Babyland General Hospital

Dolls are “birthed” every hour during business hours in a procedure during which one of the resident “nurses” aids the Magic Crystal Tree in producing each doll. When the intercom announces that a Mother Cabbage is in labor, a nurse hurries to get ready for delivery of a new Cabbage Patch baby. With the nurse are the pink and blue bunnybees that pollinate the kids with crystals, determining if the newborn is a boy- blue crystal or girl- pink crystal. The nurse comments on how much the Tree is dilated and injects with “Imagicillin,” an “experimental but highly recommended” drug.

If the need arises, a “C-section” or “Cabbage section” may be administered. After the doll is successfully birthed, the audience is asked to provide suggestions for the its first two names, the third of which is always that of the adopter. Most of the time the children’s names are being chosen by the youngest kid. These names are then recorded on its certificate and on a name tag, and the doll takes a place among the hundreds that inhabit the facility’s nurseries and play environments. A full-featured Intensive Care Unit is in place to handle premature births and otherwise unhealthy newborns.

Here we are at the foot of the Magic Crystal Tree. Ask yourself whether the idea of a cabbage live-birthing a baby is more or less creepy than the idea of someone beheading baby dolls to festoon the site of an hourly New Age ritual?

Here’s the bunny bee, which sprinkled blue,* so the baby we saw born was a boy.

The nurse had a spiel that sounded well-practiced. Or maybe I mean well-worn. Or maybe I mean that she delivered it in a tone that evinced a boredom that was positively French. I was able to capture a brief video:

This is the result when things go well at the cabbage birthing. All the leaf-spawn shown here were born today. That happens to be the doll that Sg ended up picking out over there on the left.

Unfortunately, not every birth is trouble-free. Cabbage Patch Kids come in sizes ranging from bigger-than-a-2-yr-old to smaller-than-developed-country-newborns. This latter group is referred to as “premies” (as in, short for “a baby born before the standard period of pregnancy is completed”). It’s pretty clear that these pre-term cuties were developed to fit a market niche, and that a cute (if somewhat disturbing) name was assigned to the category. I’m sure you’re now thinking what I am — if they end up fielding an even smaller CPK, would those be called crack babies? Fetuses? And if the latter, would anyone other than Catholics pay CPK retail?

Hot. Mama. Nuff said.

These two are on a waiting list at a prestigious boarding academy.

I’ll tell you something about “Imagicillin”. Imagine that the word Disney uses for its technical development team members (“Imagineers”) is a passenger in an exotic sports car, careening at breakneck speed down a curvy mountain road in a light rain, the jagged boulders of “not clever enough” racing by on one side, and the vast chasm of “too clever by half” dropping precipitously away on the other. Perhaps the drive wheels of Imagineering’s car lose traction briefly. Perhaps you, dear reader, are amazed when it safely reaches the valley of respectability and slows to merge onto the interstate of acceptable usage. “Imagicillin”, attempting the same feat on that same mountain road, was involved in a wreck that made the man who operates the jaws of life stop believing in God.