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Bobblehead doll
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A bobblehead doll, also known as a bobbing head doll, nodder, or wobbler, is a type of collectible doll.
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Encyclopedia
A bobblehead doll, also known as a bobbing head doll, nodder, or wobbler, is a type of collectible doll. Its head is often oversized compared to its body. Instead of a solid connection, its head is connected to the body by a spring in such a way that a light tap will cause the head to bobble, hence the name.
Although bobblehead dolls have been made with a wide variety of figures such as vampiric cereal pitchman Count Chocula, beat generation author Jack Kerouac, and Nobel-prize-winning geneticist James D. Watson, the figure is most associated with athletes, especially baseball players. Bobblehead dolls are sometimes given out to ticket buyers at sporting events as a promotion. Corporations including Taco Bell (the 'Yo Quiero Taco Bell' Chihuahua) , McDonald's (Ronald McDonald), and Empire Today (The Empire Man) have also produced popular bobbleheads of the characters used in their advertisements.
History
The earliest known reference to a bobblehead is thought to be in
Nikolai Gogol's 1842 short story The Overcoat, in which the main character's neck was described as "like the necks of plaster cats which wag their heads". The modern bobblehead first appeared in the 1950s. By 1960, Major League Baseball had gotten in on the action and produced a series of papier-mache bobblehead dolls, one for each team, all with the same cherubic face. The World Series held that year brought the first player-specific baseball bobbleheads, for Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Willie Mays, still all with the same face. Over the next decade, after a switch in materials from paper-mache to ceramic, bobbleheads would be produced for other sports, as well as cartoon characters. One of the most famous bobbleheads of all time also hails from this era: The Beatles bobblehead set, which is a valuable collectible today. By the mid-1970s, though, the bobblehead craze was in the process of winding down.
It would take nearly two decades before bobbleheads returned to prominence. Although older bobbleheads like the baseball teams and The Beatles were sought after by collectors during this period, new bobblehead dolls were few and far between. What finally prompted their resurgence was cheaper manufacturing processes, and the main bobblehead material switched once again, this time from ceramic to plastic. It was now possible to make bobbleheads in the very limited numbers necessary for them to be viable collectibles. The first baseball team to offer a bobblehead giveaway was the San Francisco Giants, which distributed 35,000 Willie Mays head nodders at a 1999 game.
The variety of bobbleheads on the market rose exponentially to include even relatively obscure popular culture figures and notable people. The new millennium would bring a new type of bobblehead toy, the mini-bobblehead, standing just two or three inches tall and used for cereal prizes and such.
Bobblehead dolls in culture
- The UK car insurance company "Churchill" uses a bobblehead of a bulldog as its mascot.
- In the Firefly episode "Trash", the characters discuss a shipment of bobblehead geisha dolls they smuggled and sold.
- In 2003, as a promotional stunt, cable network GSN unveiled the "Chucklehead", an 11-foot-tall, 900-pound bobblehead statue of game show host Chuck Woolery.
- Child rapper Lil Romeo's album Romeoland includes a song called "Bobblehead". The lyrics compare the act of dancing to the motion of a bobblehead, with the chorus: "...take it to the floor and act like a fool / shake it, shake it, shake it like a bobblehead..."
- In The Office episode "Valentine's Day", Dwight Schrute receives a personalized bobblehead of himself. He also has a small collection of other bobbleheads on his desk. The Dwight Bobblehead is available for sale through NBC's website. The video game based on the sitcom will feature all of the characters as bobbleheads.
- The Futurama episode "The Farnsworth Parabox" had an alternate universe (Universe 1729) where everyone appears as giant rude bobbleheaded versions of themselves.
- The law journal The Green Bag created bobblehead dolls of certain U.S. Supreme Court justices, including Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist, and John Paul Stevens.
- In Prison Break episode "Scan", fugitive Fernando Sucre steals an automobile fitted with a bobblehead of Mother Mary that cryptically appeared to nod and shake her head whenever Sucre devised a desperate idea to escape recapture.
- In Scrubs episode "My Way Home", Turk tries to make Dr. Bob Kelso choose him for making a heart transplant, by giving him a personalized bobblehead of himself.
- In the Boston Legal episode "Duck and Cover", Denny Crane (William Shatner) is seen toying with a bobblehead of himself standing on an opened law book with a gavel lying at his feet. Denny's bobblehead features a voice chip, which plays a clip of Crane delivering his trademark line, "Denny Crane!". A commercial replica of this prop, with the words "Boston Legal" on the law book base, is available through ABC's website. Like the bobblehead shown on the series, this one also features the voice Shatner proclaiming "Denny Crane".
- In 2003, TNA Wrestling released a bobblehead of D'Lo Brown. A signature mannerism of the professional wrestler was to quickly shake his head side to side like a bobblehead.
- Fallout 3 includes "Vault Boy" bobbleheads as status enhancers that are hidden throughout the game. Real life bobbleheads were produced and included with collectors editions of the game.
Bibliography
Hunter, Tim - Bobbing Head Dolls: 1960-2000 (Krause Publications, 2000)
See also
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