On the other hand, for a kid who knows he/she was a preemie, or who has a preemie younger sibling, it might be quite appropriate for them to have a doll labeled as such. They know that newborn photos don't always show a rosy bouncing 7lb. bundle; they may have seen NICU photos of themselves or their sibling, or seen the preemie-sized clothes they once wore. Revisiting that story is perfectly ordinary play behavior.

And, honestly, this could be an example of a general addage which is that baby-sized or miniature versions of anything is cuter...

i thought kids got dolls so they could mimic and understand what their parents were doing with a new baby. a "premie" doll might help them work through the trauma of a premature sibling.

Is it really any worse than socializing girls to believe that if they grow up to be a wife and mother, rather than a CEO, they are a spawn of Satan. I stayed home for 33 years years and raised three children in a trailer house in a farming community and guess what? I raised a daughter with a Masters who teaches Algebra/Physics in Europe, a son who is a writer and a daughter studying for an art degree. I, myself, have recently gotten a retail job. I'm not a CEO, I don't have to be, because my job was to raise three children to become happy contributing parts of society and I've done that. Someone has to do your job and someone has to do mine. No one person can do it all, without or with a nanny.

i wholeheartedly agree with amanda that a big part of the preemies phase in the CPK phenomenon was well, the kids are cute, but THESE are tinier and cuter (not to m ention we don't have to spend as much money making them since they are smaller- fewer resources and materials needed). you must have one. and you think those preemies are cute? wait til you see the Koosa PETS!

i have a hard time imagining product designers sitting around thinking "lets make girls want to be moms and reinforce the nurturing stereotype! yeah!" i think it was unintentional because the people who were creating the toys at the time grew up in the era where that WAS the ideal. sure they should know better and be with "the times", but it takes time for those ideals to filter down and get diluted. i don't think it is completely gone today, but there sure have been some huge changes. in the 25 years since i've been a grade schooler Barbies have become astronauts, Dora is out exploring, and "CSI" type science kits are a huge rage (at least in my parts). i had baby dolls, princesses, and nurse kits. i think we're getting there- things are getting better, they are DEFINITELY not great, but better.

ANYWAY- back to my original point. when i was eight i wanted a preemie not because i wanted to be a mommy. i wanted one because they were THE toy to have. if you didn't have a preemie, you were nothing. you didn't get to sit in the circle of kids playing with them on the playground. the commercialization almost bothers me more than the implied future mommy-ness of it all.

PS- I am 34 years old and have no children. I do not want children. I would be a terrible mother, I am well aware of this fact. And I had EIGHT Cabbage Patch Kids of all varieties, shapes, and sizes.

PPS- I can remember all of their names. and that kind of scares me hahaha.

I'm very convinced by Penny and Haldorable's points here...children very often use play to construct and revise narratives about events in their lives, including difficult ones such as having a preemie sibling or being smaller/more delicate than the other kids.

I was recently watching a 3-year-old girl using a toy medical kit and some plush toys to re-enact a very sad day at the vet's office, as a way of coping with the family dog's sickness and death. I've never seen so much nurturing with a plastic scalpel - all the gender-neutral motor-skillsy toys in the world couldn't do much to change that. It would be a horrible scene to put into a cheerful TV commercial, but I'd expect parents to have their own insight into how their kids might use toys that simulate real-life scenarios.

As for Asian being an eye color, that's news to me!

I had a preemie doll when I was little. I had BEEN a preemie, so I related the doll being small and maybe needing a little extra help.. to the way I was small and perhaps in need of a little extra help. I thought it was cute and diaper-able. I have no real desire to have any kiddos (I'm almost 30), so I don't think it brainwashed me *too* much. :)

Did the Cabbage Patch Preemie retail for the same price as the other Cabbage Patch Kids? If so, that would have been a pretty crafty way to get the same money for a toy that required less material.

