The Birth of Bob - The Supercross BMX Bobble Head

It all started about 5 years ago when I picked up a DEVO bobble head as a Christmas present. It was a limited edition, 1 of 1000 model of the classic Punk / Alt rock band of the 80's.

I thought it was the raddest thing ever. I had a Bobble head of one of my favorite bands. Then I got thinking about how at Baseball games and Soccer games you can get Bobble Heads of your favorite players. Then I started to think, ‘why couldn't we do a BMX Bobble Head?’, and better yet a Supercross BMX Bobble head? And for our 25th year anniversary, how cool would it be to make this happen?

Should be easy right? Well that's where it got strange.

We assumed that we could use the google machine and search for a toy company or a bobble head company specifically and have them make a Bobble Head for us. Wow was I wrong. You could do that if you wanted a generic , garbage Bobble Head that you want to put your enemy's logos on to make them look bad. ( hmm.... just gave myself an idea ) But not if you wanted a true BMX Racing bobble head.

So after a few months, we got ahold of a lady who said she had a friend who would do it. Once we got the contact, we were asked for all the specifics, and with the specifics, they also want the money. We didn’t realize how specific we have to get! We actually had to send a FLY F2 helmet, a Jersey, Shimano shoes and more so they could use them to make the molds. And even then, we were having problems. As we were taking full size items and shrinking them down to 1/16th or so of their size.



They were trying to scan the items to 3d print them into molds, but ultimately we ended up going with a hand carved mold. As they said there was to much difficulty and too much cost involved in trying to do a full 3d scan and print of the entire rider.

So that's when we had to send more money. We were now thousands of dollars into making a bobble head and we hand't seen a single thing yet. Except for a few screen shots of what they had done to make 3d scans of the gear we had sent them.  We decided on what to do, and since I am stubborn, I really really wanted a Supercross BMX bobble head now. So forward we pushed in our quest to produce this bobble head.  

We needed to send them photos of how we wanted a rider posed for the Bobble Head. So a quick call to the Mitchell Bros. and Katin and Kyle jumped at the chance. They did their best Bubba Hang Loose pose ( perfect as we were about to lose them to Hawaii ) and got all the photos of them in their gear.  Once we sent all 40 or so photos to the Mold Maker with another Paypal payment and they started carving.

So now the clay models were almost ready, we had quite a few things we saw that we needed to change, but it was starting to look like a Mini BMX Bobble head.

So now we needed to talk about the gear, the paint. We sent more money, and we eagerly awaited the final sample.

After 45 days of un answered e-mails and phone calls, we start getting photos like this.

No logos, that are really proper, I mean sure it had the FLY logo on the pants, but. It just wasn't right.

Eventually we get to this.

This little guy was almost perfect. Finally!! 18 months later and $6,000 in, we have a final sample! Lets do this I thought!

After asking for a few more small changes to make it perfect, we get told, thank you, but no thank you. We are NOT going to make these for you. It is too detailed, it is too complicated. So sorry. What?? Why did we go along this far then? Why did you keep taking money? At this point they stop responding to all e-mails and phone calls. Done. We did get a Fed Ex package with the original Bobble Head and an invoice for the 1 sample at the full price.

So this little bobble head has sat in the window over looking the track at the shop for a while, and I was not ready to give up on the idea. We were too far in. So after talking to a few people and meeting a guy that works for a toy company that has a friend that has a friend, I started speaking with another company. The new guy says, ‘oh yeah I know that company, and they do that all the time, they only want the easy work.  Send me the Bobble Head and Paypal me some money and I can make a mold for you and do production.’ 

I didn't want to send the only one we had, it was too long of a process. It cost too much. What if it just disappeared and never came back. So we agree to start the project over again from scratch. Am I crazy, do I really want to do this again?

 Yes, I am a glutton for pain, we had planned on having these ready for the Worlds in Rock Hill at that point, and wow did we miss that target. By a full 18 months, but hey the 30 year anniversary of Supercross BMX is coming up. Can we get them ready for the 30 year anniversary?  Not without a lot of extra work, and a few thousand dollars of Air Freight, but yes, we made it! Bob had his big coming out party at the 2018 USA BMX Grands, and has been taking over BMX Tracks and bedrooms around the world ever since.

This version is the 2018 Supercross BMX Factory Uniform. It is a 1 of 500 worldwide. This summer we will be launching the 30 year anniversary Retro Bob, which is an all new pose and the 1989 Supercross Factory Uniform. And then the third of the planned series will be at the 2019 Grands. Each one is limited to 500pcs worldwide.  So if you are a true BMX fan this is something you will want to have in your collection.

Click here to see if there are any Bob's available still.