Wifasso.com
Henry’s Random Thoughts
2015 Cincinnati Reds SGA Bobbleheads
Nine Bobbleheads Planned in 2015
The Reds have nine scheduled
bobblehead giveaways this year, so if you try to get
them all, clear off some shelf space. This seems like a lot, but several teams
have been giving away numbers like this for years. Apparently, frequent
giveaways don’t dampen fan enthusiasm much. The giveaways are being deployed
strategically this year. All of them are on Saturdays, and there is a five-week
stretch from late June through July where none are given away. All-Star Game
hype is a sufficient amount of hype for that period. That means that they are
tightly-packed into the rest of the year’s schedule. There are two in
back-to-back weeks. The announced quantity of each giveaway is 25,000.
The Reds have installed
metal detectors this year, part of a league-wide directive. I’m not aware of
any type of epidemic of stabbings or shootings at ballparks, but maybe it’s out
there. Anyway, even if you aren’t carrying metal, the lady in front of you is,
and this is going to slow down the lines in a major way for these bobblehead giveaways. Be prepared. Getting one bobblehead shouldn’t be much tougher than it used to be,
but the capitalistic enterprise of burning extra tickets to get multiple
bobbles by leaving and getting back in line is going to be tougher. I hope
people don’t give up, though, because no matter how big a fan someone is, they
can’t make every game, so they need the eBay sellers.
April 11-Todd Frazier Bobblehead
41,500 people showed up to
see the Reds lose their first game of the season after four wins. Crowds aren’t
typically that large this early, but they did have the bobblehead,
and some good weather came along after a week of some typical nasty Cincinnati
early-April weather. Also, they were playing the Cardinals and Cardinal fans do
travel. The Reds drew really well last year in spite of a down year, so I
shouldn’t be all that shocked if every Saturday game with decent weather sells
out. Phil Castellini, in charge of the non-baseball
operations of the Reds, always does a fine job, no matter what you may think of
the team’s baseball moves.
They honored Todd Frazier, a
guy that they honored just a couple of years ago. However, Frazier became the
face of the team with a breakout 2014, and his All-Star game appearance with
Jeter was the kind of feel-good story any team would love to have, particularly
a team like the 2014 Reds, who weren’t really contenders. If he keeps up the
good work on the field, expect him to be front-and-center in Reds promotions
for a while.
The sponsor is Coca-Cola, a
company that’s always up for sponsoring just about anything. There really is a
lot of detail on this one, from the grub beard to the partial logo on the
batting glove. Although you occasionally get a defective one, the product being
turned out by these factories in China is a lot better than it used to be. It’s
definitely not the head stuck on a generic figure like it used to be.
The basic method of
manufacture does seem to be the same as it always has been. Parts are made out
of some sort of resin, then the items are hand-painted by workers (cheap labor
is a necessity to make so many and distribute them as giveaways). Then they are
glued together. One has to wonder, though, when it will be economical to use
3-D printing to make them. If I had to guess, I would say that the custom,
“make your own bobble” outfits already use 3-D printing, because they get over
$100 per item. It’s more of a cost issue when making 25,000 at a time and
giving them away.
The possibilities of 3-D
printing are fun to think about, though. They could be made here if there was
enough automation. You might not need the lead time in planning them. No more
guys on them like Jonny Gomes who are clearly on the trading block by the time
of the giveaway. You could feature a player on a hot streak a lot faster, and
even have fans vote for one. It may never happen, though. The current system is
cranking out a product that people like, and doing it cheaply. Maybe 3-D
printing is a solution in search of a problem.
