Our Story
Whoopass Enterprises is the result of countless hours of beer-induced discussions between friends of the countless product ideas we had that would surely take the consumer market by storm. Though the original idea – marketing an actual Can of Whoopass – did not stick, the name for that potential company – Whoopass Enterprises – did.
After much deliberation, custom bobblehead dolls were selected as the sure-fire, can’t miss next “it” product over other brilliant innovations such as the swiss army shovel, the car clothes rack and the solar powered cigarette lighter.*
Founders Jaeson and Darby Rosenfeld – living in Shanghai, China at the time – decided to look for potential bobblehead partners in the then “world capital” of bobblehead making, who would surely be tripping over themselves to partner in their brilliant plan. After being laughed out of several meetings and even being told by one company that making bobbleheads one-at-a-time was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” they decided the bobblehead dream needed a change of continents.
On a vacation to Guadalajara, Mexico, the dream and reality met. When strolling through a souvenir shop in downtown Guadalajara, Jaeson spotted something that would forever change his life – a medium quality Homer Simpson figurine wearing a Chivas soccer jersey (two-for-one copyright infringements!). It was clearly a message from god, in the form of his own mouth piece, Homer Simpson. Guadalajara was the place to make the bobbleheads.
Jaeson and Darby harassed the store keeper for information on this mysterious producer of figurines, and eventually obtained a cell phone number that led to another cell phone number that led to producer of said figurine. After a 30-minute meeting with the Homer Simpson shop – they commissioned him to produce test bobbleheads, assuming he would produce high quality at a low price, of course.
The prospects of the custom bobblehead dream grew bleaker over the ensuing months. Every two weeks or so, an urgent email would come from the Homer Simpson shop, asking for more cash to purchase materials. After several trips to Western Union, Darby and Jaeson began to despair. Rather than let these potential producers (and with it the bobblehead dream) go, they decided that there was better ways to deal with getting cash extorted from them by the Homer Simpson shop then rolling over and playing dead. If they want to steal money from us, it was time for us to get our “Italian friend” involved.
So in fall 2003, they asked Jaeson’s childhood friend – Scooter DiMaggio – to become part of the bobblehead dream. Not only did he possess the requisite mafia connections, but also graduated with a Master’s in Art from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. His combination of intimidation and sculpting instruction would surely bring the bobblehead dream into reality.
Upon arriving in Guadalajara, Scooter discovered that one issue with the Homer Simpson shop was that they spent a lot of their time communicating with aliens. Apparently, the lead artist in the Homer Simpson shop had aliens implant some metal objects in his “extremities” which allowed him to regularly communicate with extra-terrestrials. This was not only deterring him from producing our bobblehead prototypes, but also causing him to extort money from us.
Since Scooter had a month long-ticket, we decided that looking for other producers might be the right path to follow. We decided to give as many sculptors as we could find a sculpting test – and to our surprise a few of them actually passed. We also got some very abstract pieces of art along their way.
We officially launched our website in December 2003 – at the time we Darby, Jaeson, Scooter and their three dogs shared a moderate sized house with about 30 artists. Four years and thousands of bobbleheads later, we no longer live in the studio where our artists work, but we are still “living the bobblehead dream.” Hopefully, we can make your bobblehead dream come true, too.
* OK – caught us, these are actually Japanese “chindogu” or “useless inventions.”
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