The other day Jodi Punki Patch asked me if I knew where these tags might have come from and or what they were for. I had no idea.
Looking closely, they’re from a company called ELKAY and have Made in USA in the top left corner, where the silk square labels used on CPK doll clothes don’t.
Regular CPK clothing tag
By doing some online research, I found a US company with the name ELKAY, which made children’s clothing in the 1980s. I did not find direct evidence that they produced CPK clothing; however, I could not find another company with that name that was doing anything even tangentially related to toys or children.
While discussing it with Jodi, I had a thought. Softies were often dressed in child-sized clothing.
BINGO!
Sure enough, the original outfit of one of my softies has this label in the neck. It appears that this company made at least some of the clothing used to dress softies in the mid-1980s.
This discovery leads to the following questions:
- When exactly did they make CPK related clothing?
- What softie lines did they making clothes for?
- Did they produce human kid clothing?
However, these questions will need to be looked into by Softie collectors and those at the Soft Face Place. It does not fit my blogs mandate.
About Elkay
The company was incorporated in 1965 in New York, New York. They manufactured clothing, specializing in children’s clothing. They had multiple clothing factories located in South Carolina. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1990, and the majority of the manufacturing machines were auctioned off and sold in 1991. They continued attempting to register trademarks until 1996, but none appear to have been successful.
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I worked for Elkay in the mid seventies. Yes, they did manufacture children’s clothing. I don’t remember the Cabbage Patch clothing, but now that I think back Cabbage Patch Kids came out after I left the company.