Under the cabbage leaf: the boys are back in town

Yep, it's another post for the Patch!  As a couple'a y'all undoubtedly remember, I like boy Cabbies.  I've run into folks that prefer the girls, and I like the girls too, but I do love the boys.  I do have Owen Presley, Shelley Fred, and Sammy Sloth, all of whom I love, and I also have a Mini named Graham and a figurine named Charlie.  Oh yeah, and Shelley Fred made his debut last fall, but those were my only boys until recently.  Today's Kids are more owners of the Y chromosome, but for the sake of time I'm going to focus primarily on one boy.  He's a more recent doll like Julie Emmalee is, if the mid-2000s could be considered recent.

At first glance he looks like a lovely green-eyed ginger boy.  I think I may see brown hair back there, but we'll get to that.  This chappie is a Magic Touch ColorSilk Kid.  I presume that this is some spin-off from the Cornsilk Kids of yore (due to the word "silk" being involved), but his hair also changes color in places.  According to the package my grubby little mitts are warm enuff to do the trick.

The ColorSilk Kids came out in 2006, if what I'm reading is right.  I was a senior in high school around then and I was still very fond of dolls, but with college looming I thought "Mayyyyybe tone that back a bit?"  Tone it back I did, to the point that I considered giving up the doll hobby entirely, but as y'all can see, that mindset didn't stick!  It was weird...I wasn't paying an iota of attention to Barbie or the American Girls at the time, but I still had a large porcelain Cinderella on my desk in my dorm.  She had a separate shoe and all.  Anywho, by 2006 Play Along had control of the Cabbage Patch Kids, and among the lines they released were these Magic Touch ColorSilk Kids.  True to Cabbie form there were boys and girls of all races, eye colors, and hair colors, and they all had swatches of hair that would change from one trippy color to another.  Miss Emily had one of these for awhile, a little girl named Mercedes Emilia, and she had red hair with purple and hot pink streaks.  Mercedes never got a review of her own, but she does appear in Miss Emily's first Magic Nursery review.  I like the Magic Nursery dolls, by the way; they remind me a lot of Cabbage Patch Kids with their soft bodies and outstretched "hold me" arms.  I kinda wish Mercedes Emilia had gotten her own review, though.  It would've been fun to see what Miss Emily thought of the ColorSilk Kids.

Oh well, I have my own ColorSilk Kid, and he's MIB, papers and all.  That means that he won't get saddled with a hurricane name or a shipwreck name like some of my other Cabbies did.  His name is Kory Aryan, and he has/had a birthday on December 17th.  I wonder if any Cabbies were ever born on Leap Day?  None of mine are leap babies, and the duo that I'm eyeing on eBay aren't leap babies either.

Hmmm...I'm not a huge fan of the name "Cory/Kory," but it's better than "Shelley Fred."  "Aryan" sadly has a black mark on it nowadays, but the name has Sanskrit origins that go back WAAAAAY further than the 1930s and 40s, and even now it's extremely popular in India.  Leave it to Hitler to take an old name that has no German connotations whatsoever and ruin it.  He did that with the swastika too; that WAS a symbol that dates back to ancient times and was revered among practitioners of Eastern religions, but no one can wear it now without getting the side-eye.  ANYWAY, "Cory" is of Irish origin, so that fits my doll's green eyes and red hair a bit more.  Irish and Sanskrit...never would've thunk to pair those two.  But let's face it, Cabbage Patch Kids have had some goofy name combos from the word "go."  I'm still not over "Charlene Darlene," for example.  Kory's name flows well, and thank God, it doesn't rhyme!  But so far, of the dolls that I own and haven't named, "Owen Presley" is still my favorite combo.  

Alrighty, let's slide Kory out of his box.  The old Coleco dolls were lashed to their backings with a few bits of loosely twisted twine, but I doubted Kory would be that easy to free.  Then I saw this.

Three wires lashed Kory to his package.  One around his neck, and one for each leg.  Untwist those and he was free as a bird.  Of course I made a beeline for the papers to see how different they are from the ones Cara Raelean had.  Remember how Cara's papers listed her aspiration to be a lab technician?  As it turned out, Kory's envelope only had his birth certificate and adoption paper...connected.

I think these items can be pulled apart, but I'm not gonna bother.  The back has some family history and an advertisement for MyCPK.com, which no longer exists (I checked).  Apparently there one could change the name of their Cabbie, important if someone had had an issue with the name "Aryan" or with any other name they got.  The "receive a birthday card on the doll's first birthday" gimmick was apparently still alive and well in 2006.  Julie Emmalee's paperwork is the same as Kory's for the most part, except for the name and the birthday.

