Which licensed bobbleheads get a nod of approval? Hall of Fame co-founder Phil Sklar tells all!

Bobbleheads, Phil! You’re the co-founder and CEO of The National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum. I can’t wait to hear about that, but in terms of the bobbleheads themselves, which licenses do you hold?
It’s an ever-expanding list! For example, though, have Marilyn Monroe coming out in time for her 100th birthday in June. It’s also the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Globetrotters this year so we’re doing some new bobbleheads for them. In terms of releases that are out now, two of the newest are The Blue Man Group and Chuck E. Cheese.

Beyond that, we have so many… It’s a pretty eclectic list of people. We’ve done a LOT of different Olympians and sportspeople, as you can imagine. We’ve done The Three Stooges, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, The Simpsons, Mad Comics, Peanuts, The Golden Girls, Home Alone… As I say, it’s a pretty eclectic list.

Looking at your website, I think eclectic is an awfully well-chosen word! I’m curious, then: what makes a license attractive to you?
I think some of the most attractive are those that either haven’t had a bobblehead before, or at least in a long time. For example, there’d been Three Stooges bobbleheads before, but that was 20 years ago – none of them were available. We know people still love The Three Stooges though, and we thought we could do some unique things that haven’t been done before…

Another example would be Abbott and Costello. Even though they’re the same genre of comedy as The Three Stooges, they’d never had bobbleheads before. So we produced the first Abbott and Costello bobbleheads – and the first run quickly sold out. Another example would be Chuck E. Cheese, which is – as you know – an iconic US brand. So I think things with an element of nostalgia are popular. That said, even a lot of non-characters offer a great opportunity if they’re done the right way.

Non-characters?
So we’ve done I Love New York as one of our licenses for example. There’s not a person or character there… But we’ve done some different things with I Love New York bobbles: we did a bear and a duck and some others with I Love New York shirts. So we can pretty much take anything and create bobblehead-based stuff.

Love it! And are there any red lines then, Phil, in terms of bobbleheads you wouldn’t want to do?
Yes, we don’t tend to do controversial characters. For instance, there’s a company that once produced a line of real-life serial-killer bobbleheads. I don’t think that’d be up our alley! They were definitely going for unique niche.

Yes – that’s in exquisitely bad taste! Would you cover political figures? Divisive as they increasingly seem to be?!
We do politics, yes; we do both sides of the aisle. So we did Trump, we did Biden and Kamala Harris. Obviously, there’s some controversy with politics, but generally we get both sides of that. We sometimes do bobbleheads covering viral events that happen in the news. We touch pretty much anything… With public figures, we’ve done the Queen, the Pope, new presidential candidates, new world leaders – that’s just outside licensing, though; we can do those on our own. But yes, it’s pretty wide open in terms of opportunities for different people, characters and viral moments.

And in terms of your process, what happens after you’ve got a license? How do you make someone into a bobblehead?
Generally speaking, we give one of the graphic designers that we work with our specifications… What we want it to look like! They can have some input into that; they can go in different directions if they think something might look better than our first concept. So we might tell the graphic designer that we want the Blue Man Group… Three characters on a base in this pose, with these heads. And a lot of times, of course, the licensor gives us pictures, graphics and logos to get that just right. Then the graphic artist creates a two-dimensional rendering for all round approval… Approval our end, and by the licensor or even – sometimes – the person themselves. Then the factory hand sculpts the initial bobblehead or bobbleheads out of clay.

Out of clay! Wow! That’s old school; I love it! I suppose working in clay lets you make the sculpts more detailed?
Correct! It’s a very detailed process. Once they have that hand-sculpted clay model, they send us pictures. We usually go through a couple of rounds of revisions… But sometimes more, sometimes less. Once it gets approved, it gets painted, approved again – and then produced and shipped.

I absolutely love this! So now, in terms of the museum, this is a physical building that people can visit?
Exactly right. It’s the only museum in the world dedicated solely to bobbleheads. We have over 10,000 unique bobbleheads on display, from all different categories. In sport alone, we have baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, tennis, golf, boxing, wrestling… You name it. And then in non-sports we have all kinds of pop-culture: comics, movies, TV, music – just anything and everything you can imagine. We even have a Waldo bobblehead hiding in there somewhere!