April 25-Nasty Boys Triple Bobblehead
April 25 was a virtual
sellout, with festivities planned to honor the team from 1990, the last Reds
team to win the World Series. It was a splendid idea, but the weather didn’t
cooperate. The game was rained out. This is the first time that I can recall a bobblehead game being rained out, although several of them
have had questionable weather. For those of us who have been going down to
watch the Reds for decades, we remember April games (other than Opening Day) as
ones where 10,000 people would show up. You had to prepare for bad weather, but
you could score a great seat and probably have two empty ones in front of you,
one for each foot to rest on. Those days are over. There might be a small crowd
or two, but the team has used promotions to get some surprisingly strong gates
in April. The downside is that the games have a pretty good chance of being
delayed or cancelled. They are very reluctant to call off a game where a big
promotion was put together. For example, on their “Opening Night” game, they
just delayed the weeknight game for hours and let it wrap up after 2 AM. Enjoy
that if you have a day job. This time, the rain just came and came, and they
called it off. But not before they handed out the bobbleheads.
What we have here is the
first triple bobblehead they’ve done, after doing
double ones semi-frequently. It is of the Nasty Boys, the nickname of the Reds’
bullpen in 1990. The three players featured are Rob Dibble, Randy Myers and
Norm Charlton. The rain-soaked festivities included the real life Nasty Boys,
in addition to other members of that championship team. Those festivities are
the kind of thing they used to have in July, but with this year’s All-Star Game
coming, they aren’t wasting the big promotions on a time where there’s bound to
be plenty of hype. So the ceremonies took place in what was basically a winter
storm.
The 25,000 fans that got
these got a really nice item. They shrink the size of each figure vs. the
single bobbles, but they still manage a fair bit of detail on them. The flags
on the uniforms were in support for our troops in the Middle East for Operation
Desert Shield, troops that Marge Schott mistakenly referred to as “our boys in
the Far East.” We miss you, Marge.
They even put words on the
back of the plaque listing the team’s accomplishment. Someone remarked that a
rear view of this bobble makes it look like the three guys are urinating on
something, and I have to say that there’s a little bit of truth to this. I
guess if you can find an A’s mini-helmet like they used to sell for a quarter
in vending machines, you could place it strategically and complete the look.
May 16-Johnny Bench Stars of the Queen City Bobblehead
May 16 was an example of
where you bought a ticket to get a bobblehead and
attendance at the game was basically the giveaway. The Reds were starting an
awful losing streak, and part of the stadium had caught on fire the night
before. They took an 11-2 pounding in this particular game. In short, things
weren’t going well for them. But the beauty of a retired player bobblehead is that the player can’t disappoint you by going
on the DL or being in the midst of a horrible slump. And the featured player,
Johnny Bench, disappointed very few people in his playing days, unless you
count fans of the other team.
This is the second Bench
giveaway by the Reds themselves, excluding the Reds Hall of Fame. The first
time they honored him was in 2002, the second year of the giveaways. That
earlier Bench was the one that created some bad feelings, when most of the fans
were left without one and the ones who got one were able to flip it for big money
on Ebay. No doubt the 2002 Bench giveaway caused the
Reds to rethink the number of bobbles given away, as they were never as stingy
with the count again like they were with the 10,000 Bench bobbles they gave
away. They gave away 25,000 of these.
What we have here is the
first in a three-item mini-series called Stars of the Queen City, celebrating
past All-Stars. These feature a base in the shape of a star, necessitating a
bigger box. The boxes bobbleheads come in are an
attraction in themselves, and if you ever plan on selling your bobbleheads, keeping the boxes is a must. Holding this item
in the box, you feel like you have something substantial,
and the bobble itself is a nice piece.
One side note is that
listing an item like this on Ebay was a little harder
than I thought it would be. Mentioning the All-Start tie-in, the Stars of the Queen
City, and the star-shaped base flagged the listing. Apparently, Ebay doesn’t like people begging for five-star ratings
inside their listings, so they deal with it by having their software basically
ban the word “star.” The best way around this issue for me is to figure out a
way to list without the offending word. The All-Star Game becomes the
“Midsummer Classic,” etc. If you try to reach Ebay
customer service, you have more determination than me. It’s still my belief
that Ebay is run by three guys in a basement full of
pizza boxes and empty Diet Coke bottles.