TANGENT ALERT:  Kory's family history made my tornado buff self lift an eyebrow.  A quick perusal of Cara's and Shelley's papers revealed that they too have this info, but I had my head up my rear last summer so I didn't notice.

Yes, the tornado buff.  I guess this dolly history is implying that Kory's "mother" was born in Gainesville, Georgia.  Gainesville has a long history of being hit by violent tornadoes, the most significant being in 1936.  The Cliffs Notes story of the 1936 tornadoes at Tupelo, Mississippi and Gainesville, Georgia can be found HERE, and an excruciatingly detailed version can be found HERE.  By the way, if any of y'all like Elvis Presley, pay attention to the Tupelo tornado, because Elvis was there.  He was a little over a year old at the time and didn't remember the tornado, but he WAS there.  This created some slightly humorous dialogue between my daddy and me during an episode of Wrath of God:

NARRATOR:  All over town people took shelter, including a one-year-old boy who would later become Tupelo's most famous son.  <displays a picture of the child>
ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD ME:  Who???
DADDY (emphatically):  Elllllvis!!!
ME (to myself):  Yeah, right.

Daddy was notorious for pulling my leg, so I thought he was up to his old tricks.  But the story of baby Elvis surviving a killer tornado is 100% true.  The child went on to become...well, ELVIS, that gyrating singer/actor/sex icon that people love to this day.  I personally am not terribly enamored with Elvis, but I don't have anything against him either.  End tangent.

Alrighty, back to Kory now!  I'm not going to discuss size too much, because by now it's kinda predictable...except that it's not.  Play Along was a division of Jakks Pacific, and as such Kory should be smaller than Idalia Gale and my other Coleco dolls.  But he's not.  Kory is very close in size to Idalia Gale, and is larger than fellow Jakks Pacific doll Iris Evangeline.  He is slimmer than Idalia, though; Idalia is very firmly stuffed.

As another brief aside, Iris Evangeline is a Twinkle Toes Kid.  Y'all remember how I had one of those on my bucket list?  I've got her now!

Iris is your standard blonde, blue-eyed doll, but she's wearing my favorite outfit.  Twinkle Toes Kids had five outfit options...

...and I got the one with the rainbow socks!  Thus her first name; "Iris" means "rainbow."  I threw in "Evangeline" because I liked how it sounded with "Iris."

Back to Kory again, he's a Cornsilk Kid, as are all Cabbies with fiber hair.  Before I get too deep into discussing the hair...there's a story behind the color-changing feature.  C'mon, these are CABBAGE PATCH KIDS!!!  There's ALWAYS a story involved!  Heck, there's a story about why all Cabbies have ears!  Anyway, here's the legend of how the Cabbage Patch Kids came to be, and how some of 'em ended up with ColorSilk hair.

Apparently the fabled Bunnybees had nothing to do with the ColorSilk hair.  Remember that they were tangentially responsible for Julie Emmalee's glowing locks.  Anyway, attached to Kory's wrist is a color chart, showing what color his stripes will be when they're warm and when they're cool.

The inside of the tag elaborates a bit and includes some basic instructions for triggering the color-changing feature.  It's so easy a caveman could do it.

As I predicted, Kory is only ginger up front.  His bangs are the color-changing stripes of orange and purple...

...and the rest of his hair is brown.

No biggie, I like brown hair.  Hell, my own hair is brown, though not as pretty a shade as Kory's.  Besides, this is my first Cabbie with a color-changing feature.  As y'all saw, Kory's bangs are orange and purple, and according to the color chart the orange will turn yellow and the purple will turn pink when I warm them.  Except that apparently Kory's purple highlight is violet, because it turned blue.  Jeez, what's the difference between purple and violet???  Apparently there IS a difference, but why not use some other color instead of two that look alike???  Either way Kory's orange highlights turn yellow, and his purple violet highlights turn blue.

The heat in a warm room did the trick.  I don't know what the temperature in the room was, but it was warm enuff to trigger the color change, AND Kory's hair darkened again when I moved him to a different, cooler room.  The tag recommends ice to return the colors to their original state, but if I leave Kory's hair alone long enuff it'll go back on its own.  I wonder if Kory's hair will respond to the weather around him, like Pix E. Flutters' hair does?  I bet it will.

