Last week, we took a day trip to the outskirts of Atlanta with our BFF Emily. One of the stops was Baby Land General Hospital in Cleveland (middle of nowhere, seriously), Georgia. What is Baby Land you might be wondering? It is where all the Cabbage Patch Kids in the world are born!
Apparently, Xavier Roberts, he of Cabbage Patch Kids butt-signing fame, is from this sleepy mountain town and converted an old medical clinic into the birthplace of his famous dolls in the 1980s. Fast forward to 2010 when Roberts and his friends built a brand new Baby Land General Hospital that includes a birthing center, medical staff ("nurses" who seriously walk around in scrubs), extensive gift shop, and nursery.
Baby Land is extremely cute and seems like a wonderful place to take kids. However, I didn't see many children there...so it was extremely creepy.
A few unusual sights at Baby Land General included a room full of real medical incubators with Preemie dolls inside, speakers in the ceilings that pipe recorded baby sounds (like coos and such) into the nurseries, and last but not least, an actual birth in which a nurse pulled a doll out of a fake cabbage while saying things like "the cabbage is dilated ten leaves!" Whaaaa? Too much strange awesomeness for one building!
Video of piped-in baby noises in the nursery
To make matters weirder (and I guess better), there are
hundreds of Cabbage Patch Kids everywhere. In one plastic cabbage patch, little doll heads poke up out of the ground and move around like moles.
Cabbage Patch birth (not our video) - be warned, it is fairly graphic
Also cool was the entryway that had several walls of signed photographs from celebrities like Donald Trump (with his classic mean muggin' look), Fred Savage as a child, and 80s Michael Jackson with messages to Xavier Roberts and the Kids.
If you ever find yourself in Northern Georgia looking for something truly strange and wonderful (or if you have kids/collect cloth ones), Baby Land General Hospital is absolutely worth a visit. It is like stepping back through a time warp to a special place where the good and ridiculous stuff of the 80s never ceased to exist.
Join Us...
Posts
