'What kind of a stunt did you pull?' The story of Milwaukee's great Cabbage Patch fiasco
Chris Foran
What started as an offhand joke 40 years ago turned into a viral moment for Milwaukee — decades before there were such things as viral moments.
During their morning radio show, WKTI-FM radio personalities Bob Reitman and Gene Mueller, joking on Black Friday about the unavailability of the season's most in-demand toy, told listeners that a mercenary would fly a B-29 over County Stadium later that day — Nov. 29, 1983 — and parachute in 1,500 to 2,000 Cabbage Patch Kids dolls for the relief of desperate gift-buying parents.
“That was just two guys shooting the breeze the Friday morning after Thanksgiving," Mueller recalled in a February 2022 interview. "We came up with this goofy throwaway shtick, and that was before viral was viral and cellphones and everything.
"By the time I got off the air and I was home, I got a phone call from my boss, and he said, 'What did you guys say about Cabbage Patch dolls today?' 'Well, we made up this thing about dropping dolls from a B-29 and taking pictures of people’s credit cards out at County Stadium.' 'Well, I’m getting calls from the Brewers and they’re kind of pissed. They’re afraid there’s going to be a crowd out here. What kind of stunt did you pull?'"
The Milwaukee Journal reported that about two dozen people braved the day's bitter cold temperatures and came out to the stadium, staring up at the sky with credit cards in hand. The radio station reported getting hundreds of phone calls on it as well.
"When I heard it on the radio, I thought, 'far out,'" a south side Milwaukee resident named Lee told The Journal. He was hoping to pick up a doll for his 2-year-old daughter. He didn't think the idea of someone dropping Cabbage Patch Kids from a bomber onto the County Stadium parking lot sounded like a joke.
"It's not that far-fetched," he said. "It could be possible that somebody could do it for a publicity stunt."
Some critics thought the joke went too far, but the radio station didn't receive a lot of complaints. Reitman and Mueller's gag went national, earning write-ups (and kudos) in Time magazine and Sports Illustrated.
