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September 25, 2018

​New Bobbleheads Celebrate 75 Years of Dirt in the Skirt

Submitted by Kelly Glass

In case you haven’t heard, there’s no crying in baseball. That line and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), were immortalized by Tom Hanks and Geena Davis in the movie, “A League of Their Own” in 1992. For the 75th anniversary of the league, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum worked together with the AAGPBL to create a new memento: the first ever bobblehead series to feature the 15 league teams. Only 500 bobbleheads were produced per team and the individually-numbered figures can be purchased for $25 each or $300 for an entire league set.

"We are thrilled to partner with the AAGPBL to celebrate the league and its players with the first comprehensive series of AAGPBL bobbleheads ever produced,” Phil Sklar, co-founder and CEO of the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, said in a release. “The women of the AAGPBL will forever be role models and these bobbleheads commemorate their tremendous contribution to sports and society. We are confident the bobbleheads will generate even more interest in the AAGPBL while inspiring women throughout the world to follow their dreams and passions.”

Bobbleheads in general have been a mainstay in the promotional products business for decades, with everything from Mickey Mouse to sports players to even the Empire Carpet Man nodding at one another along the way. But the real history of bobbleheads stretches back for centuries.

According to the Bobblehead Museum, the first ones appeared in the 1760s as Chinese “nodding head” figurines. They were typically made from plaster, with heads that wobbled on bodies decked out in ornate traditional Chinese robes. The figures were popular with the royals at Buckingham Palace through the 1800s.

In 1842, bobbleheads were first referenced in literature in the book “The Overcoat” by Nicolai Gogol, who described one of the characters as having a head that wagged like that of a plaster cat.

Depending on who you ask, the first bobblehead as we know them today was produced in 1920 — a player from the New York Knicks. But the Bobblehead Museum contests this, noting that the Knicks weren’t founded until the 1940s. It’s more likely that the first sports-player-specific bobbleheads were made in 1960, modeled after ceramic animal bobbleheads from Germany in 1901. The ones in 1960, though, were made from either paper-mâché or ceramic. The first players to grace the bobblehead world? Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Willie Mays. And they all shared the same face! Similarly, the AAGPBL bobbleheads share the same face; perhaps in a throwback to the original style.

From there, bobbleheads continued to boom in popularity for famous figures of all kinds. Around 1970, though, action figures began to take hold and bobbleheads suffered from a lack of demand. They were difficult and expensive to make, thanks to the ceramic construction, and could break easily. In the 90s, they burst back onto the promotional products landscape, now made of cheaper and less destructible plastic. They’ve been nodding along strong ever since.

Have a bobblehead plan for a client? Let Idea Custom Solutions help you with the vector artwork design you need to make the most of the campaign!

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