creepy factor of the popular dolls by releasing a line of babies that actually 'eat' when you shove food into their mouths. Dubbed Snacktime Cabbage Patch Kids, the dolls came with little fake sticks of food which children were encouraged to shove into their mouths. After some animatronic chewing, the food would go through the dolls head and reappear in a backpack on the other side, giving the appearance that the doll actually consumed the play food, in an apparent attempt by Mattel to give fatass kids something to do other than shove food into their own mouths. Check out the original commercial for the line below.



The dolls became the Turbo Man of the 1996 holiday season, with half a million of them flying off store shelves at a rapid fire pace. That is, until some of the evil little babies got a little too hungry and munched on the hair and fingers of their child owners, prompting 911 calls, new warning labels and soon after, a worldwide recall. "When I picked Carly up, the doll was attached to the back of her head", one mother said, describing the time her daughter's Snacktime doll's metal roller filled mouth ripped a good portion of hair off her scalp. 35 such incidents were reported, with Mattel eventually offering a $40 refund for all owners of the doll.

After the epic failure of the dolls, Mattel President John Kramer was promptly let go.

As most evil recalled toys do, the Snacktime Cabbage Patch Dolls have become big time collectors items over the years, fetching large sums of money on sites like eBay.