Cabbage Patch Kids: First Christmas

Cabbage Patch Kids' First Christmas (1984)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Decent Christmas special has the Cabbage Patch Kids learning about the holiday for the first time. Fearing they won't find the Christmas spirit in their yard, the kids travel to the city to locate it when they happen upon an orphan trying to be adopted as well as three thieves trying to harm them. CABBAGE PATCH KIDS' FIRST Christmas is mainly going to appeal to fans of the dolls because most others probably won't find too much charm here. I think at 23-minutes the movie remains entertaining from start to finish but there's really nothing overly special here to make someone, other than fans, watch it a second time. For the most part the animation was quite good and especially the look of the children. I can vaguely remember the dolls from when I was a child and I thought the filmmakers captured the looks quite well. The biggest problem is that the adventure itself just doesn't have enough going for it to really carry the entire film. Everything's pretty predictable as you'd expect and without any major laughs or heartwarming scenes, this here just remains watchable without coming close to being a classic.

Rating this 10 completely for nostalgic reasons, it takes me back to my childhood!

I just ordered the DVD off of Amazon and watched it for the first time in about 30 years. Of course it's dated but it's still what I remember it to be! It was one of my favorite Christmas specials and I was upset when they stopped showing it. Now I'm showing it to my daycare kids and they enjoy it as well!

This holiday special was considered a "classic" in my household and was watched for many years over and over again. Having just pulled out my family's old VHS tape of holiday specials, I got the chance to watch this again for the first time in probably about 15 years or so. It still holds up as an enjoyable 80s holiday cartoon. The animation is done fairly well and while I don't know if these Cabbage Patch Kids characters were made specifically for the special or if they actually had their own dolls, they definitely look like Cabbage Patch Kids. The chance of seeing this on DVD or television are probably slim to none, but with so many 80s cartoons now getting DVD releases, who knows? The dolls are still being made to this day, I believe, so it wouldn't surprise me to see a DVD of this holiday special in stores one holiday. The villains in the movie might be a bit scary to younger children. Certainly in this day and age they do seem quite scary, thanks to their idea of kidnapping the Kids to use them to steal and also as slaves in their coal mine. Ah, the days when a kidnapping was treated so lightly.

Anyway, if you're ever able to track it down and have a fondness for the ol' Cabbage Patch, it's worth taking a look at.