History has it that the first Bobbe heads, called the Nodders, first appeared in Germany, in the late 1960s. These were large figures of animals about 6 to 8 feet tall. Some people believe that quite a number of bobbleheads existed even before 1960s but were not quite popular at the time. Japan was on the lead, in 1970s, in the manufacture of four common bobbleheads, which became quite common in history of the time. The main material Japan used to make the bobbleheads is papier-mache. Now, papier-mache is not quite good for making the bobbleheads, and this explains why bobbleheads made using this material are few in number. According to the records present, the few of the papier-mache bobblehead dolls that survived either had cracks or chipping or both on them.
At the time, there was nothing such as personalized bobbleheads. They were made for baseball teams and each team had its own type. The bobbleheads made had the same face but wore different types of uniforms. You should take this to mean that there were no bobbleheads for individual players. This is why all those early bobbleheads had the same head, even though they were in different uniforms.

History has it that the most popular bobbleheads were The baseball bobblehead and The Beatles bobblehead dolls. In fact, they remained the most sought after, soon after the bobbleheads became less popular.
There was a change in the material used in making the bobblehead dolls. Ceramic was adopted in place of papier-mache and have been used in the production of the item for a long time now. The Beatles and the Baseball bobbleheads are still popular to date and some have been personalized for tournaments, sports as well as cartoon characters.