Move over bobble-heads, the matryoshkas are coming!
In the U.S. sports memorabilia market, bobble-heads are starting to lose their bounce. Some in the business are betting that the next promotional hit in stadiums around the country will be Russian nesting dolls, more formally called matryoshkas.
A number of novelty companies are jockeying for licenses and production deals to make a series of hollow, bowling-pin-shaped figures that fit inside each other and bear the likenesses of today's sports stars.
"To compare it to the bobble-head may be a little premature, but having said that ... this absolutely could be the next wave," said Brian Jennings, the National Hockey League's group vice president of consumer products marketing.
At the very least, the timing couldn't be better, according to those in the industry.
The wildly popular bobble-heads, which have ruled the sports trinket landscape for the last four years, are starting to lose their appeal with fickle sports fans. Professional sports franchises are easing back on their orders of the boingy items as game giveaways. Fourteen teams in the National Basketball Assn. will have in-arena bobble-head promotions this season, down from 20 last year, a league spokesman said.
At Alexander Global, the Bellevue, Wash., company credited with reviving bobble-heads in 1999, U.S. production and retail sales of the dolls are down 50% since 2001, even as demand grows overseas, President Malcolm Alexander said.
"I'd clearly say the bobble-head doll is on the later stages of the product life cycle," he said. "It has established a solid collectible audience but is not as popular a fad."
Companies like start-up Newcrafters in Encino believe the next big thing for sports nuts will be a twist on the century-old Russian art form of hand-painted dolls that are stacked, or nested, within bigger dolls.
The plan: Replace the visages and dress of peasant women and storybook characters with the mugs and uniforms of multimillionaire players.
Former Ukrainian basketball player Alexander Krilov and his wife, Julia Butler, said they got the idea for their Nester dolls in the summer of 2000, when fellow countryman and Los Angeles Laker Stanislas "Slava" Medvedenko came to their home.
Medvedenko was on a swing through California to meet his new teammates. As it happened, he packed a matryoshka in his luggage, thinking he might need it for a goodwill gift.
