Bunting bag with attached hood. The hood is one colour/pattern, and the remainder of the outfit is another. There is lace around the armholes, the hood, and the edges of the yoke. There are also three large rows of lace around the bottom of the bag. The hood opens at the back to allow it to be put on the doll. It ties closed with a white ribbon.
Almost all of them have a curved ‘Cabbage Patch Kids’ patch on the breast. Right now my THEORY is that only the OK factory didn’t use the patch.
Courtesy of Jodi Punki PatchSS outfit with patch and OK version without patch.
This outfit was sold only on dolls manufactured in 1985 and later.
Version Information
My goal is to find every version of every outfit that was produced. Below is a record of each version of this outfit that I have, up to the date indicated. To understand clothing codes, factories and variations, please refer to the suggested readings below.
If you have an outfit that is not recorded here or does not match my information, (e.g. you have a B502D SS that is pink, not blue) I would appreciate hearing from you. Information is best sent in the form of pictures. For details on the pictures required, jump to Taking Clothing Tag Pics.
This outfit is a velour bunting bag with an attached hood. They are all solid colours. They have lace trim accented with a ribbon that runs around the sleeves, the hood, and the bottom. The hood tightens with a ribbon. Most of them have a curved logo patch on the right breast, but not all.
This outfit was only sold on dolls manufactured in 1985 and later.
Version Information
My goal is to find every version of every outfit that was produced. Below is a record of each version of this outfit that I have, up to the date indicated. To understand clothing codes, factories and variations, please refer to the suggested readings below.
If you have an outfit that is not recorded here or does not match my information, (e.g. you have a B501G SS that is pink, not purple) I would appreciate hearing from you. Information is best sent in the form of pictures. For details on the pictures required, jump to Taking Clothing Tag Pics.
Similar Outfits
25th Anniversary Bunting Bag Outfit: Although the colours are different, these outfits are very similar. For more information, visit 25th Anniversary Outfits.
The second, and fancier, line of Preemie clothing!
For basic information on preemies and their outfits, jump here.
1984 – First Series of Preemie Clothes 1985 – B Series (This Post) 1987 – Preemie Mimic Series (707 – 716) (Future Post) 1988-89 – Random outfits in the 100’s (Future Post)
What’s with the code?
I am unsure what the B stands for. I theorize it indicates that this was the second series of outfits, but I have no proof of that. These outfits have a 500s number as they were produced in 1985. For more information on this, jump to: What are Clothing Tag Codes
Some of the codes were put on the tags with stickers. It may be they were reusing leftover tags from other outfits until the correct tags were available.
The Outfits
NOTE: These outfits do not have conventionally agreed-upon names. Therefore, the names used below were created by me purely for the sake of expediency to distinguish one from the other.
There are six B Series outfits, and they were made predominately by the SS factory. However, some are OK, and some are WS. All are Chinese factories.
I do not have enough information to propose ‘primary’ factories at this time; however, so far, outfits J and K appear to be primarily from the WS factory. Based on my research to date, it seems that letters A, B, C, and I were not manufactured. The highest letter I’ve found is K.
Example: The greyed-out lines are those that I do not believe had outfits manufactured.
Almost all the BSeries outfits have the curved Cabbage Patch Kids applique on them. I have only seen one or two that did not !
Summary List
NOTE: These outfits do not have conventionally agreed-upon names. Therefore, the names used below were created by me purely for the sake of expediency to distinguish one from the other.
This is a three-piece outfit. It comes with a one-piece short-sleeved romper that is white on top and patterned at the bottom, a sleeveless vest that matches the romper pattern and has two ties at the front, and (generally) a white cap.
This outfit was most likely sold only from 1984 – 1985. Some packaged versions may have sold later than that.
Version Information
My goal is to find every version of every outfit that was produced. Below is a record of each version of this outfit that I have, up to the date indicated. To understand clothing codes, factories and variations, please refer to the suggested readings below.
If you have an outfit that is not recorded here or does not match my information, (e.g. you have a 11 B that is pink and white gingham, not green and white gingham) I would appreciate hearing from you. Information is best sent in the form of pictures. For details on the pictures required, jump to Taking Clothing Tag Pics.
Variations
> Mimic Outfit: #711 – This outfit is structurally identical to outfit #11 except that there are no ties on the vest. It doesn’t come with a bonnet but did come with knit booties instead of shoes and socks. Special thanks to Sarah Galt for first bringing this outfit to my attention.
Picture courtesy of a Francesca Pilgrim Smart
> So far, the P and FD factory outfits have the clothing tag in the vest. The OK, WW, and SS factory outfits have the clothing tag in the romper.
> I have only one example where the hat is made of the same pattern fabric as the romper, an FD factory outfit. All the rest are plain white.
NOTE: These outfits do not have conventionally agreed-upon names. Therefore, the names used below were created by me purely for the sake of expediency to distinguish one from the other.
This series came out in 1984, with the original preemies. There are 16 outfits, and they are numbered from 1 to 16 using the same coding convention as the 1983 regular kid series.
Each outfit came with a code that consists of a letter and a number. The numbers represent the outfit type, and the letters represent a specific fabric pattern or colour combination.
With this series, certain letters seem to have been produced primarily by certain factories. I call these the Primary Factory(PF) for each letter. For example, the P factory produced the letters A to C for almost all the outfits, I think. Here are the primary factories, as proposed, at this point:
However, outfits were often produced by multiple factories, not just the Primary Factory. For example, I know that outfit 8G was produced by the primary factory SS, and by the FW factory. Below, we know that 8E was produced by two factories. Can you figure out which ones?
Answer: OK, CC
As you can see above, different factories often produced different versions, even if they are given the same code. (Refer to 8E above) Consequently, checking to see if I have something recorded based on the code, factory and description is superior to using just one descriptor.