Pix's temperature cut-off is right around sixty-six degrees Fahrenheit (rough estimate).  I'll have to wait until summer comes again to test Kory's cut-off temperature...and believe me, summer WILL come again.  Anyway, the rest of Kory's hair is brown like mine, only more vibrant in tone.  My hair is the exact color of nice, clean, kick-off-your-shoes-and-play-in-it mud, while Kory's is lighter and has a nice red cast to it.  It's delightfully soft and smooth, though to be honest I've yet to meet a Cabbie with fiber hair that didn't have soft locks.

Some of Kory's hair is gelled up in...well, I won't call them spikes, but part of his hair does stand up a bit.  The rest of it lies...mostly flat, though if I left this hair pressed against something hard it would stick up.  In profile Kory reminds me a little of a hedgehog.

The rooting is pretty good.  Short hair doesn't cover rooting as well as long hair does, and yet Kory has no obvious thin patches.  

I'm impressed!  My Cabbies with yarn hair have a thinner root job since yarn is thicker overall than fiber, but...where was I going with this???  Oh heck, I'll just say that I'm pleased with Kory's hair.  Up until I handled him I had no experience handling Cabbies with fiber hair, so I was glad to see that his hair is nice and thick.  Oh, and for the record, Iris, Leslie, Julie, and Carol have thick hair too.  Not stupid-thick, mind y'all, but they don't have bald patches or visible rooting.  I read that the old Coleco Cornsilk Kids have nylon locks, so I wonder if this too is nylon like Felicia's hair and Tiana's hair.  Either way it's pretty nice.  Just shows what Bratzillaz hair could've been.

Regarding Kory's face, I'm just gonna be honest:  I like Cabbage Patch Kids, but it sure as hell isn't because they're beautiful.  Back when my Patch numbered three I noted that these dolls can be the ugliest little goobers on the planet.  Still, it's hard to ignore the delight in Kory's face!  

Just about every major toy company has owned the Cabbage Patch Kids at some time, but they all (thankfully) followed Coleco's lead and numbered their heads.  Here's what Kory's mark looks like; it's got a "PA" for "Play Along," followed by "12."  Thus this head would be PA-12.  I've seen other Cabbies with this head, including (possibly) one of Miss Emily's dolls, Darwin Louis.

Actually, now that I look at Darwin Louis again, his mouth is shaped more like Julie Emmalee's mouth.  But regardless of head molds I love dolls with charisma, and Cabbies have plenty of that, regardless of the holding company.  They can look a little shy like Carol Kasey does, or ecstatic and giggling like Kory, or a little on the silly side like Idalia Gale.  The paint job has changed a lot over the years, particularly in the eyes.  And yet these dolls are all immediately recognizable as Cabbage Patch Kids.

I try not to show preference towards the various brands of Cabbage Patch Kids, as they all have their perks.  But I will make special note of both Play Along and Jakks Pacific Kids, as all five of mine are deliriously happy, with delightful lopsided smiles.

I like how Kory's eyes don't stare straight ahead like my other Kids' eyes do.  This reminds me a little of the Mel Birnkrant trio (So Surprised Suzie, Olivia Reese, and Marta Angela).  I also love how his eyes are green.  I have several green-eyed Cabbies, but Kory's eyes are a slightly different shade from Carol Kasey's and Candela Laura's.

Below the eyes Kory has the bubble nose that all Cabbies have, and the thick cheeks, and the smile.  Coleco Cabbies didn't have open smiles like this until...well, I'm gonna call it 1988.  Cabbies had teeth showing way before then, but the #19 head is the earliest head that has a toothy smile like Kory does.  Indeed, I've run into folks that don't care much for the #19 head.

Here's a closer look at the mouth.  It's open with a little molded tongue, and two of Kory's teeth are showing.

Those teeth aren't just spots of paint either.  They're molded in.  See the shadow?

As I noted above, Kory isn't alone in the Big Happy Smile department.  Iris Evangeline has four of her teeth showing (only two are visible here, but trust me:  she's got four teeth).  Her head is marked with a Jakks Pacific mark, JP-46.

Julie Emmalee has two upper teeth like Kory does.  Once again these are legit teeth and not spots of paint.  Her head is marked PA-1.

Leslie Emily doesn't have any teeth at all, but she's no less ecstatic.  This head is a PA-27NF head.

