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Who’s On First: How Legendary Comedy Duo Abbott And Costello Got Their Own Bobblehead

Feb. 3, 2023
Who’s On First: How Legendary Comedy Duo Abbott And Costello Got Their Own Bobblehead

Throughout the course of baseball’s long history, many movies, television shows and a few comedy bits focused on the sport.

Perhaps no comedy bit resonated with baseball fans like Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine, which originally was a radio skit and celebrates its 85th anniversary this year.

With the anniversary in mind, it is among the reasons why the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame Museum decided to pay tribute to the duo’s most famous routine in the only appropriate way – in the form of a bobblehead.

“It’s actually pretty surprising that legends like Abbott & Costello, who have been tied to baseball with their “Who’s on First” sketch, have never had a bobblehead until now,” Co-Founder and CEO Phil Sklar said. “A lot of times that is just because the right people haven’t connected—and once we got connected with the right people, we were able to make it happen.

Even Sklar concedes to not being a hardcore fan of the skit, it was something he recognized the significance of.

“I knew the skit and have seen it several times. I wasn’t one of those hardcore people,” Sklar said. “The sketch is consistently ranked among the top comedy sketches of all time, which is amazing given that it was 85 years ago.”

The dream of turning the legendary duo into a bobblehead with audio included became a reality on Jan. 7 when the National Bobblehead Museum and Hall of Fame that opened in 2016 and is based in Milwaukee unveiled the limited edition models of the legendary duo.

The bobbleheads feature the duo on a base in the shape of a baseball featuring their names. Bud Abbott is dressed in the same St. Louis Wolves uniform he wore in the skit while confusing Lou Costello with names such as “Who” and I Don’t Know” to represent monikers of position players.

And besides the resemblance there is about five minutes of audio playing some of the notable lines in the skit, which was first performed for a radio audience on March 24, 1938 and was rarely performed the same way twice.

To get to the point of celebrating a legendary skit in the form of a product baseball fans often get to ballparks hours before first pitch to collect, took a few meetings starting with the licensing agent for the duo at last year’s Licensing Expo in Las Vegas a few months after a commemorative set of Negro League bobbleheads were introduced in conjunction with the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City

“When they reached out, we knew it would be something we wanted to pursue,” Sklar said.

After the initial meeting there was the process of designing and creating the bobblehead into a clay mold and painting them to develop an accurate likeness in conjunction with the members of the Abbott and Costello families and estates, which included Chris Costello, the daughter of Lou Costello.

“They have a lot of input, everything we do related to the bobblehead gets approved by them,” Sklar said. “That includes the bobblehead, audio clips, and packaging. They have been very easy to work with, which always makes things nice.”

After getting the appropriate feedback and input from various interested parties comes the legal part such as licensing. Licensing agreements typically include the portion of the sales that go to the estate or family along with the length of the agreement and then comes to the fun part – the design and insertion of audio clips.

“We take clips from available recording and send them to the factory,” Sklar said. “The factory puts the audio clips onto chips which are in an audio box. Each bobblehead has the audio box, and the bobblehead plays the audio at the push of a button. It really makes an already fun and unique bobblehead even better.

So far sales of the limited edition bobblehead are robust and on pace to exceed to initial order of 1,938 and many are deciding to add a second collectible in the form of a Black and White edition of the duo’s performance.

Like the name of the third baseman in the skit, Sklar says “I don’t know” when asked what lies next beyond the initial sales but there is hope for some promotions with minor independent and major leagues along with some involvement the Baseball Hall of Fame which placed a gold record of the skit in Cooperstown in 1956.


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