I remember the "preemies" and I remember actually thinking being a "preemie" or a small/early baby was cool. I was mildly jealous of my friends who were light at birth or born early, while I was a 9 pound baby born 3 weeks past due. So I find these dolls disturbing because of the implication that prematurity is "cute" or somehow "special." I mean, it seems kind of good for kids who were actually premature to have a toy to relate to--but it's not good at all for kids to relate prematurity to being "better" than other babies, which is what I got from it. Kind of a newborn version of being the skinniest girl in your class.

blue, green, brown, and Asian

Sometimes, there is nothing to say but WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

Holy he**, they're $199.00 each??? No wonder the only Cabbage Patch Kid I ever had was a generic handmade one!

I'm a little weirded out by this whole idea that children who are born preemie somehow need to have a doll who represents that. Most preemies go on to have perfectly healthy childhoods, so why exactly is it being impressed on these children that they are "different" from other kids?

Some deep and disturbing socialization indeed.

The only way I could possibly see this as disturbing is if it is implied that only girls should feel/respond like this, and boys absolutely should not. Otherwise, what is so disturbing about sending a message that parents should care deeply for, and even be willing to sacrifice for the good of, their children? Do we want people to become parents who don't understand that? I think that this is actually an excellent message for all children to receive.

This particular commercial did feature only females, but remember that Cabbage Patch Kids were actually marketed to boys AND girls, and were quite famous for being one of the first big-name baby dolls that were popular with both genders. Perhaps you expect them to feature both boys and girls in every single commercial just to make sure nobody ever gets the wrong idea, but overall I think you could have found many toys with much more deeply gendered messages than a Cabbage Patch Kid.

The one thing I do find disturbing is exactly what Cracked pointed out - they are romanticizing the idea of a premature baby. Even when I was a kid I was kinda creeped out by that.

Wow. Yikes. I'd totally forgotten about the CPK Preemie dolls.
I was in the appropriate age group, but I was very much not into the CPK phenomenon. In fact, one xmas I made a point to tell my mom that I didn't want one— I didn't want her going through all manner of hassle and expense to get me something I'd hate. Something about them grossed me out. To me they weren't cute. Like, at all. *shudder*

Anyway. My comment:
My memory on this is foggy, but I seem to recall that around this time— late 80s?— premature babies were getting a huge amount of press, because 1) medical tech had gotten to the point of being able to save their lives; and 2) a whole lot of them were suddenly being born. And why were there suddenly so many premature births?* I think partly #1, but wasn't that also right about when modern infertility treatment really began to take off? Surrogacy and what we then called "test-tube babies" had begun to be science fact, and those babies were often premature (and briefly famous à la "Inside Edition"). I wonder if any of that contributed to the creation of the CPK Preemies?

In fact, now that I think of it: considering the explosion in IVF and whatnot, and the attendant spike in multiple/premature births, I'm surprised there aren't more (a lot more) premature-baby dolls on the market.

____
*That is: premature births among white/well-off Americans (as depicted in much of the marketing for CPK merch). Cuz the more obvious reason we were suddenly seeing preemies all the time back then was the crack epidemic. But those were largely brown preemies, so... yeah.

Yes, how disturbing, the very idea of caring for others more than you care for self. HORRIBLE. Evil, even. Thankfully, young women and men today are much too narcissistic to ever be fooled into caring very much for others.

By providing your child with many stuffed toys, the child will be more creative and imaginative by giving each toy a different personality and name

In the craze, I got a preemie, but only because the regular Cabbage Patch Kids were sold out. Forty bucks in 1980s dollars, and I had to convince my mom to buy one for me. I didn't even want a CPK, with their over-dimpled bodies and fat plastic heads, but it was a status symbol, and I'd rather get one than to be rejected by my peers, whose status was ranked in CPK dolls. The Preemies back then had a small circle of short yarn hair on their heads. Other CPK ads showed the dolls in a hospital nursery, so the "extra special care" was referring to the special beds that real preemies had to stay in to survive. I knew this as a 7 year old. This was back in the day before the Internet and parents answered their children's questions about the differences between people. It was not about slavery to a child for life. No, that was for the Cabbage Patch Kids in wheelchairs, okay?