Sneak Peek - University of Minnesota - Duluth Mascot Bobblehead

This Friday night, the Bulldogs are giving away a bobblehead of their mascot, Champ!  First 3000 people to enter get the bobblehead.  I'm sure it'll be a popular one as UMD fans are crazy about their hockey team and love their mascot, Champ!  It looks to be a very quality bobblehead too.  And hopefully I'll have one in my collection in the near future.  Check out the picture below and find tickets here to the game!

Larry Culpepper Bobblehead

This one has nothing to do with Minnesota or 99% of my collection.  However, its a new addition and a pretty cool bobblehead.  Dr. Pepper made a bunch (I say a bunch because the production number isn't known, but they aren't super hard to find) of these Larry Culpepper bobbleheads.  I believe only given to Twitter followers (through giveaways) and fans at specific college football games.

Nebraska Mascot Pepsi One Bobblehead

This is a recent addition to my collection, but its replacing the one I had previously.  I have one complete set of these pepsi one mascot bobbleheads.  However, since I completed it, I've always been looking to upgrade my Nebraska bobble.  The reason...he doesn't hear so well, as he's missing an ear. Now I have 1 complete set with all bobbleheads in really nice condition.  I've blogged about these Pepsi One bobbles previously, which you can check out here and here.

Pepsi One Mascot Bobbleheads (Update)

Back in 2014 I wrote a blog about the Pepsi One Mascot Bobblehead Set.  It's one of my most read blog entries.  Click here to review it!  I've been contemplating writing another blog relating to this bobblehead set and today is the day.  Why would I blog about it a second time, besides it being a popular read and a popular set, I do have some new information.

Hopefully you clicked the link above because I'm not restating much from the previous blog.  I've been helping several different collectors complete this collection.  I think at the moment it stands at 5 different people that are searching for these bobbles and I've completed the set for another 4-5 people. I wouldn't be surprised if more people contacted me looking for specific bobbleheads from this set, as I do come across them fairly regularly.  You'll see from the previous blog that a lot of the extras ended up in Maple Plain, MN.

I met one of the guys that "saved" hundreds of these bobbleheads.  Him and a buddy of his were working out of this warehouse when several of the warehouse workers were dumping box after box of these into the dumpster.  He literally asked them to stop what they were doing as he wanted to take them all home if they were simply going to be thrown away.  After getting the "ok" from management, he saved hundreds (if not a thousand) of these mascot bobbles.  Between him and his friend they estimate they each took home between 30 and 60 boxes.  And when I say "boxes" I mean shipping boxes that contained anywhere between 18 and 24 bobbleheads in each box.  That number adds up pretty quickly, eh?

Since I try to be as accurate as possible, I was thrilled to have met this guy and get his first hand account of what happened.  I had heard the same story through other sources but never from THE source, which is what I wanted.  Here are a couple pictures of the set, missing one (Kansas State).

Lee Corso Pepsi One Bobblehead

I finally completed the Pepsi One Set.  Click here to read more about it.  This is one of the hardest sets to put together.  I recently picked up this Lee Corso bobblehead to finish off the set.  This is the 2nd Corso I've had...the first one I had was damaged and I wanted a better one.  I didn't think it'd take nearly 18 months to find my 2nd one, but at least...I have a complete set.  You notice the link only talks about the mascots in this collection.  There are 3 announcers (all on College GameDay now) in this set.  Corso, Kirk Herbstreit and Chris Fowler.

Pepsi One Mascot Bobbleheads

I've been trying to track down information about this set for quite some time.  The information below might not be totally accurate and its been pulled from several different sources.  So, if you can add anything to the story behind these bobbleheads, please do.

I believe in the 2003-2005 range, Pepsi One did a set of 33 college mascot bobbleheads.  It included both major and minor conference schools.  AGP produced the bobbleheads and the detail in them is amazing. That's the reason I decided to collect this set even tho it has nothing to do with Minnesota - well at least the teams don't.  Besides that, its a pretty tough collection to put together.  At the time, you had to redeem points (from purchasing Pepsi One cans/bottles).  I've heard 2 different variations.  The first is, so many points got you one bobblehead of your choice.  The second, another batch of points got you 3 bobbleheads of your choice.  Also, only 1 set of points could be redeemed by the same person.  And from the sounds of it, lots of points were needed to get the batch of bobbleheads.  Add in the fact that there are 33 pieces to this set, you'd have to come across a lot of friends who drank Pepsi One.

I teased that Minnesota wasn't really involved in the Mascots earlier - which is true.  But Minnesota is heavily involved in the story.  I've heard the same thing from numerous people, a lot of these Pepsi One Mascots ended up in the Minnesota area.  Not sure why that is, but it certainly seems to be true.

Update: The bobbleheads ended up in Minnesota because the redemption company has a warehouse in Maple Plain, Minnesota.  All bobbleheads were supposed to be destroyed once the redemption period ended.  However, we know that most likely didn't happen.

Here's the set, broken down into 4 pictures.  Who's your favorite?

Also - there is one bobblehead missing from these pictures - Kansas State.