HOULTON, Maine — For Hillary Martin, it was the Christmas that she received her first Cabbage Patch Doll.
That holiday in the early 1980’s, she recalled Monday, was the 42-year-old’s most memorable Christmas, the time that she got the gift that she had longed for “all year long.”
“Cabbage Patch Dolls were huge in the 1980’s, they were essentially the ‘Tickle Me Elmo’s’ that Christmas,” she said, referring to the coveted toy that every child wanted to see under the tree when it came out in 1996. “My friends and I kept seeing them advertised all year on television, but they were pretty hard to get at the time. I remember that I wanted one for my birthday in March and my mother told me that there was a huge waiting list because the local stores around here didn’t have enough of them.”
Invented by Xavier Roberts, Cabbage Patch Kids had large, hard plastic heads and soft fabric bodies, and were first produced in 1982. Each doll came with its own individual name and birth certificate.
“When I was young, I had red hair, and I wanted a doll that looked like me,” Martin recalled. “My mom had a hard time finding one, but I remember that was the last package that she gave me on Christmas morning, and I just screamed with excitement when I opened it. I took that doll everywhere and collected a few more. I wish I still had them.”
Like Martin, Jason McAfee of Presque Isle said that his most memorable Christmas gift involved a lot of waiting until he received it.
“I was a huge Star Wars [movie] fan and I still am,” he said. “My father took me to see the first movie in the franchise when it came out in 1977, and after that I was hooked. That year, I wanted a toy Millennium Falcon and a Death Star from the movie. All of my friends did, too. I had the page where they were located in the Sears catalog all dog eared by the week before Christmas.”
McAfee said that he received the Millennium Falcon that year under the tree, but he had to wait for the Death Star until his birthday in February.
In Caribou, Maria Thompson said Monday that she had many memorable holidays as a child, but her best Christmas was when she got the new bicycle that she had wanted “all year long.”
“It was a 10-speed bicycle,” she said. “At that point, I just had a regular kids bike, but my best friend had a 10-speed and I rode it all the time at her house. I was about 14-years-old then and I was so excited when I got that bike. I rode that thing until I went to college.”
