Bobblehead

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Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III, August 19, 1946) is the former 42nd President of the United States and served from 1993 to 2001. At 46 he was the third-youngest president. He became president at the end of the Cold War, and was the first baby boomer president. His wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is currently the United States Secretary of State. Each received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from Yale Law School.
http://wn.com/Bill_Clinton
D'Lo Brown
Accie Conner (born October 22, 1973), better known by his ring name '''D'Lo Brown (also written D-Lo Brown'''), is an American professional wrestler. Arguably best known for his appearances with World Wrestling Entertainment, he is currently working as an agent for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling.
http://wn.com/D'Lo_Brown
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast, and alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing covering topics such as jazz, promiscuity, Buddhism, drugs, poverty, and travel. His writings have inspired other writers, including Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Robbins, Thomas Pynchon, Lester Bangs, Will Clarke, Richard Brautigan, Ken Kesey, Haruki Murakami, Jon Foreman, and Bob Dylan. Unsympathetic critics of his work have labeled it "slapdash", "grossly sentimental", and "immoral". Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the Hippie movement. At age 47 in 1969 Kerouac died from internal bleeding due to long-standing abuse of alcohol. Since his death Kerouac's literary prestige has grown and several previously unseen works have been published. All of his books are in print today, among them: On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, The Subterraneans, Desolation Angels, Visions of Cody and ''Big Sur.
http://wn.com/Jack_Kerouac
James D. Watson
James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist and zoologist, best known as one of co-discoverers of the structure of DNA with Francis Crick, in 1953. Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material". He studied at the University of Chicago and Indiana University and subsequently worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator and personal friend Francis Crick.
http://wn.com/James_D_Watson
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
http://wn.com/John_F_Kennedy
Luc Robitaille
Luc Robitaille (born February 17, 1966) is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey player. During his 19-season National Hockey League (NHL) career, Robitaille won a Stanley Cup in 2001–02 with the Detroit Red Wings, and played for the Pittsburgh Penguins and New York Rangers, but is most known for his fourteen seasons, over three different stints, with the Los Angeles Kings. He served as Kings team captain during the 1992–93 and 2005–06 seasons. Robitaille retired after the 2005–06 season as the highest-scoring left winger in NHL history and the holder of several Kings franchise records, as well as numerous Kings playoff records.
http://wn.com/Luc_Robitaille
Mickey Mantle
Mickey Charles Mantle (October 20, 1931 – August 13, 1995) was an American baseball player who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.
http://wn.com/Mickey_Mantle
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (; ; ) (, – ) was a Ukrainian-born Russian novelist, humourist, and dramatist.
http://wn.com/Nikolai_Gogol
Roberto Clemente
Roberto Clemente Walker (August 18, 1934 – December 31, 1972) was a Puerto Rican professional baseball player and a Major League Baseball right fielder. He was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the youngest of seven children. On November 14, 1964, he married Vera Zabala at San Fernando Church in Carolina. The couple had three children: Roberto Jr., Luis Roberto and Enrique Roberto. He began his professional career playing with the Santurce Crabbers in the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League (LBPPR). While he was playing in Puerto Rico, the Brooklyn Dodgers offered him a contract to play with the Montreal Royals. Clemente accepted the offer and was active with the team until he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the Major League Baseball draft that took place on November 22, 1954.
http://wn.com/Roberto_Clemente
Roger Maris
Roger Eugene Maris (September 10, 1934 – December 14, 1985) was an American right fielder in Major League Baseball who is primarily remembered for hitting 61 home runs for the New York Yankees during the 1961 season. This broke Babe Ruth's single-season record of 60 home runs (set in 1927) and set a record that would stand for 37 years.
http://wn.com/Roger_Maris
Tim Russert
Timothy John "Tim" Russert (May 7, 1950 – June 13, 2008) was an American television journalist and lawyer who appeared for more than 16 years as the longest-serving moderator of NBC's Meet the Press. He was a senior vice president at NBC News, Washington bureau chief and also hosted the eponymous CNBC/MSNBC weekend interview program Tim Russert. He was a frequent correspondent and guest on NBC's The Today Show and Hardball. Russert covered several presidential elections, and he presented the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey on the NBC Nightly News during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Time magazine included Russert in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. Russert was posthumously revealed as a 30-year source for syndicated columnist Robert Novak.
http://wn.com/Tim_Russert
Willie Mays
William Howard "Willie" Mays, Jr. (born May 6, 1931) is a former American baseball player who played the majority of his career with the New York and San Francisco Giants before finishing with the New York Mets. Nicknamed The Say Hey Kid, Mays was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. Many consider him to be the greatest all-around player of all time.
http://wn.com/Willie_Mays