Ha! Funny! And how long does it take to walk around the museum of 10,000 bobbleheads? I’m planning my visit!
We have some visitors that’ll come in 20 minutes before we close and they tend to leave saying they wish they’d more time. But most people spend 45 minutes to an hour walking around. We sometimes do events, though, so if you were here to do a scavenger hunt, or you have kids, you might spend a lot longer. We do have other cool things around us in the downtown Milwaukee area, so we have a lot of people who take a day trip here. We’re open seven days a week, usually for 360 days a year. We also have a wall timeline so that people can learn more about the history of bobbleheads.

What IS the history of bobbleheads?! Now that you mention it, I realise I haven’t got even the smallest idea!
Bobbleheads have been around since at least the late 1700s. There’s a painting of Queen Charlotte in her dressing room at Buckingham Palace with two large Chinese figurines behind her. They have the heads bobble… We have similar ones in the museum from 1841. So bobbleheads have been pretty much the same ever since then… Obviously, they added a spring instead of the knotting mechanism that they used originally.

I love that you’ve married the licensing arm to an attraction like that. What made you want to create a museum?
At some point, my fellow co-founder – Brad Novak – and I realised we had a collection of close to 3,000 bobbleheads. It was growing a bit out of control; we didn’t have enough space for all of them. So we thought maybe we could have a museum dedicated to bobbleheads along with the company that produces and markets unique models. For the very first bobblehead created specifically for the museum, we did one for the superfans of a well-known player with the Chicago Cubs. It went over really well.

And when we’re on the subject of firsts, what was your first bobblehead? Was that licensed?
No, for our first one – back in 2013; long before we had the idea to have a museum – we produced a bobblehead of a friend of ours, Michael Poll. He was the manager for the Milwaukee Panthers college sports teams; he was also a special Olympian, so we wanted to honor him and raise money for a Special Olympics group. Several local news channels did stories about it so they sold well and we wondered if there could be more opportunities for other people and characters who have never been made into bobbleheads before…

Of course, there were a couple of companies out there already doing bobbleheads, but mostly they were just promotional items… They weren’t really being sold online or in stores, and we thought maybe there was an opportunity there. We started to make a list of people, characters that we thought would make for popular, good-selling bobbleheads.

What was your first licensed bobblehead?
Our first real license was Butler University in Indianapolis… They had a live-dog mascot that was really popular. Somehow, we connected with them about doing a bobblehead of that dog – and their fans loved it. Then we started to add more colleges. Today, we’re licensed for over 260 colleges across the country.

Brilliant. Now, I imagine you’re often asked what your favourite bobble head is so I won’t burden you with that – but which is your most niche? It’s not a serial killer; we know that!
That is a great question! You’re right, I get asked for my favourite almost all the time… In terms of the most niche, I guess there’s one that we didn’t think would take off at all, but it did really well! That was Bernie Sanders with his mittens from Inauguration Day in 2021. At the time, that became our best-selling bobblehead ever. It’s since been displaced, but that was unexpected. We also did two interpreters that were on TV during the pandemic… Their bobbleheads sold better than some of the governors – of which we sold hundreds.

Ha! Well, I almost daren’t ask… What would you be doing if you weren’t doing this?
That’s another good question… Probably still climbing the corporate ladder. My background was in corporate finance prior to this – I did public accounting for a couple years. After that, I went into corporate finance. Shortly after doing an MBA, though, I wanted to put all the different things I’d learned to use right away… And it turned into this… And I’m definitely having more fun doing the bobbleheads!

I don’t doubt it! Final question then, Phil… What’s the one question I could’ve asked you today but didn’t?
I guess you could’ve asked me how the industry’s changing? Are you seeing different trends in the market?

I’m glad you suggested that; it would’ve taken me 100 years to come up with that! What’s the answer?
Most bobblehead buyers don’t want anything too crazy. They mostly just like the simple bobblehead to keep on their desks or it the man caves or wherever. They tend to keep some knickknacks or collectibles, and they really want characters or people that resonate with them… Brands or people they love or admire. So we keep it pretty simple. Occasionally, we add sound to some bobbleheads…

Sound? Can you give me an example of that?
Yes – the Abbott and Costello one we talked about earlier has sound. With that, you can push a button and hear the Who’s on First? sketch… People love it. But overall, people relate, I think, more to the nostalgic aspect of bobbleheads. So trends come and go, but I think people still like a traditional bobblehead. What collectors ask for is pretty consistent.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for making time for this, Phil.