Beatles & Bobbleheads

In anticipation of the release of the remastered albums next month, I've been listening to The Beatles a lot lately. I've also been readinga lot of facts & opinions about the different versions that are going to be available: Stereo versions available separately for every album, a stereo box set, and a mono box set.

The 10 albums from Please Please Me to the "White Album" were originally released in mono, while the final 3 albums, Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be were originally released in stereo.

The only way to get all the newly remastered CDs in the same versions as they were originally released is apparently to buy the mono box set plus the individual stereo versions of the final 3 CDs.

The incomplete mono box set that contains the 10 mono albums and the 2-disc Mono Masters sells for $230, which works out to a ridiculous $19.17 per CD. Plus, you still have to buy the individual Yellow Submarine, Abbey Road, and Let It Be CDs, as well as the individual version of Past Masters, since Mono Masters doesn't have The Ballad Of John And Yoko, Old Brown Shoe, or Let It Be. This works out to over $280 to get all the albums and songs in the versions that they were originally released.

In contrast, with the stereo box set, you get the complete 15 CDs as well as a DVD with 13- mini-documentaries for a much more reasonable $180. This works out to a mere $12 per CD.

The stereo mixes of the first 10 albums were made as an afterthought since back then stereo, while an immature technology, was nonetheless a hot gimmick. Besides not being the versions of the albums that The Beatles themselves were most concerned about, some of the stereo versions of songs have the vocals on only one channel, which is awkward, if not unpleasant, to listen to. It's ridiculous that the stereo versions are what were used back when the first version of The Beatles CDs were released, and it's even worse that they're repeating this mistake with these new releases.

I think it would be much better if rather than individual stereo releases, a complete stereo box set, and an incomplete mono box set, instead all the individually available albums were the same as they were originally released. Also, there should only be 1 box set, which has all the albums as they were originally released, the first 10 in mono, the final 3 in stereo, and Past Masters with all the songs as they were originally released.

If they want to release a box set with the stereo versions of the first 10 albums, that would be fine. Instead of the main version, it would be a curiosity like The Capitol Albums box sets that were released a few years back.

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NBC is going crazy releasing bobbleheads. It started (I think) a few years ago with a Dwight bobblehead like the one seen in season 2 from The Office. Then after that a talking one of Michael Scott was released, which had no direct connection to The Office. Now they're releasing 14 more of all the main characters from the Office, which like the Michael one have no connection to the show. At the NBC store they also have non-Office related bobbleheads, including ones of the main character from the shows Monk, Psych, Heroes, ones for their show hosts Keith Olbermann, Jim Cramer, and Howie Mandel, and last but not least, The Dude.

What's funny is that originally on The Office, before Angela gave Dwight the bobblehead of himself, Dwight had various bobbleheads on his desk to show what a loser he was.

Despite being a big fan of The Office, these new bobbleheads don't appeal to me. The possible exception is the Kelly one, since I think it would go nice with the Dwight bobblehead I have.

But I'm sure there are lots of fans who these will appeal to, so I guess it's good NBC is making these. It'll be interesting to see in a year or two how far NBC has gone with this, and if they've released bobbleheads for all their shows.

The main thing that irks me about the bobbleheads is how they're being sold. There are 14 new bobbleheads and they're releasing 1 a week, for the discounted price of $15 plus $6.75 or more for shipping, a discount from the regular $19 plus shipping. I don't know why they're selling them like this. I think it would be much better if they released them all at once. Maybe they're trying to trick people into not realizing how much it'll be to buy them all, kind of like those president coin boards they sell on TV, where you get the board and the first and last coin for $10 or so, but then the rest of the coins are a few dollars each plus shipping, so if you want to complete the board you're going to have to spend a few hundred dollars. $19 plus shipping for each bobblehead doesn't seem too bad - but it adds up. To get all 14 of the new bobbleheads, even at the discounted price, it's over $300 to get them all shipped.

Even considering this complete price turn-off, I think it would have been better if in addition to releasing all the new bobbleheads individually, they released all the bobbleheads, both the 14 new as well as the 2 older ones, in some kind of deluxe complete set. The set would have a small discount (maybe 10-20%) to buying them all individually, plus big shipping savings. More importantly, to push sales the box set would have a bobblehead that isn't available individually. My first choice would be Mose. Or possibly a special version of the Dwight Bobblehead, such as one that's (fake) gold plated, or Dwight in one of his various costumes, like his karate gi from season 2, or of when he dressed up as Jim in season 3, or one of the 2 Halloween costumes we've seen him in, either the Sith costume from season 2, or even better, his Joker costume from season 5. The extra item doesn't even have to be a bobblehead, it could be something else, such as the Princess Unicorn doll from season 5. I never understood why, after coming up with such a hilarious idea, all they did with it outside of the show was making a mock website and selling a couple babydoll women's shirts. Did they not manufacture and sell the doll out of fear of getting sued by Mattel? I'm pretty sure if the Princess Unicorn doll was made available exclusively with the bobblehead complete set, it would sell out right away, just like the "real" Princess Unicorn dolls.