May 31-Billy Hamilton Bobblehead
What a difference a year
makes. Last year’s Hamilton bobble came when he looked like the Rookie of the
Year, and it was the bobblehead everybody wanted.
This year, Hamilton is running into the same issue that has dogged most of the
speed demons that came along after Henderson and Raines. Simply put, you can’t
steal first base. Don’t get me wrong. I was all for bringing him up. When a guy
has a chance to change the way the game is played, you have to try him out. And
he still has time to figure out big-league pitching and become a feared
offensive weapon. But for now, he hasn’t shown it and watching him bunt, in
particular, can be a painful experience.
Fans who attended this game
saw the Reds thrash the Nationals, one of the best teams in baseball, as part
of a three-game sweep. Something really got into them that weekend. The Nats came in with quite a bit of swagger, having won almost
every game in May, and the Reds dispatched them like champions. I know this
year’s team isn’t really a contender, but I enjoy the flashes of brilliance
when I see them. This was played before a not-quite sellout crowd of 36,000 or
so. It was a 4:10 start time. While that time may be good for TV and get team
employees out of there for Saturday night, they do seem to have trouble filling
the stadium for those games, even with a marquis opponent.
This bobble is a running
pose, so just be aware that when you get one and display it, the head is
pointed down and the figure isn’t exactly “looking” at you. That’s a proper
running pose, so don’t think that yours is defective.
One thing about this
giveaway is that it is the one where they finally stopped allowing the public
to exit the way they normally would after a game through the exit in center
field. I got turned away at the normal exit and left via a nearby entrance.
Next time through, that entrance was hip to it, so I ran one further entrance
down, where I got out, but you could practically hear them getting the word not
to let people out. As my brother once said after trying to sneak into a Jimmy
Buffett concert at Riverbend, “You can’t outrun a
radio.” The writing was on the wall at the Bench game. They were trying to stop
us from using the center field exit then, but they were unprepared. The entry
gates had a lot of space between the gate itself and the metal detector, making
it easy just to walk out. For the Hamilton game, they had all those areas roped
off with the kind of tape you see in banks to keep lines orderly.
Now to re-enter, you have to
use the re-entry gate, a gate intended for people who need to leave the stadium
and get back in on the same ticket. As of now, this is somewhat tolerable, as
that re-entry line doesn’t move terribly slow. But you
never know what they will do. If you take advice from this website on how to
get through the lines multiple times to get multiple bobbles, be aware that any
advice was only good on the day in question, and that the Reds staff just makes
up the rules for exit/re-entry as they go along. At some point, they may slow
you down so much that you can’t even get a second bobble. But as the Good Book
says, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” I’ll worry about that rule
change when it comes. If Andy Dufrense could break
out of Shawshank Prison, I can find a way out of
GABP.
June 6-Barry Larkin Stars of the Queen City Bobblehead
There’s no rest for the
wicked, so bobble-chasers had to be down at the stadium a week after getting
the Hamilton bobble to snag the next one, featuring Barry Larkin. They managed
a virtual sellout, so 41,000 or so fans came to see the Reds fall to the Padres
9-7. As a consolation prize, the first 25,000 fans got the second in a series
of all-time greats called the Stars of the Queen City.
This one featured Hall of
Famer Barry Larkin, one of the best ever to put on the Reds uniform, even if a
guy like Johnny Bench still has a little more star power around here. Larkin is
back on the Reds payroll, and is rumored to be the leading candidate next time
the manager’s position is open.
Larkin was never truly
appreciated by Reds fans, in part due to his quiet demeanor. He was a guy who
led the team away from the cameras, and was never seen stomping around the
dugout or screaming at umps. Some fans mistook this for apathy, even though Larkin
did things like learn another language to communicate with teammates. Did Pete
Rose ever do that? Also, he got upset at the Marge Schott racial slurs,
something that was entirely justified, but not something the fans were ready to
understand.
