Every doll also came with a signature on its rear end — that of Xavier Roberts, the manufacturer and supposed creator of the Cabbage Patch Kids. But a new Vice mini-documentary, “The Secret History of the Cabbage Patch Kids,” reveals that the dolls were actually invented by artist Martha Nelson Thomas, who died of ovarian cancer in 2013. According to the 16-minute doc, which is part of Vice’s American Obsessions series, Roberts stole the idea after coming across Nelson Thomas’s dolls at a fair, and eventually turned them into a $2 billion franchise.