photo: WN / Yolanda Leyba

Ronald McDonald's critics not clowning around

The State

19 May 2011

NEW YORK - Ronald McDonald is having a midlife crisis. His floppy shoes, painted-on smile and flaming-red hair may be a harder sell to today's kids, who are trading in their dolls and trucks for...

photo: WN / Yolanda

Ronald McDonald's midlife crisis

Herald Tribune

18 May 2011

NEW YORK - Ronald McDonald is having a midlife crisis. His floppy shoes, painted-on smile and flaming-red hair may be a harder sell to today's kids who are trading in their dolls and trucks for...

Bobblehead

.]] 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

bobblehead doll.]] 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 their May 9, 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.

The Futurama episode "The Farnsworth Parabox" had an alternate universe (Universe 1729) where everyone appears as giant rude bobbleheaded versions of themselves.

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.

Thanjavur Dolls of India: These bobblehead dolls are of a class known as "Thanjavur Thalayatti Bommai" in the Tamil language, meaning "Tanjore Head-Shaking Doll".They are a native art form in the Thanjavur region of Tamilnadu state in South India. These dolls are usually 6" to 12" tall (15 to 30 cm). They are made of clay or wood and painted over in bright colors. They are often dressed up in fancy clothes. They form a part of an elaborate display of dolls known as "Golu (kolu)", exhibited in Indian houses during the "Dasara (Navaratri)" festival in Sep-Oct. Another type of Thanjavur Doll is the Tanjore Roundpot Rocking Doll (in Tamil, "Thanjavur Gundusatti Bommai").

The popular video game Fallout 3 used bobblehead dolls for its egg-hunt element, the game Borderlands (possibly in tribute) uses them as cash items.

In 2006, Boston College commissioned www.boxwoodbrands.com to create a custom bobblehead of their Boston College Superfan

Sports teams often give away bobblehead dolls at their games - the Los Angeles Kings have chosen Dec. 5, 2009 as their first ever bobblehead giveaway night, honoring Luc Robitaille on his induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame.

In the popular NBC television show The Office, the character Dwight K. Schrute has several frequently mentioned bobblehead dolls of himself on his desk. On the NBC The Office website, customers can purchase bobblehead doll versions of all of the main and supporting characters.

In 2001, the German automobile company Audi aired commercials in Europe featuring an Elvis impersonator and a prototypical Wackel-Elvis ("Wobble Elvis" or "Wobbly Elvis") dashboard figure with a wobbling left arm and hip. Due to high demand of viewers after the spots aired, 165,000 Wackel-Elvis dashboard figures were produced. The figure depicts Elvis wearing the jumpsuit he wore in the 1973 Aloha from Hawaii TV broadcast.

In an episode of Scrubs, Turk bribes Dr. Kelso with a bobblehead version of himself to which Dr. Kelso replies "Ah bobbleheads, you think you would get sick of them but you don't" before playing with it.

A number of bobbleheads of popular political figures were added to the set of NBC's Meet the Press when its set was redesigned in early 2010. Bobblehead figures of Bill Clinton, Tim Russert, and John F. Kennedy can be seen on the set.

In 2010, 14 year old Henry Ermer of Brooklyn, NY, attempted to enter the Guinness Book of World Records by building what is believed to be the world's largest bobblehead, standing 16 feet tall.

Bibliography

Hunter, Tim - Bobbing Head Dolls: 1960-2000 (Krause Publications, 2000) ISBN 9780873418027

References

History of Bobble Head Dolls

Category:Dolls Category:Baseball culture

This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.

Bobblehead

History

Bobblehead dolls in culture

Bibliography

See also

References