Now that he’s in the Senate, John Fetterman’s everyman persona scores him bobblehead treatment

What’s 8 inches tall, big-headed, and dressed chronically casual?

A John Fetterman bobblehead.

The junior senator from Pennsylvania will soon have a trinket that is both caricature-ish and unsettlingly accurate based on the rendering, adding him to the short list of politicians with a devoted following and a mass-produced character.

Available for preorder just in time to mark Fetterman’s swearing-in ceremony and National Bobblehead Day, both last week, the tiny clone captures Fetterman waving in his black hoodie and blue jeans uniform. It has miniature replicas of his arm tattoos and a smile that feels both welcoming and like a warning to “mess around and find out.”

Fetterman’s bobblehead is sold by Milwaukee’s National Bobblehead Hall of Fame & Museum, an emporium of nodding miniatures that often fields requests to produce bobbleheads (political or otherwise). Museum cofounder and CEO Phil Sklar said his team will typically consider manufacturing a bobblehead after three or four requests, but Fetterman smashed that threshold.

“We got at least a dozen requests via email [for Fetterman], which is not normal,” and definitely “pretty rare for a new politician,” Sklar told The Inquirer.

Though Fetterman has been in the game since 2006, first as mayor of Braddock and then Pennsylvania lieutenant governor, he gained national fame for his everyman vibes during his TV appearances during the 2020 presidential election and successful bid for the Commonwealth’s Senate seat.

» READ MORE: From the top of the political world to a basement office: How John Fetterman will fit in the U.S. Senate

Dubbed the “workwear senator” by the hypebeast style blog HighSnobiety, Fetterman and his ironically nondescript hoodie have been lauded as an allegory for an understanding of the working class, along with his general lack of style. Others seem to like him just because he sometimes has proletariat problems, like not owning enough suits for his new job and being the too-online coworker.

Sklar said coming up with a bobblehead design can sometimes take as little as “a couple of hours” but perfecting those recognizable details can be difficult.

“We wanted the bobblehead to be immediately recognizable so someone isn’t like ‘Oh, that looks more like Arnold Schwarzenegger,’” Sklar said, referencing another hulking former politician. “When you see [Fetterman] on the news, he’s in jeans and a hoodie, so that’s what people relate to him in and what we wanted to capture.”

Fetterman did not respond to request for comment about whether he thinks the bobblehead mirrors his likeness, or whether he would purchase one to adorn his desk.

The bobblehead is available for preorder via the museum’s website for $38, which includes shipping, and should be in collectors’ hands by May. Sklar said he’d be happy if he sold between 300 and 500 tiny Fettermans, though other political figures have sold thousands.

Sklar said a masked and mitten-clad Bernie Sanders sold 30,000 copies, while 50,000 different iterations of former National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease Director Anthony Fauci have been purchased since 2020.

Other new politicians that got the royal bobblehead treatment from the Hall of Fame include Rep. Katie Porter (D., Calif.) and her white board and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, whose miniature makes him look like a clean-shaven Paul Ryan.

Sklar said the museum also made a Mehmet Oz bobblehead but never released it after his loss to Fetterman in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

“Who knows where Fetterman’s career will go, but he’s had a really interesting journey to where he’s at,” Sklar said. “This bobblehead is a testament to that.”