As of the time of this game,
the third Stars of the Queen City entry, to be given out in September, has not
been announced. Rumors abound that it’s going to be Pete. There is a chance that they
are waiting for the Commissioner to rule on Pete’s reinstatement, and that they
haven’t even ordered the item yet. I have my doubts about Pete ever getting a
full reinstatement, but he could get a partial one that allows him to be
honored for past achievements. So we may see a Rose SGA from an official Reds
game, 13 years after the Farewell to Cinergy giveaway.
June 20-Brandon Phillips Bobblehead
From this point forward, at
least for 2015, I won’t be going into much detail about the day they handed them
out, who won, etc. Reds fans know how the second half went: The team stunk. But
more importantly, for the ones above here, I updated this site in the week or
so after I got the item, and I’m updating the rest of these in mid-November of
2015. Everybody has a life, even me, and the sheer number of these giveaways
coupled with the poor play on the field got me less motivated to update this
site. It’s all good, though. The Bengals are 8-0 as I write this, so I’m in
better spirits about Cincinnati sports.
The general trend in the
response to these giveaways as the year went on could be expected. The hangover
after the wonderful All-Star week was there, the team was further under .500 as
the weeks went by, and the shelf was really filling up with bobbleheads.
So the demand for the later ones softened as the year went on. They didn’t
fetch too much on Ebay after the first three of the
year got strong prices. The Reds fan is a loyal creature, however, so while
demand was diminished, it was certainly still there. Attendance numbers for the
games were still decent, and the fans still lined up early. If you had extras
to sell on Ebay, it was still good enough to be worth
the effort. You just weren’t retiring off your Ebay
“riches.” How much of the good attendance was loyalty, how much was a fuzzy
definition of a sellout, and how much was the fact that tickets were sold well
in advance, I don’t know.
August 1-Devin Mesoraco Bobblehead
This one sort of summed up
the Reds’ season. When they announced this one, I was pretty pumped, as it was the
first-ever bobble of an up-and-coming player. Then, Mesoraco
suffered a season-ending injury early on, and that was that. Assuming he comes
back OK, collectors who missed this one may come around scrambling for it, as
he’s a good player under Reds team control for a while in terms of contract
status. No matter what, players in catcher’s gear are pretty few and far
between. Up until this one, the only way to get honored with a bobble wearing
the “tools of ignorance” was to be the greatest catcher of all time, Johnny
Bench.
August 22-Tony Perez Statue Replica
Like the Joe Nuxhall and Sparky Anderson ones given out some years ago, Tony
Perez was honored with this replica along with the formal dedication of his
full-sized statue outside the stadium. The replicas aren’t actually bronze.
They are some sort of resin, but the paint job pulls off the bronze look pretty
well.
September 12-Pete Rose Stars of the Queen City Bobblehead
As the losses mounted and
the bobbles piled up, the Reds had one trick up their sleeve to freshen things
up. We should have seen it coming. This was the day after the 30th
anniversary of Pete breaking the hit record, and the league has been a little
more lenient in terms of letting Pete make some honorary appearances in spite
of the ban. But the team didn’t announce who this one was going to depict until
a month or so before the game.
Prior to the game, it was
announced that instead of the usual 25,000 to be handed out, the sponsor would
be springing for enough of these to give one to every ticket-holder. This move
took the time pressure off bobble-seekers, since showing up late would not cost
you your bobble. But due to the extra supply, it wasn’t a really valuable item
on Ebay. This is not to say that the price was
exceedingly low, it was just average for a Reds SGA.
The game was declared a
sellout, but it was the most thinly attended “sellout” I’ve ever seen, and I’ve
been to a lot of these bobble games where there were people missing from the
seats because they just came for the giveaway.
