On prior articles we’ve got discussed how bobbleheads, especially the personalized type have become quite popular lately, and we also elaborated around the subject of resemblance, as well as the aspects that impact it.
In this article we take a step back and attempt to provide a quick recount of how bobbleheads came into pop culture, starting using the look of vintage bobbleheads inside the 1960s. We are going to skip the bobbleheads developed in ancient China and Japan merely because there is certainly not sufficient recorded material to tell the story with enough detail. It should nevertheless be pointed out that customized bobbleheads have existed for hundreds of years.
So let’s dive straight into the topic.
The 1960s produced the very first bobblehead boom into pop culture. This was a time when the Usa was seeing a distinct type of athlete seem within the Baseball Scene. Stars like Mickey Mantle created their look as well as the sport was larger than ever.
It is not only baseball that employed these bobbleheads to promote the sport. American football and ice hockey were close followers too, and when produced, the editions typically covered all the teams in the expert leagues.
The teams that have been covered in the first production run of the baseball league bobbleheads made in 1961 and 1962 have been: the Anaheim Angels, Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Houston Colt 45’s, Houston Astros, Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers, Kansas City Athletics, Milwaukee Braves, Minnesota Twins, Mineapolis Twins, New York Mets, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, Pitsburg Pirates, St Louis Cardinals, San Francisco Giants and finally the Washington Senators.
Not all these bobbleheads have been created alike. For instance, specific teams had mascot bobbleheads, namely the Orioles, the Cubs, the Reds, the Indians, the Tigers, the Braves, the Pirates and also the Cardinals.
In the extended list of teams produced, the rarest custom bobbleheads right now are regarded as to become those from the Anaheim Angels, which possess a paper label over the Los Angeles Decal, the Minneapolis Twins and the boy of the Baltimore Orioles.
Other curious details contain the cowboy hats worn by the bobbleheads of the Colt 45’s as well as the Astros, the white or green base selection from the Cleveland Indians and also the Detroit Tigers, as well as the dark or light uniform option for the New York Mets figurines.
To create matters much more complicated, there were two separate series produced at the same time. 1 of them is recognized because the mini series of baseball bobbleheads (by the way, the term bobbing head is more popular in these vintage models) and the other a single is know because the white base series.
Lastly every group comes in two various variations, either holding a ball or a baseball bat.
These two series incorporated the initial two expert baseball players to be represented as bobbleheads, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, even though all figurines really looked the identical and those of Mantle and Maris didn’t truly resemble the players.
Aside from a head that bobbles, these vintage bobbleheads hold tiny similarity to the ones we see produced right now. For 1 factor the material they had been produced of within the extremely beginning was actually paper mache.
The design was also significantly different. The body was created with extremely tiny detail and in no athletic pose. It was rather much more like a single block with some nuances about the limbs and though all the body models would appear identical prior to painting, great care was taken to accurately represent each team’s uniform. This partly explains why there are such avid collectors chasing right after them right now, and attempting to hold all bobblehead models.
The production approach meant that each bobblehead was probably made, but certainly painted by hand. The colors themselves usually contain a pearlescent finish and are often glossy. This contains the finish of the face, which combined with all the boyish look created a cherub-like result on most of them.
The lack of emphasis around the body carving, and small work in accurately representing any person star indicates that the interest back then was to promote the group, and given that these bobbleheads had a magnet under the base, they had been sure to become proudly displayed on several vehicle dashboards back in these days. And yes, dashboards had been produced of metal back then, in case you had been questioning!
Following the Mantle and Maris bobbleheads created, an additional two stars followed rapidly following, which had been Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays. Needless to say those bobbleheads did not appear a lot like Clemente or Mays either.
1 quick Google will reveal a handful of companies committed to catering for the collector of this kind of bobblehead. They are not all priced equally, with all the costs ranging from 15 USD towards the all time record breaking 17,000 USD, which will be the topic of a future write-up as we preserve discussing this short history of bobbleheads.