We need to record all of the factories that made each outfit, as there are often differences between them, even if some aren’t drastic differences. These differences can then be used to identify an outfit’s factory, which may help to identify the possible factory of the kid wearing it or let you know if you need it for a specific kid. These differences can include but are not limited to:
Generally, the first six outfits, all gowns, came with knit booties. Outfits #7 to #14, all came with regular shoes. Outfits #15 and #16 did not come with either.
However, there seem to always be exceptions. I am aware of at least one MIB preemie that came wearing a gown and shoes. This appears to be an exception. Maybe they ran out of booties that day? Maybe it is an example of an in-store switch?
Some of the codes on these outfits start with the letter B. e.g. B10J
Picture courtesy of Heather Woodie.
I have no concrete explanation for this. My theories:
These outfits were not produced until 1985, so were given B tags to match the 1985 B Series.
The B indicates that they were manufactured in 1985. In this case, 1984 was A but not labelled as such. As possible evidence, I have one outfit from the SS factory that has both a B tag and a non-B tag. Perhaps one was produced in 1984, and one was produced in 1985.
The B indicates they are the ‘second version’ of an outfit that was already being manufactured. However, using the evidence from theory two, I cannot see any major differences between the two SS outfits, so cannot understand why they would need a ‘second version’.
So far, the only B tagged outfits I have are on outfits #10 – #14, and only SS and WS factory outfits in letters G, H, J, and K. I will need more records to determine which of the theories, or another one not yet considered, is correct.
Other Information
> I have one outlier letter recorded, an R. It is on a #4 outfit made by the SS factory. It is odd that all the letters between L and R are otherwise empty. Could this be a factory fluke, and they used a 4R tag from the 1983 series when they ran out of whatever it was supposed to be? Do you have any other preemie outfits with the letters L-R in their code?
> There are at least two packaged versions of every preemie outfit in this series. It appears that the CC factory, which manufactured only packaged clothing, produced at least letters D and E for each outfit, except #15 & #16, which were made by the FW factory. Other versions, made by the OK, P, and other factories, also came packaged.
> The knit outfits, #15 and #16, were only available packaged and were made by the FW factory, located in China. Interestingly, they came out the same year as the 1984 series knit outfits, which were made by the EX factory, located in Taiwan. Only two versions of each outfit were produced, letters F and G. I have no idea why they chose those letters.
> Preemie Twins and preemie twin clothing were planned, but never produced. You can see them in these catalogue photos. For more information, refer to Ref 3, p. 178.
NOTE: These outfits do not have conventionally agreed-upon names. Therefore, the names used below were created by me purely for the sake of expediency to distinguish one from the other.
An overview of the various Preemie outfit series and links to more information.
Preemies are 14″ cabbage patch dolls that came out from 1984 to 1989. Hasbro then continued to produce them for a few years. They originally used a limited number of head moulds, hair types, hair colours, and eye colours. (Ref3, p.178)
The first series of Preemie clothes came out in 1984.
The second came out in 1985.
The third came out in 1987 and was a series that mimicked many of the outfits that came before.
Finally, in 1989 a few random preemie outfits were produced.
The first outfit numbers in 1983 started at 1, which makes sense.
The first twenty outfits, created for the regular-sized kids, came out in 1983, and some stayed in production for many years. Many of the foreign outfits are based on the outfits in this series. (Visit: Jesmar Clothing)
When they created the first line of preemie outfits in 1984, they used the same numbering convention. Unfortunately, that means that if you don’t know whether an outfit is a preemie outfit or a regular kid outfit, they can be easily confused. You have to know by looking at it. (Jump to: Preemie Clothing Summery and 1984 Series)
Year by Number
It was eventually pointed out to me (Ref #4, Vol. 3 Issue 9/10/11, p. 6) that the code numbers used seemed to match the year they were produced.
500s in 1985
600s in 1986
700s in 1987
800s in 1988
This makes sense! For some specific lines of kids like the Toddlers, Growing Hair kids, Splashing Kids, Talkers, and a few others, this theory works.
Talking KidToddlerSplashing Kid
The second preemie series (BSeries), which came out in 1985, also uses the same year-based numbering convention. They are numbered as a 500s series, but most are numbered B5__. Consequently, they are easier to distinguish from the regular kid 500s outfits. I wonder, did they consider the regular-sized kids outfits the A series?
The first theory about the code number being the year it came out works for many outfits, but not for all of them. Starting in 1986, some outfits no longer fit the pattern. A small addition shows up in the code to assist. To learn more jump to: Tag Codes Continued: A 2nd Theory
Series by Hundreds
Which series can be found in which hundred. To see examples of outfits in each series jump to: Series Information in Pics
There’s only a handful of 200s and they are knit BBB outfits. It’s like they didn’t realize how many numbers they’d need when they started making the series, and just continued into the 200s. That’s it.
200201202203Pictures 2 & 3 courtesy of Jodi’s Punki Patch. Picture 4 courtesy of Sarah Ransom.
The 300s
The 300s contain only the second series of Cornsilk outfits that came out in later 1986. I call these the Wacky and Layered Cornsilk Series 2. That’s it.
Picture 3 courtesy of Carey Reiss Jarchow.
The 400s
There are two different 400s series.
Series 1 – Sold in 1988, they have the 8- in their codes. They are all packaged regular-sized dresses produced by Coleco. So far only 4 are recorded.
Series 2 – Sold in 1990 (Transitional Period), they have the 0- in their codes and often have Hasbro tags. I have 4 outfits recorded and they are all BBB outfits.
Oddly enough, the 14″ Furskin outfits produced in 1986 are also recorded in the 430s.
The 500s
Only one series of regular outfits came out in 1985. For more information visit The 500s Series.