Point made, not all Cabbies have sedate little closed-mouthed smiles like my first three girls do.  However, it should also be noted that not all Jakks Kids are LOLing at the world.  There was another ColorSilk boy on eBay that I was sizing up, and he was a little on the shy side.  I really liked him because he had Leslie Emily's eyes and the Eleventh Doctor's bangs, but he sold.  Grady Tate, I hope you get a good home!

Moving on now.  Likely all of y'all are familiar with Cabbage Patch bodies, so I'm just gonna skim this.  Kory is made out of soft stockinette and is nice and squishy.  He's largely the same as my older Kids, except for the hands.  I touched on this when I compared Taniyah Yasmin to Stella Rae, but Imma do it again.  Shelley Fred has a seam running across his palm, while Kory's seam runs across his wrist.  This makes the hands a different shape.

For the record, Julie, Iris, and Leslie have hands like this too.  Here's Leslie's hand and Iris's. 

The Jakks Kids couldn't hold a crayon if they wanted to, though Shelley can't either due to his super-soft thumbs, LOL!  So far Idalia is the only Cabbie in my Patch who can hold a crayon.  But I like the Play Along/Jakks Pacific hand shaping better than the Coleco shaping, as my JP and PA dolls don't look like they've got rubber bands binding their palms.  Maybe I'm weird, but I always thought Coleco hands looked painful.

Now to Kory's consternation I'm gonna talk about tushie marks.  I'm basing the following info off of Diana's Patch and her studies of the signature stamps, so if I get anything wrong, forgive me.  That said, like my other Cabbies, Kory's rear is stamped, and like Coleco dolls, the year of production for Just Play dolls can be determined by the color.  Play Along used both red and blue for tushie marks in 2006, with Kory's being the latter.

LOL, when I was little and I had my old Cornsilk Kid Honoria, I remember being freaked out that she had what I called "a tattoo on her butt."  <pauses to think>  I think her mark was lavender, meaning that she dated from 1988; if it had been some other color I'd have remembered better.  The mark continued to freak me out until Sister got her own Cabbie for Christmas, and he had a "tattoo" on his butt too!  

As for clothes, Kory is wearing an outfit that is kid-friendly and boy-friendly.  Grady Tate was wearing this same getup, but ColorSilk boys also wore a striped T-shirt and blue jeans.  Kory got the colorblock T-shirt and the corduroy shorts.

I love purple and yellow together.  In my pictures the purple looks blue, but IRL it's purple.

Not much to say, really.  The yellow parts of the shirt are hemmed with contrasting thread...

...but the purple parts are not.  That bummed me a teeny bit because I like it when things contrast.  But the hems are done pretty well, so I won't harp too much.

The shirt is tagged on the left chest area.  Par for the course; most of my Cabbie clothes are tagged or labeled somewhere.

The back of the shirt closes with two tabs of Velcro.  The hooky side is facing away from Kory's body, but I'm still extra-careful to avoid snags.

Kory's shorts are pretty straightforward, being knee-length and fancy-free.  Corduroy is not a fabric I'd pick for play clothes, by the way.  Being fuzzy, it catches dirt and pet hair like mad.

The waistband closes with a Velcro fly (again the hooky side  is facing away from Kory).  No elastic or anything.  I did find a single cargo pocket, though.  I always like details like this on doll clothes.

It actually opens, too.  Kory could slip a frog or a trinket in there if he wanted.

Regarding footwear, Kory sports yellow socks that are made out of the same fabric as his shirt.  These are hemmed at the top and don't stretch much. 

Over the socks  Kory wears brown hiking boots.  These have molded details, but no painted ones.  Again, a small bummer.

The soles have nice treads, the kind that are perfect for holding mud or dog crap.  Don't ask me how I know, LOL.  The heels are marked with the Cabbies' logo.

The shoes are made of sturdy vinyl that holds its shape, so I was surprised to see they have tagboard insoles.  Those made putting the shoes back on a pain in the posterior. 

Thankfully these don't fall off at the drop of a hat like Honoria's shoes did...and like Iris's shoes still do.  

My obsession with boy Cabbies reminds me of a video I saw on YouTube.  The video was shot in 1983 when the demand for Cabbies was at an all-time high.  The person behind the camera interviewed a number of people gathered around a store called Kiddie City.  Some of the people interviewed got a doll and some did not, and one woman who DID get a doll griped "I got a boy, I wanted a girl."  She hadn't been allowed to cherry-pick her doll, I presume because store employees were trying to avoid a crazy, grabbing, destructive melee.  Since then I've found another clip where a different woman at a different store said the same thing.  Keep in mind that this was 1983, when ANY Cabbie, black, white, male, or female, was hard to find.  During both videos I muttered "Geez, lady, be glad you got a Cabbage Patch Kid at all!"  Mama was listening in too, and during the first video she commented "Aren't boys harder to find?  I'd have been thrilled to get a boy!"  I would have been thrilled too, especially considering that some of the boy dolls in that first clip were fuzzy boys.  But right now I'm just happy to have another boy, period, and another new face in my Patch...wait a minute.