Below, we have a rarity, an
instance where the same player had a bobblehead
issued in the exact same pose, 13 years apart. The one on the right is the
“Farewell to Riverfront/Cinergy” bobble issued in 2002 (not given out by the
Reds). Normally, the older bobbleheads had the
player’s body a little too thick, sometimes even making the player look fat.
The new ones tend to be more realistic in that regard, even if the face bears
only a slight resemblance. In this case, however, we have a player who was
pretty stocky in real life, so the 2002 version is definitely the better
likeness. That skinny guy on the left didn’t even exist in 1963.
September 26-All-Star Bobblehead/Figurine
Bait & Switch
This game was advertised as
the ninth bobblehead giveaway on the Reds promotional
schedule for most of the year. It was described as an All-Star bobble, and I
wondered who it would be. Only two Reds made the All-Star roster, although they
both had a fine showing, even if Frazier’s good showing was the day before the
game. A Frazier Home Run Derby bobble would have been great, but they had
already honored Frazier once earlier in the year. I guess they also felt that
Chapman had been honored enough in recent years, or maybe they thought he’d get
traded.
Sometime in the middle of
the season, they unceremoniously changed the listing on their promotional
schedule to “All-Star Game Figurine.” Let’s face it, this was the second-last
home game of the year, and the team was mailing it in at that point. There wasn’t
much fan interest at that point, and there was a general feeling that the
season was 2 ½ months too long. The giveaway switcheroo was only a minor
disappointment, unless you bought a lot of tickets for bobbleheads,
tickets you wouldn’t have been able to give away by game day.
I have mixed feelings about
this giveaway. Personally, I like it, since I’m a sucker for the early history
of the game. I wish they’d give away a 19th Century-themed item
every year. A Bid McPhee bare-handed fielding bobblehead would be nice. I can even overlook the fact that
that the shirt on this little guy is 1869 Red Stockings gear, but the hat is
from a later era. (The 1869 Red Stockings wore hats without
the stripes.) But it does bother me that they promised a bobblehead and didn’t deliver, and it was for a game where
the promised bobblehead no doubt sold a lot of
tickets that would have gone unsold.
The quality of the figurine
was about on par with the bobbleheads, where a little
roughness in the paint job is expected. If you want your figurines well-done,
like the girly figurines Grandma keeps in her curio cabinet, this one is going
to come up well short of that standard. It’s pretty typical Chinese quality.
Bonus Item-September 4-Reds Grateful Dead Night Dancing Bears
This item was part of a new
trend in giveaways, a trend that stretches the definition of the term
“giveaway” somewhat. The Reds are now selling theme packages to certain games,
where you pay a significant surcharge to score some swag related to the theme,
as well as admission to the game. The theme packages start at $25, as opposed
to regular tickets that start at $5. So it’s a significant surcharge for those
looking to get the item as cheaply as possible, but for those who might
typically buy better seats, the charge probably isn’t too oppressive. You just
get your items without worrying about showing up early. There were a few theme
nights in 2015, including one for Star Wars, one with a replica World Series
ring, and this one, for the Grateful Dead.
I knew some ticket scalpers
back in the day who worked Dead concerts, and in spite of, or perhaps because
of, Deadhead animosity towards scalpers, they adorned their cars with some
Deadhead stickers, including the dancing bears. They were pretty cool stickers,
as long as you didn’t mind the possible extra suspicion of drug possession that
Deadhead stickers might bring. So the dancing bears have been on my mind all
those years, and when I saw this item on Ebay, I
bought it, even though the price was on the high side.
I don’t have plans to collect all of these items in
the future. It’s not so much the cost as the volume of overall Reds promos.
Unless you have a warehouse, it’s tough to store them all, much less display
them. So buy what you like, ignore everything else, and don’t feel the need to
have everything. I’m sticking to the conventional giveaways where there is no
surcharge. Besides being cheaper to get, there’s more continuity with the prior
15 years of promotions.