Everyone nods in agreement at National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum
By Tom Adkinson
October 15, 2021

Elvis, Einstein and Churchill are among almost 7,000 of celebrities at the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum. Image by Tom Adkinson

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – Meagan Pearson has gotten used to having hundreds of pairs of eyes constantly looking over her shoulder as she works. If they express any emotion at all, she interprets it as nods of approval.

Front desk associate Meagan Pearson says is doesn’t bother her to have so many eyes on her work. Image by Tom Adkinson

That’s because Pearson is a front desk associate at the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee, a quirky attraction in a city of quirky attractions. Behind her is a wall with scores of bobbleheads – sports figures, politicians, even Smokey Bear – that are only a hint of the museum’s collection that’s approaching 7,000.

Absorbing the depth of the museum’s collection is like wandering the stacks of a research library. There are rows and rows of bookcases eight feet tall, but instead of holding books, they are filled with bobbleheads.

If you thought bobbleheads were the domain of minor league baseball promotional nights, you’d be way off base, although minor league baseball is one reason the museum was created.

Brad Novak and Phil Sklar are the two lighthearted – and philanthropic – people behind the museum. Image by Tom Adkinson

The museum is the brainchild of two guys, Brad Novak and Phil Sklar. They were middle school pals in Rockford, Illinois, where Sklar said baseball cards were his gateway drug to bobblehead collecting. Novak once worked for the minor league Rockford RiverHawks, and seemingly suddenly, they had accumulated a substantial number of the springy-headed dolls.

By 2013, they had 3,000 bobbleheads, and they announced the museum in 2014. It didn’t open until 2019, and despite a pandemic and a somewhat peculiar location, Novak and Sklar have been busy ever since adding to their collection of athletes, movie stars, historical figures, politicians and symbolic personalities such as Rosie the Riveter.

Walk around the burger restaurant to the back of the building to find the entrance to the bobblehead museum. Image by Tom Adkinson

Although the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum has a prominent sign facing a busy downtown Milwaukee street, there’s a hamburger restaurant where you’d expect the museum entrance to be. You must walk around to the back of the building and climb a long flight of stairs to get to Bobblehead nirvana.

Of course, Marilyn Monroe is featured at the bobblehead museum – three times over. Image by Tom Adkinson

Novak and Sklar don’t flinch if anyone questions the logic of their museum, in part because bobbleheads have been around since the 1760s, and as a museum sign declares, “There are museums dedicated to mustard, barbed wire and even SPAM, so why not bobbleheads?”

Bobbleheads from the 1760s were Chinese nodding-head figures, and there is a famous portrait of Great Britain’s Queen Charlotte in her dressing room that shows two of the Chinese figures in the background. They gained popularity in Europe over the next century, but the true bobblehead explosion came with American sports teams.

The museum created bobbleheads to honor the 15 teams of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Image by Tom Adkinson

Generic “nodders” for Major League Baseball and National Football League teams appeared starting in 1960 as retail souvenir items, and the first player-specific bobbleheads came in 1961. Those were of Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Willie Mays.

Novak and Sklar have traced the first bobblehead giveaway to the San Francisco Giants on May 9, 1999. The player honored? Willie Mays.

Today, all manner of sports teams create bobbleheads of players, mascots, coaches and even fans. A popular one was of Sister Jean, the centenarian nun who gained great fame cheering (and praying) for Loyola University in NCAA basketball tournaments.

The museum itself makes lines of bobblehead dolls. It has a series for not-so-popular U.S. presidents (Zachary Taylor and Millard Filmore, for instance), all 15 teams in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in the 1940s and 1950s, many stars of baseballs Negro Leagues and contemporary figures such as politicians.

Politicians and others in the news during the pandemic actually kept the museum busy with mail order business after visitation dried up.

Bobbleheads of Dr. Anthony Fauci and others in the pandemic spotlight have helped raise $300,000 for charity.. Image by Tom Adkinson

Its biggest sellers were various depictions of Dr. Anthony Fauci, particularly one with him trying to hide his expression during an infamous White House news conference.

The Fauci dolls and generic ones of pandemic heroes – doctors, nurses, EMTs, first responders and others – ha ve had a benefit beyond a few laughs. Novak and Sklar dedicated part of the sales revenue to the American Hospital Association’s Protect the Heroes project. To date, that has generated $300,000.

While Novak and Sklar’s manufacturing goal is to create bobbleheads that fill in historical gaps or that could be retail hits, they will help you custom order a bobblehead. Want one of your spouse, your mother-in-law or a co-worker? The cost is only about $120.

Their own field of dream bobbleheads seems limitless.

“We’ll never run out of ideas for bobbleheads. There always will be new sports figures and politicians doing stupid things,” Sklar observed.