My, what blue eyes you have!  Kory, what's your friend's name?

Kory:  He says Hugo Jack is his name!

Found a Russian World Traveler out-of-box but complete for a reasonable price.  He's got the #5 head (not one of my favorites), and his tag is marked "OK."  Indeed, his name is Hugo Jack.  He's not a leap baby either, but he does share a birthday with Shelley Fred.  September 1st and October 1st are both common birthdays for Cabbies.

I admit that I have a penchant for naming dolls after hurricanes, but in this case it was a coincidence.  Anywho, I consider myself lucky to have Hugo aboard since these Russian World Travelers are kinda hard to find.  In the eighties travelling to Russia wasn't a popular idea, and it's still not a popular idea forty years later.  Indeed, with the war going on it's probably downright dangerous to go to either Russia OR Ukraine!  Shame, because I'd almost kill to see St. Basil's Cathedral in real life.  Those colors are to die for.  Hmmm...I think I also said that I wanted to see La Sagrada Familia, so that's two churches now that I'd love to see before shuffling off this mortal coil.  ANYWAY, I kinda wish Hugo's shirt had the Cathedral on it; I can't really tell what these things are.

Moscow has several buildings with onion domes on them including St. Basil's, and no one said that Hugo was going specifically to Moscow.  So this could be a picture of any building in the whole huge country.  As an aside, Hugo was wearing his hat in his online sale pics, so I had no idea...

...that he's bald!  Bald like Taniyah, Cara, Stella, Owen, and Sammy.  And Charlie, can't forget him.  LOL, the hat looked like dark brown loopy hair in the picture!  No biggie, I love it when my Cabbies are bald!  They make me think of good ol' Charlie Brown.  Believe it or not, I ran into a YouTuber that didn't know that these #5 heads came bald.  Granted, the video is about two years old now, but the gal in the video likes both bald Cabbies and the #5 head.  I hope that by now she's found a bald #5 of her own.

In his papers Hugo reveals something about himself that I can totally relate to.

I'm a klutz too!  I've broken bones twice in my life, and both times I was doing something dumb and ended up tripping over my own feet.  My arms always have bruises from where I've knocked into a doorknob or a desk edge.  So believe you me, Hugo, you're in good company!  After looking at this little slip I went looking at Shelley Fred's papers, but all he said was that he loves to play all day.  Who doesn't when they're young???

Even though the #5 head is not a favorite of mine (yet), Hugo does look cute with my other big boys.  Mama says Shelley is her favorite of the boys and I...gosh, I do like Shelley, but I like all of 'em!  I do think Hugo would look better in jeans and his T-shirt (I have jeans in the mail), but he'll definitely do for now.  Alrighty, boys, bring it in for a group picture!

Well!  With Kory and Hugo joining the Patch you'd think I'd be done, right?  Wrong, LOL.  Rather, it's time to update my Cabbie bucket list.
*I'm bumping the #30 head to the top slot.  Those are hard to find, but I figure my chances of finding one are better than finding...
*A Tri-Ang gaudy yellow.  At this point I'd settle for one of the more modern dolls with sunshine-colored hair.  Tri-Ang dolls sometimes have bad eye paint, and Wicked Cool Toys produced some super-cute dolls with sunshine yellow hair.
*Still keeping an eye out for a Snacktime Kid!
*A male Kissin' Kid.  Those dolls are so nineties!  Plus, I'll never turn down an opportunity to get another boy.
*Mayyyyybe still a fuzzy boy.  I think those are awfully cute.  He doesn't have to be a red, but if he is I'll jump for joy.

I did promise Mama that I'd take it easy with dolls for the time being, but I admit that I have my eye on two other Cabbies, one Coleco and one Hasbro (I don't have any Hasbro Kids yet).  But for now Kory and Hugo and Julie help whet my appetite for cabbage.  Ewww, I actually loathe cabbage...except for sauerkraut on my hot dogs!

Happy Leap Day,
RagingMoon1987