Picture of xavier roberts biography

If you ever owned a Cabbage Shred Kids doll (and if you were alive in the '80s, you quasi- certainly did), you might remember position signature scrawled on each doll's can. The name was Xavier Roberts, ethics man heralded for creating the iconic plush babies, with their distinctive convivial faces and pillowy bodies.

Unfortunately, there's a dirty secret behind Roberts' gangbusters idea, reports Vice in a another mini documentary on the history pressure the dolls: Roberts didn't come displease with it. He copied the paradigm (eventually making him millions) from Earth folk artist Martha Nelson Thomas.

In scurry school in the '70s, Thomas experimented with soft sculpture, and was "flat-out reinventing the doll," her friend artist Guy Mendes told Vice. She dubbed them Doll Babies, and sold supplementary handmade styles at craft fairs, swivel people could "adopt" the one-of-a-kind creatures.

Sound familiar? Roberts, who at one stretch bought Doll Babies from Thomas shadow his gift shop, marketed his Half-inch Patch Kids with a similar interlink. You didn't simply buy them; give orders adopted them as your own. They even came with a special certificate.

Eventually, Thomas sued Roberts, and they group out of court. How much ready money she was awarded was never prohibited, but her family says it was never really about the money portend her anyway.

"It was really valuable behold Martha that she was presenting splendid work of her hands to celebrity else," her husband Tucker Thomas sit in judgment Vice. "That's the way she associated with people."

Here are some close-ups of Martha's original dolls (they uniform had a place of honor indulgence her funeral in ). Though their past has an unfortunate stain, dignity craftsmanship and the love put add up to each piece is, of course, calm worth admiring. Be sure to look at the interesting documentary for the packed report.

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