Minnesota Twins SGA Bobblehead Set (Part 1 - Year 2000)

The set that started the bobblehead craze in Minnesota.  To this day, its still the toughest Twins SGA set to complete.  Harmon Killebrew, Kent Hrbek, Tony Oliva, and Kirby Puckett.  Only 5,000 bobbleheads were made for Killebrew and Hrbek, while they upped that amount to 10,000 for Oliva and Puckett.  Theoretically that means there are only 5000 complete sets out there.  This is always why the Killebrew and Hrbek bobbleheads are more spendy that Oliva or Puckett.

A look at the past

I've been pondering blog ideas for a while.  This one has always been in the back of my head but I couldn't do it until I took some pictures. I think this will round into a 13 part series.  What I plan on doing is listing each bobblehead set the Twins gave away by year, starting with the oldest, which was in the year 2000.  These blog posts will be short and sweet.  I'll run down the bobbleheads and probably give out a little tidbit or something on one or more of them.  Hopefully you, the reader, enjoy this series.  As I mentioned, I needed to take pictures, thats because each one is from my own personal collection.

Big Ten Icons

Early in 2013 I was doing some research on University of Minnesota bobbleheads.  I found some information on a Big Ten Network (BTN) set of Icon bobbleheads.  It appears that BTN promoted these bobbleheads in 2010 in connection with a show called Big Ten Icons.  Sidenote: when BTN first launched, I had Comcast and there wasn't an agreement in place so I wasn't able to watch BTN from its conception, but ever since Comcast had BTN in their lineup, I've been a loyal viewer (of course of Gopher sports and related content!) There were 11 bobbleheads in the set, one from each school in the Big Ten (at the time).  Here's a promotional picture of the bobbleheads.

The Gopher bobblehead was of all-time football great, Bronko Nagurski.  I knew I'd like to add this bobblehead to my collection, but the problem was - how?  I scoured the internet for a few months and never found anything.  Well in late 2013, I got lucky!  I reached out to a contact at BTN.  I heard back right away and we emailed several times over the next few months.  He (and BTN) were incredibly gracious and willing to help!  From the emails, I might even say, he was even a bit excited to add to my collection.

I wasn't sure what to expect.  In all the email conversations we had, it seemed like he would do whatever he could to get me the Minnesota bobblehead.  Well...I came home from work the other day and had a package waiting for me...and it wasn't a small box (which is what I was expecting since these were mini bobbleheads).  When I saw who it was from, I was downright giddy...since I wasn't entirely positive what was in there...I was thrilled when I opened the box and saw quite a few little boxes just waiting to be opened!  This is what I found...

Thank you so much to everyone at BTN who helped with this!!  Not only did I get the Bronko Nagurski bobblehead, but each of the other 10 bobbleheads as well - to form a complete set of Big Ten Icons!

The Menards Guy

In a previous post that you can read here, I mentioned I had 2 of these bobbleheads but believed there were 3 total.  I recently found the 3rd one to add to my collection.  Ray Szmanda, better known to those of us in Minnesota as the "Menards Guy" has 3 bobbleheads in his likeness.  Perhaps he has other ones, but these are the only 3 I've come across.

Mini Midway Stadium

Back in 2007 the St. Paul Saints gave out mini Midway Stadiums and this is one of them.  The Saints marketing team is brilliant about their giveaways, but this is just the normal and classic - replica mini stadium!